Altman says OpenAI's AI math releases will continue despite mathematician backlash
On the Cheeky Pint podcast, the OpenAI CEO voiced empathy for disrupted mathematicians but said the company's flood of AI-generated proofs won't stop.
What to know
- Altman says OpenAI's AI-generated math results will keep coming despite mathematicians' distress, arguing humanity 'deserves' the knowledge.
- 28 Fields Medal winners and Caltech mathematicians have publicly warned the push harms the mathematical community, prompting OpenAI to withdraw from a planned Caltech 'math hackathon.'
- OpenAI is now also criticized for withholding details of a claimed Yang-Mills theory breakthrough, contradicting its stated aim of transparency.
- Researchers say hundreds of results released this month lack adequate attribution, context and verification, leaving them to do the work of checking OpenAI's claims.
“I feel unequivocal on this point: Humanity deserves fundamental knowledge, and we should not be sitting on a major fundamental science discovery. The world deserves that.”
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO · Cheeky Pint podcast ↗ · Oct 28
Sam Altman OpenAI CEO
John Collison Stripe President, podcast host28 Fields Medal winners Open letter signatoriesCaltech mathematicians Critics of AI math hackathon
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlesposts
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Mathematicians say OpenAI's rollout remains poorly communicated
Researchers speaking to The Verge said this month's hundreds of AI-generated results have come with inadequate attribution, context and verification, leaving them to do painstaking checking even as OpenAI presses ahead.
“I think, on net, the world deserves to understand how the universe works. But I do have empathy for the method.”
— Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO · source -
In your example, if an alien comes and simply says "it's not true" and leaves, it's not the same scenario we're facing in real life. The alien came, and dropped millions of lines of Lean code showing that it is not true (or so the alien says, we still need to confirm it). We just have to understand them, not cry about how hard it is. What kind of…
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Yes, in a certain category of fields such as medical research this is the case. Absolutely not in mathematics though.
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Altman voices empathy but says the math releases will continue
On the Cheeky Pint podcast with Stripe's John Collison, released Thursday, Altman acknowledged the disruption to mathematicians but said the public's right to scientific knowledge outweighs it, and hinted OpenAI holds many more unreleased discoveries.
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first by Business Insider, 13d ago · also The Verge, Futurism
2 more headlines
- Sam Altman sympathizes with mathematicians, but says OpenAI’s math onslaught won’t stop Mastodon · 13d ago
- Sam Altman to Infuriated Mathematicians: The Math Slop Won’t Stop Futurism · 12d ago
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background
OpenAI claims three breakthroughs but withholds Yang-Mills details — OpenAI announced major claimed results in mathematics, physics and computer science, but has not released details of a Yang-Mills theory result, citing advice from a hand-picked expert group — a move mathematicians call gatekeeping.
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OpenAI announces AI solved a Navier-Stokes Millennium Problem — OpenAI said its models found a case where the Navier-Stokes equations, the subject of a $1 million Clay Mathematics Institute prize, break down into a 'singularity' of infinitely fast vortex spin.
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28 Fields Medal winners publish open letter against AI math push — The mathematicians warned that AI companies' use of mathematical problem-solving as a benchmark harms the field and the community that sustains it.
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OpenAI pulls out of Caltech 'math hackathon' — OpenAI withdrew from the event after current and former Caltech mathematicians and others in the field warned it was 'likely to have destructive impacts for the mathematical community.'