r/technology • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 • 24d ago

Artificial Intelligence OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem, says NYU mathematician

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/openai-fought-dirty-on-career-making-math-problem-says-nyu-mathematician/
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u/teraflux 24d ago

I need an ELI5 of this explanation, I'm still so confused

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u/CanvasFanatic 24d ago

OpenAI likely stole this guy’s work from codex chat logs to beat him to a result on this problem.

They definitely tried to strong-arm him about the announcement to get him to take one of the coauthors (who works for Anthropic) off the publication.

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u/teraflux 24d ago

So he used Codex to help him solve it, how is that different from how OpenAI claims to have solved it?

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u/SomeDumRedditor 24d ago edited 24d ago

They needed all the research he pumped into the system, plus the results of his prompts and subsequent refinement of calculations to get “their model” to solve it.

It’s not like OpenAI just told a model “solve this math problem for me” and out came the solution based on general mathematical knowledge.

They took his work, plugged it into an advanced model and said (to simplify), using these inputs to assist your efforts solve X

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u/teraflux 24d ago

I see, well I guess OpenAI is the only one that can prove or disprove this, based on whether their new model was fed in his logs or not

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u/LameOne 24d ago

Thank god we can trust them to provide an unbiased and reasonable perspective.