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.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1004·
    4 days ago

    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

    • [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish
      22·
      4 days ago

      The whole threatening careers thing happened with navier stokes too.

      These people are completely rotten to the core.

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish
      12·
      4 days ago

      OpenAI then threatened his career if he tried to tell people what had happened.

      and thus ended academic collaborations with OpenAI.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        34·
        3 days ago

        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

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
            27·
            3 days ago

            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.

  • cannedtuna@lemmy.worldEnglish
    422·
    4 days ago

    “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

    • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      211·
      4 days ago

      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.

      The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, without regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper’s arguments at the expense of their quality.

      The term “Gish gallop” was coined in 1994 by the anthropologist Eugenie Scott, who named it after the creationist Duane Gish, described by Scott as the technique’s “most avid practitioner”.[1][2]

  • lepinkainen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    4 days ago

    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?

    • CelloMike@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      4 days ago

      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

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      4 days ago

      There’s an onus now on those that care about math to check the proofs. If errors are found in one their might be similar errors in another. A serial release would have been cleaner and allowed commentary that might help improve the accuracy or perhaps even the way the model conveyed the data to make it more understandable / digestable.

      Openai dug the problems up from somewhere. They could have collaborated with some of the people that defined the problems in the first place. This is just perpetuation of their culture of theft.

      • jumping redditor [they/them]@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        is there any evidence that it is harder to understand a proof than to make it in the first place? because I suspect that it is generally easier to understand the proof than to produce it.