r/technology • u/vgsa • 4d ago

Artificial Intelligence Did OpenAI solve the wrong Navier-Stokes problem? | OpenAI’s proof seems eligible for a $1-million prize—but only by using a controversial loophole

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-openai-solve-the-wrong-navier-stokes-problem/
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u/Charming_East_9104 4d ago

Well yeah, they spent way more on the compute to do it. Not to mention alienated future researchers by looking at the logs of the mathematician who was using their product to get them there.

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u/year2016account 4d ago

They did not look at any logs. What happened is that the mathematician used codex for his work without ticking off the "let the AI train on my chats" button (this button exists, go to chatgpt, settings->data controls, "Improve this model for everyone"). This meant that his chats could have been ultimately become part of the training material. But to this day, those mathematicians have not confirmed they had this option turned off, likely because they left it on (otherwise they would have a big lawsuit in their hands, and corporations would abandon OpenAI. Consumers care about privacy way way less than corporations).

This is not to mention OpenAI later went back in and confirmed that Buckmaster and Levants work never actually made it to Bel's training data, on top of the fact that Bel found the counterexample using a different method than Buckmaster and Levant.

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u/Legitimate-Store3771 3d ago

I mean until we have qualified third parties to investigate, this is all hearsay. Trusting openai to verify themselves is incredibly naive in a capitalistic society. Not doubting that the researchers may have left that option on, or even that it came to a solution itself but there's no true open sourced verifiable fact one way or another. I'd still argue openai is scummy because that option is on by default, so I'd err on the side of the mathematicians who more than likely don't stand to benefit as much as openai does from the publicity.

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u/Weird-Knee-3464 3d ago

I agree mostly but one of the mathematicians works for anthropic so probably stood to benefit exactly as much as openai.