alt Hacker NewsThe flaw with this line of reasoning is that Buckmaster and Alpöge only had a partially completed proof of a weaker version of the Navier-Stokes problem. OpenAI's internal model solved the full, harder problem. This means the key information needed to bridge the gap was not present in Buckmaster and Alpöge's chat history.
You might retort that ChatGPT used the training data to copy their approach, but the approach Buckmaster and Alpöge chose was already published by Luis and Diego in 2023 and in every frontier model's training set.
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I don't believe people are denying that the model is impressive. The problem is that learning someone else is making progress on a topic using method X and then rushing to scoop them borders on academic misconduct. If, on top of this, their private conversations about X were used in the proof, I really don't see how its defensible...
I’m pretty sure you think you are doing a good job of defending your employer and you probably believe “Open”AI are the good guys here. I also acknowledge that they butter your bread so your financial future currently depends on their success.
However the way you are conducting yourself in public, while announcing yourself as an OpenAI employee is doing enormous harm to the greater and magnanimous aim of your organisation. Take a step back and read the temperature of the room. Being the smartest guy in the room will never protect you from alienating the rest of the room into a baying mob. Right now you are Icarus flying straight into the sun.
This argument proves too much. By this standard, it wouldn't have counted as copying their approach if the researchers had just fed in Levent & Buckmaster's paper verbatim as a prompt into the swarm.