45 points kevcampb 50 minutes ago 58 comments
trescenzi 36 minutes ago | parent
heaney-555 30 minutes ago | parent
What the mathematicians could do is reveal whether they had the data-sharing opt-out on or not. But curiously, as far as I've seen, none of them will answer that question!
cmiles8 29 minutes ago | parent
brookst 24 minutes ago | parent
heaney-555 23 minutes ago | parent
aenis 25 minutes ago | parent
Most people do not understand that the main reason for the subscriptions is to give OpenAI and Anthropic the priceless, unique data that shows how the models are used, what people are building, how they are building, which solutions they consider OK, which they consider bad -- they purchase this data with cheap tokens. This is their only moat, really. If some really proprietary IP gets swept in the training data set its not really OpenAI's fault -- its the researchers'. Have something secretive? Dont fricking paste this into chatgpt. Duh!
(I'd definitely not think OpenAI/Anthropic ignore the opt outs, or ZDRs. All it would take is one whistleblower to get them into terminal troubles. And why would they do it? They are not in the business of scooping unique IP -- they are in the business of understanding how AI is used across a variety of mundane, day to day work of individuals and companies. Useless math problem is good (or bad, as in this case) PR, but otherwise entirely worthless for the labs.
socialcommenter 20 minutes ago | parent
heaney-555 18 minutes ago | parent
What I was referring to is the fact that neither Levent Alpöge nor Tristan Buckmaster will answer this question.
asimpletune 19 minutes ago | parent
heaney-555 18 minutes ago | parent
What I was referring to is the fact that neither Levent Alpöge nor Tristan Buckmaster will answer this question.
yturijea 30 minutes ago | parent
fractorial 26 minutes ago | parent
heaney-555 20 minutes ago | parent
OpenAI, as with all AI companies, openly admits that it trains on user data unless the user opts out. But the mathematicians have not said whether or not they opted out.
>Did the transcripts of any of the agents include a tool call whose result including user data?
They have already explicitly denied this.
xxs 23 minutes ago | parent
forlorn 33 minutes ago | parent
kedikedi 29 minutes ago | parent
So I see someone dedicating a sizeable portion of their life on a discovery and not being credited is the problem here. Otherwise it would be published in a journal anyway.
pluc 28 minutes ago | parent
brookst 27 minutes ago | parent
pluc 23 minutes ago | parent
halsafar 13 minutes ago | parent
Just like their "oops we hacked hugging face".
Everything OpenAI does is to drive hype. They aren't honest or a good actor but they sure have good hype.
brookst 28 minutes ago | parent
fxwin 28 minutes ago | parent
suddenlybananas 28 minutes ago | parent
watwut 28 minutes ago | parent
And lying about whether the proof was done by mathematicians or OpenAI is bad humanity, so.
cyclopeanutopia 28 minutes ago | parent
xxs 27 minutes ago | parent
diydsp 25 minutes ago | parent
2. There was a $1,000,000 reward
bryanrasmussen 24 minutes ago | parent
gilrain 24 minutes ago | parent
diydsp 15 minutes ago | parent
Anyone with a decent amount of social power is aware and skilled at maintaining these conditions whether consciously or not.
The praxes are non-trivial: awareness, bravery, flexibility, and seflessness.
This could be summarized as "unhealthy competition."
LelouBil 24 minutes ago | parent
This kind of bribing attempt doesn't seem to come from the "good side"
timthelion 12 minutes ago | parent
throwaway713 25 minutes ago | parent
heaney-555 21 minutes ago | parent
However, the mathematicians could easily declare whether they had the toggle on or off. Yet curiously, they will not say!
LelouBil 15 minutes ago | parent
It was very weird on it's own almost like the setting didn't matter. Or the researcher was being dishonest with what they shared to The Verge
monster_truck 9 minutes ago | parent
scotty79 23 minutes ago | parent
arutar 23 minutes ago | parent
https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117237320796901560
Especially in recent years the mathematics community has worked very much in good faith, and a lot of effort is spent trying to give appropriate credit for ideas. Even when ideas are discovered in parallel if it turns out that previous work contained the same essential idea it is by and far regarded as best practice to give priority in this case. The point, in good academic practice, is to maintain the health of the practice at large.
As Terence Tao explains in that post, the goal of mathematics is not only to solve big problems. And, even if one were very single-mindedly focused on solving big problems, it is still (in the long term) better to maintain the health of the community at large so that problems which are out of reach at the moment may be in reach again in the future. Good academic practice is one part of this culture.
sylware 22 minutes ago | parent
Re-using advances done by others is necessary in maths.
This is how hard sciences do progress.
xxs 21 minutes ago | parent
sylware 16 minutes ago | parent
On my open source projects, there is always a big "WIP" messy phase which I don't "really" publish... because it is messy.
xxs 1 minute ago | parent
in most jurisdictions it'd constitute a crime.
kova12 20 minutes ago | parent
loose-cannon 17 minutes ago | parent
aennassiri 17 minutes ago | parent
I'm not criticizing them, but I hope this race towards the first-best result or AGI doesn't blind them to making good decisions such as not using their users' data without consent.
eggy 16 minutes ago | parent
jaccola 11 minutes ago | parent
If my friend showed me some unpublished work (Say 90% of the hardest work toward a significant proof) if I then go finish the remaining 10% and publish the whole thing as mine it isn’t ‘building on the shoulders of giants’ it’s plagiarism/theft.
If he’d published that work first and I took it and found another proof and credited him for his work via citation then that would be fine.
faangguyindia 14 minutes ago | parent
But later we found that algorithm and math cannot be patented.
monster_truck 13 minutes ago | parent
sobiolite 11 minutes ago | parent
But if they are saying this contaminated the model's training data with knowledge of their ideas, who's to say the model they were developing their research ideas with wasn't already contaminated through prior discussions with other researchers about the same topics?
So if contamination is proved, or cannot be disproved, and if these researchers want OpenAI to relinquish its claim to have solved these problems independently, then it would seem they also have to give up their claim to have solved them independently?
api 8 minutes ago | parent
loose-cannon 1 minute ago | parent
2. If someone did come out and claim that their ideas were used without proper attribution in Tristan's work, then of course, that deserves consideration.
3. What you're suggesting seems purely hypothetical. At present, there is nobody claiming that Tristan's work is "contaminated"
4. Tristan was very willing in his initial statement to give credit to the people who developed the ideas.
glimshe 1 minute ago | parent
In the best case scenario, these people are standing on the shoulders of past generations AND the extensive training data from sources that aren't being credited and possibly they couldn't even access.
I have nothing against these mathematicians because I don't know them. And given that, there's no reason to trust their word any more than OpenAI's. Its possible the work they were doing, even if related, was a dead end and immaterial to OpenAI's findings.
In other words, we need more evidence before making accusations.
fooo1882992 10 minutes ago | parent
Dude makes up like 50% of the replies here.
asimpletune 9 minutes ago | parent
If I were a mathematician I would not my unpublished work to go into the hands of a competitor.
If I were a lawyer I wouldn't want private details of my defense to be made available to the prosecution. Anonymous or otherwise.
I wouldn't want the plot to an unreleased book to be suggested to another author.
krater23 3 minutes ago | parent
Would this data moved through a hack to ChatGPT, this would be another thing, but like this. No pity at all.