> we ask them to stop testing advanced mathematical problems on proprietary models.
Maybe I'm alone on this, but for some reason these sorts of requests strike me as akin to gatekeeping how someone should breathe air. It's math... the numbers and symbols are just out there in the platonic realm available for anyone to do as they like with them. It's patently absurd to request other people to stop.
Ensuring credit where credit is due? That's fine. If your model incorporates the efforts of many others, then it's reasonable to request acknowledgement of everyone who contributed (even indirectly). But that's not what the request states — presumably their ask subsumes any advanced ML model, including those that weren't trained on a giant corpus of text.
To quote Noam Brown, "Our main focus is shipping great models so everyone can use them to make discoveries of their own" [1]. Spending 15 million dollars of compute with an internal model to blitz and scoop a resolution of Navier-Stokes that someone is already on track to resolve (or, from my understanding of why OpenAI did this, had already resolved, as staff at OpenAI stated their attempt was prompted by rumors of a resolution by Anthropic) is in complete opposition to this stated claim. That act is what this portion of the recommendation is in response to: OpenAI perpetually holding out internal models and tooling, using them to solve important problems in math, and thus themselves holding a monopoly on certain aspects of mathematics. Why is it absurd to ask people who are in a position to do an obviously damaging act to not do so, especially when those same people were the ones who asked for your advice in the first place and claimed to not want to do said act previously?
How so? All it does it move who the "gatekeepers" are. OpenAI continuing to pump math problems into their internal models will only mean that if you want to be on the cutting edge of mathematics problem solving, you have to have access to internal OpenAI models. It takes what was previously an incredibly open field -- basically every paper is freely available on the arXiv, any given topic has probably 5 textbooks -- and turns it into one where the frontier is in the hands of a single company. If you are so against "gatekeeping" -- which I assure you, mathematicians are not doing, if you personally use an LLM to solve an important problem and write it up nicely (keyword: nicely) nobody will be mad at you -- why are you so happy to place the field into the hands of a singular entity?
>if you want to be on the cutting edge of mathematics problem solving, you have to have access to internal OpenAI models.
that is the way of technology. If i want to be just in the middle of the pack, not even a cutting edge, i have to buy a car, i can't just walk everywhere in reasonable time. I have to use a phone, i go to the doctor for modern medicine, etc. - note that pretty much everything is private companies goods and private services.
>where the frontier is in the hands of a single company.
We did invent anti-monopoly laws though to address such major issues with the private origin of the goods and services, and of course AI companies should be subject to it too (if you noticed, by stocking the scare of AI the BigAI companies are actually trying to get the anti-monopoly laws relaxed for them - and this is where our attention should be, the rest is just red herring)
>It takes what was previously an incredibly open field
It was nice riding a horse among the open rolling hills.
throwaway713 · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe I'm alone on this, but for some reason these sorts of requests strike me as akin to gatekeeping how someone should breathe air. It's math... the numbers and symbols are just out there in the platonic realm available for anyone to do as they like with them. It's patently absurd to request other people to stop.
Ensuring credit where credit is due? That's fine. If your model incorporates the efforts of many others, then it's reasonable to request acknowledgement of everyone who contributed (even indirectly). But that's not what the request states — presumably their ask subsumes any advanced ML model, including those that weren't trained on a giant corpus of text.
isotypic · · focus · HN ↗
[1] <a href="https://x.com/polynoamial/status/2093451221273387477" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/polynoamial/status/2093451221273387477
ChickeNES · · focus · HN ↗
isotypic · · focus · HN ↗
trhway · · focus · HN ↗
that is the way of technology. If i want to be just in the middle of the pack, not even a cutting edge, i have to buy a car, i can't just walk everywhere in reasonable time. I have to use a phone, i go to the doctor for modern medicine, etc. - note that pretty much everything is private companies goods and private services.
>where the frontier is in the hands of a single company.
We did invent anti-monopoly laws though to address such major issues with the private origin of the goods and services, and of course AI companies should be subject to it too (if you noticed, by stocking the scare of AI the BigAI companies are actually trying to get the anti-monopoly laws relaxed for them - and this is where our attention should be, the rest is just red herring)
>It takes what was previously an incredibly open field
It was nice riding a horse among the open rolling hills.