> It was also said that if OpenAI posted after us, they would say that we deserved the Clay Prize, and that we were the “closest humans to the problem”. I declined both offers. I said that if OpenAI released its result in the way proposed I would go public with what happened. The reply was, “Why would you ruin your career?” I replied that I am an academic, and asked why he thought going public would ruin my career. The reply was, “If you don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice.”
I'm not even sure what to say to this, but I think this should be widely known if it is indeed what happened.
IF ANYTHING, OpenAI ought to investigate and officially react to this particular communique since this dude was communicating on their behalf. If there are supporting evidence, I would expect nothing less than a firing and an apology. The issue itself is separate from the whole thing.
Or, given how dedicated he appears to be to the company, a promotion and a raise.
Dark take, but I really hope not. If anything it would be a good opportunity to buy some goodwill by washing themselves from all the alleged shadiness so far.
This is OpenAI though. There were zero visible consequences to them unleashing a swarm of agents on the public internet. We will see how it goes down but my prior is zero consequence and a statement along the lines of "Isn't our AI great? Also we love transparency, ethics and collaboration."
I think this should be in the title of the post. 'OpenAI allegedly threatening to ruin a prominent researcher's career', or smth like that.
There's some glaring mistakes in your framing.
First, this is an unnamed OpenAI employee speaking, not OpenAI the organization.
Second, you miscomprehended the article. The employee did not "threaten to ruin a prominent researcher's career". The actual quote is "Why would you ruin your career?", which implies the researcher would damage their own career, i.e. via self-sabotage.
Then the actual "threat" is "If you don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice” which is an entirely different statement.
> Second, you miscomprehended the article. The employee did not "threaten to ruin a prominent researcher's career"…
Proceeds to ask removal of another coauthor or else we totally discredit you - phrased as why would you do this to yourself.
This is how deniable threats work. The promise of "not being nice" in conjunction with "ruining the career" is as clear a threat as there can be in writing.
I don't even understand the conflict tbh. Probably I'm just dense. Tristan is not claiming NS, just a huge advance which may solve NS soon. OAI is claiming NS and willing to credit Tristan for the ideas and publish after.
Oai offers two options, the second Tristan views as dishonest. But Tristan rejects the first, why? Because he thinks it's theft? But then why would OAI threaten him?
He claims to have found a counterexample for NS (see the second paragraph of the article), but the paper is not ready yet.
OpenAI claims to already have a full proof (which they produced in the past 5 days after the rumors leaked). Hence the dispute.
What I find interesting is the timeline of when he found counterexample for NS is very unclear. Did Tristan find a counterexample weeks ago or was it very recently? From the wording, it's possible that Tristan found it in the past 24 hours, after the discussion with OAI.
Either way, there was a massive rush to publish these results.
My best guess is that from the perspective of the OpenAI people, Buckmaster was letting his paranoia about OpenAI training tank his opportunity to receive the Clay Prize (it seems like Buckmaster and Alpoge's result isn't quite the full result required for the Clay Prize, whereas apparently OpenAI does have that full result worked out, using the same approach that Buckmaster and Alpoge had been exploring).
Whether the Codex sessions could have indeed made their way into Astra training data is something I can only speculate on though.
"using the same approach that Buckmaster and Alpoge had been exploring" is imo mealy wording: it seems fairly likely that OA heard Buckmaster and Alpoge were close to a breakthrough, and decided to use their unlimited compute to quickly prompt based on their assumptions about B&As work.
Zero data retention, wink.
No looksies, wink.
No trainsies, wink.
Well, Buckmaster says both his and Alpöge's use of Codex was non-institutional, and OpenAI claims the right to train their models on inputs and outputs of non-enterprise users in their service policies [0]. So I'm not sure they were even promised that.
[0] https://openai.com/policies/how-your-data-is-used-to-improve...
It isn't relevant whether they were promised that. Indeed I think the assumption must be that they were not promised that, since otherwise the author asking if they were would not make much sense.
If OpenAI did use the conversations from Buckmaster and Alpoge, then not disclosing it, explicitly, is plagiarism. If they planned to use that plagiarism to pressure the authors to publish, that is even more unethical. What the terms of use say does not make it any more or less ethical.
That's absolutely right. Why the downvotes? If OpenAI are using but not acknowledging the work of others that's plagiarism. If they don't know for sure, but aren't performing due dilligence to make sure they aren't, that's also plagiarism.
I can imagine excuses for unknowing plagiarism in this case. What is described in the article seems much more serious: a research program that was only initiated following reports of the author's similar program. In this case no excuses of "I didn't know" can apply, it is not like this revealed some obscure work from the 1980s nobody could reasonably have foreseen. And as far as I can tell this program was only really initiated to apply pressure to the researchers, without their knowledge/consent. It looks very weird.
> Why the downvotes?
I think there was only ever one. Not sure why.
Only for ChatGPT, if the user hasn’t opted out. Would mathematicians be using ChatGPT for this kind of work? Genuinely asking, I know nothing about this!
Yes, mathematicians are. And yes, most of my colleagues did not even know the opt-out was an option.
If I am reading your question correctly you are asking about chat interface Vs Codex/Claude code? If so, in my experience Codex/Claude code use is widespread for mathematicians who are seriously using these tools.
For context and balance, Bubeck has tweeted a curiously non-specific denial:
> A series of false and inflammatory allegations against me are currently circulating on social channels. To clarify, I came into the discussion following academic norms, and I'm disappointed that it has come to this. Anyone who knows me knows that academic standards are of the highest importance to me. Will have more to say tomorrow.
> I'm not even sure what to say to this, but I think this should be widely known if it is indeed what happened.
Call this behavior what it is, technofascism. Another comment compared it to the Godfather. To think this is the 21st century and academics are still horrible human beings.