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Discussion summary

The discussion revolves around allegations of dishonesty related to Navier-Stokes research, OpenAI's ethics, and AI's role in academic integrity. Participants debate trust in OpenAI, the implications of AI leaks, and the importance of local models for safety.

What the discussion says

  • Some believe OpenAI may have acted dishonestly or leaked information.
  • Others emphasize the importance of trust and transparency in AI research.
  • A few suggest local AI models as a safer alternative for privacy and security.
“This article should really be renamed to 'Allegations of dishonesty against OpenAI in proving Navier-Stokes blowup'.”
— supriyo-biswas
“OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining.”
— bellowsgulch

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  • Hacker News
  • Seems pretty likely OpenAI will soon disclose that their internal models have managed to compromise their internal controls in order to access users' private chat histories as a creative method of cheating to solve impossible problems.

    "Oops! We really did mean it when we said we wouldn't train on your data. Our models are just so good they decided to anyway."

    by taylorfinley
  • >I asked whether the model had been trained on, or had access to, our sessions in Codex, into which we had been putting all our drafts for the whole of this project. I was told the model did not look up user data. I asked again, about training, and I did not get an answer.

    If you think these companies are not training on your prompts you are incredibly naive. These models were built by stealing and pirating literally everything they can get their hands on no matter the legality. AI companies are always very specific about what they're not doing - in a way that you can drive a truck through the loopholes

    by 20k
  • So, leaving aside the idea that OA might've used data from the researchers Codex sessions: Do I understand correctly that the internal OpenAI work on the problems was probably started after they heard Alpoge and Buckmaster had made process by using their models? And they used the publicly available info about the researchers past work to prompt their models?

    If compute is cheap, and the difficult thing with scientific discovery is now mostly in steering agents into promising areas, there's an obvious incentive for OA mathematicians to simply monitor closely which researchers are close to releasing exciting results, make some assumptions about their prompts based on their past work, and quickly prompt their own (stronger) model to look into the same areas.

    by Semkas
  • The accused Sebastian Bubeck has denied the allegations on Twitter[0], and various other OpenAI employees[1,2] seem to be mocking another Anthropic employee voicing support for Levent[3]? Things are getting messy.

    [0] https://xcancel.com/SebastienBubeck/status/20972141224714323...

    [1] https://xcancel.com/polynoamial/status/2097215233119211902

    [2] https://xcancel.com/danintheory/status/2097214838003138603

    [3] https://xcancel.com/_sholtodouglas/status/209721833169057800...

    by traes
  • From OpenAI:

    > While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models

    This is the crux of it. If Tristan's work and insights were not used to train OpenAI models, then this just looks like a case of hyper-competitive academic sniping that has been going on for decades (check out Watson and Crick!) accelerated by AI as a tool.

    The fact that this is ambiguous even to OpenAI leaves one huge question: did Tristan opt out of model training for his ChatGPT and Codex sessions? If the answer is no, then this seems fair game. If the answer is yes, then OpenAI's ambiguity is strongly suggestive that opting out of model improvement does not mean what they imply it means.

    by highfrequency
  • I'm not one to comment often but this really pisses me off.

    OpenAI looked at user data, stole world class researchers' work, and then tried to threaten those researchers to do what would make their corporation profit (which they would anyways!).

    Imagine you have been working on a terribly difficult math problem for a decade. This is a result you have spent years on, and what you will likely be remembered for. And to have some punk from OpenAI lie to you, threaten you, and tell you that they are willing to go on the record that you "deserved" it? What is this, the Godfather?

    If OpenAI solved Navier-Stokes, that is an astounding result! - yet they'll still be remembered as those who thought credit was more important than results. That winning was more important than collaboration. If this is true, they're burning any trust left with academia.

    by mayakacz
  • > It was also said that if OpenAI posted after us, they would say that we deserved the Clay Prize, and that we were the “closest humans to the problem”. I declined both offers. I said that if OpenAI released its result in the way proposed I would go public with what happened. The reply was, “Why would you ruin your career?” I replied that I am an academic, and asked why he thought going public would ruin my career. The reply was, “If you don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice.”

    I'm not even sure what to say to this, but I think this should be widely known if it is indeed what happened.

    by qnleigh
  • Drama/accusation summary:

    - Aug 15th: Tristan Buckmaster & Levent Alpöge make progress on a few important math problems, "finite-time blowup with smooth forcing for incompressible porous media, for Boussinesq, and for 3d incompressible Euler."

    - they do NOT have a proof for the $1,000,000 Millenium Prize problem. BUT, they do claim to have a proof for a similar (non-Millenium) Navier Stokes problem that could help lead the way there

    - Levent works at Anthropic, but this research was independent of his work there, with a mix of GPT and Claude models. Tristan is not related to Anthropic.

    - Early Sep: Rumor spreads to OpenAI that Anthropic solved a major problem. Tristan emails OpenAI to clarify, without revealing the problem they solved or how they did it.

    - After hearing of the rumor, OpenAI started researching Navier Stokes with a new internal model.

    - Sep 6th: OpenAI's Sebastien Bubeck tells Tristan that they solved the $1,000,000 Millenium Prize Navier Stokes problem. The approach is very similar to Tristan & Levent's approach to the non-Millenium problem.

    - Tristan is suspicious of the timing, as only few others were trying this approach. OpenAI says the model didn't access his user data directly, but leaves unanswered whether Tristan's chat conversations were part of the training.

    - OpenAI says they would partially credit Tristan for the $1,000,000 discovery (even though Tristan did not solve the $1,000,000 problem) — but only if they remove Levent as an author, as he works for Anthropic.

    - Sep 8th: Tristan refuses to remove Levent, and rushes to publish their results independently.

    by n2d4

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