The research community is in uproar after OpenAI released a trove of more than 700 mathematical preprints entirely generated by AI on 6 October. The San Francisco, California-based maker of ChatGPT posted the preprints on the software repository Github.
Although some mathematicians celebrated the solution of longstanding problems, others took to social media to complain about being scooped. Some were incensed at what one physicist called a ‘slopocalypse’, even if the mathematical content could end up being formally correct.
I saw the Wired article yesterday, it’s worse than it sounds.
For at least one of the problems an OpneAI researcher initiated a partnership with a mathametician, loaded all of his work into a chatbot without his knowledge, and then published the result as 100% from the chatbot in this “trove”.
When the mathematician confronted the OpenAI employee, he was told sharing credit was “too complicated” so they wouldn’t acknowledge he had already mostly had it done. When he tried to push back, OpenAI then threatened his career if he tried to tell people what had happened.
It’s is very very unlikely that was a single case. If that happened once, they definitely at least tried it more than once.
Even if it actually solved anything, taking in years of human work and then spitting out one last step is nowhere near what they’re portraying this as. They’re intentionally making it sound like they just gave the chat or the problem and it solved what a human couldn’t.
All it did was steal human work and rush publication
https://x.com/doomslide/status/2108121379660832930
here’s a paper in their dump that is very similar to what humans uploaded a month ago
same poster goes on to say that the scale of the intellectual fraud is unbelievable
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I don’t know what you’re trying to say, and I feel like you don’t either.
This means people will stop sharing work and insights with each other, which has never before been the case.
That part was clearly, but obviously false on multiple levels
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I’m actually paraphrasing Terence Tao
That doesn’t even mean you’re saying the same thing bud…
Non-mathematicians don’t realize this, but proofs aren’t intrinsically valuable outside of what they mean about the community capable of creating them.
Do you think “non-mathematicians” think solving a math problem magically gets someone a check? Like, if anythi g you have it backwards
You’re way off on everything though.
You should paraphrase less, wait till after you understand what you’re reading.
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“Why is OpenAI trying to solve hundreds of math problems to be released all at once?”, he added.
even if the mathematical content could end up being formally correct.
It should be noted that none of what they released has been verified. Throwing 700 papers out there is intentional to generate buzz, “hey look how great we are”, and to slow attempts at proving or disproving their results. That way even if a few get disproven early they can still say “well that’s just a couple out of hundreds” because it’s gonna take forever to work through the slop dump. It could be a long time before we get a percentage of accuracy and by then most people will have forgotten or lost interest since the headline will be stale by then.
some mathematicians who might find their research projects pre-empted by the OpenAI release. “We should put that aside for today though. … he wrote, because it shows how quickly the technology has become useful to mathematicians.”
Yeah this fucks the researchers. Funding could get pulled from related projects leaving their work in hiatus until someone can check the slop for accuracy. Till then someone can just point to this and say “oh it’s already been solved” like it’s a done deal already.
“Look how useful we are!!!” Turns in unverified crap
What we should do IMHO:
Make the owner of an AI legally responsible for the actions of their AI system, but not legal owners of the AI system’s results/products.
Stealing from all the world and then bragging boldly about it.
Is that the new accepted behaviour?
The next ruler of the world?
Can someone please explain to a non-mathematician what the issue is specifically?
We all want the problems solved, right? Is there a wrong way to solve them? Or a process that people are supposed to follow not to “scoop” others? A honor system of sorts?
If a human dropped the same 700 solutions online, would it still be bad?
There are two issues really - one is a perception that they’re not vetting any of this output, just dumping it out on the internet and expecting real mathematicians to actually check it all, so yes if a human was doing the same thing it’d probably still be suspect.
The other is the widely held suspicion that much of the “breakthrough” mathematics here has been stolen from real researchers who’ve been using chatgpt to develop their theories by talking to it
I think there are three main issues (though I might be overlooking something):
- AI taking over peoples work is as much an issue for mathematicians here, as it is for programers, artists, writers, etc. elsewhere.
- We still need to check if these 700 papers are correct (AI makes mistakes at least as often as humans, usually more often). This involves a huge amount of effort. And if it turns out that they contain a bunch of mistakes, OpenAI is unlikely to care. To them, these papers have already served their purpose (generating headlines).
- Solving a problem in mathematics means being able to (formally) convince other people that your opinion is correct (massively simplified, but imo that is what mathematics boils down to), by getting them to understand why your opinion is correct. Having a pile of linear algebra spit out 700 texts about certain math problems removes the whole “human understanding” part of that.
However, it’s not entirely unprecedented for a computer to provide a proof that we don’t completely understand. I forgot the details (and I’ll edit them in if I can find it), but there was at least one problem that was solved using a computer and brute force trying millions of cases. That produces a proof much longer than any human could read in a lifetime, and iirc there where quite a few mathematicians unhappy about it at the time too.
We all want the problems solved, right? Is there a wrong way to solve them?
Science is not mainly about solving problems (that would be engineering for example).
But more specifically to your question:
There are many wrong ways of doing scientific work, and what current AI does is one of them: reading it all, rephrasing it all a little and then already declare everything as done & good, even when it isn’t.
A scientist needs proof, and peer reviews, etc. before the work can be called good.
Never forget AI isn’t creating really new things, it can only chew up and spit out what has been there before. This is especially true in science.
