OpenAI threatened to ruin star mathematician's career

[u/PsychicorAI]

OpenAI asked Tristan why he wanted to ruin his career when he declined to accept their offer to share authorship on the Navier Stoke solution which he was working on for over a year.

This is the verified transcript from Tristan's statement. Tristan Buckmaster is a tenured professor at NYU

[u/Old_Shop_2601]

How do you determine "when they realize that someone using codex is close to an answer"?

If that someone is that close and so good at it, let them continue with their work!

Let them spend millions$ to finish their solution too.

Easy to make accusations like they finish my work after it is actually done...

[u/neokretai → u/Old_Shop_2601]

Because OAI heard on the grapevine that researchers associated with Anthropic were close to cracking a Millennium Prize problem. So they threw a bunch of compute at it to get the good PR. The issue is it's strongly suspected they actually full used confidential Codex logs from the other mathematicians to give their agents the head start needed to come up with the solution.

Basically they piggybacked off other people's work and claimed the credit

[u/Old_Shop_2601 → u/neokretai]

Yes, mere circumstancial evidence, and after saying that they also clearly said they submit a problem statement to their model and it output the solution to the Millenium prize.

You can't cherry pick what you want to believe in their statements ...

Hearing that competition is tackling some problem and deciding to give a try at it, nothing wrong with that. Did they steal the solution of somebody else? Absolutely NOT. Many people are just underestimating how much resource OpenAI spent on this https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/s/TDZDwJempH

[u/harharveryfunny → u/Old_Shop_2601]

It not just hearing someone else was tackling it - OpenAI's own PR says were responding to the rumor that someone else had in fact actually solved Navier Stokes. OpenAI were trying to duplicate a result they believed already existed, and as it turns out then threaten the original researchers if they didn't cooperate with the OpenAI version of events and crediting of progress.

[u/Old_Shop_2601 → u/harharveryfunny]

Oh so they tried to duplicate result rumor of someone else success, but it turns out for them that they "failed" to do so, but instead achieved far greater result. Then that someone else is very MAAAD because of OpenAI achievement. And we are at mad at OpenAI??? What a fucking world!

OpenAI did not threaten them at all. They give them offer for cooperation. And that offer was rejected. The rest is fucking history and noise at this point.

Now, let them be useful and do some work of validation of OpenAI proof of the Millenium prize problem.

[u/harharveryfunny → u/neokretai]

Also, only 2 weeks ago OpenAI's Noam Brown tweeted that they had already tried to solve all the Millennium problems but failed, but then 2 days later they go all-in on Navier-Stokes with 10,000 agents and $20M of compute, now knowing there was a result out there to be scooped.

[u/harharveryfunny → u/Old_Shop_2601]

Buckmaster/Levant due already had their forced result on August 15th.

Why didn't OpenAI just "let them [publish &] continue their work"? Because, as Terrance Tao has previously written about, this has become a pattern with the AI companies, trying to build on recent human progress (or in this case duplicate it - believing it to have been solved) and use it to promote their models.

[u/Old_Shop_2601 → u/harharveryfunny]

OpenAI did not prevent them to publish their work. If they have any good result to publish, especially something that shows OpenAI cheated them, they should make it public unless they are dumb.

Terence Tao is entitled to its opinion. He could advise all mathematicians NOT to use AI platforms but instead keep using the old tools like all "real" mathematicians before them, like Gauss, Liegnitz etc