In the latest math version of OpenAI, some academics are celebrating the advances and others are wondering what’s happening to the researchers still working on it.
Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematics professor at New York University, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday that the company’s publication has disrupted the work of early-career mathematicians.
“So we saw entire research programs wiped out on Tuesday by their dump,” Buckmaster said.
OpenAI released more than 700 mathematical manuscripts to GitHub on Tuesday, describing them in an announcement as the result of an internal boundary model. The company also shared computer-verifiable versions of many of the evidence.
Questions about data and academic standards
For some mathematicians, the concern goes beyond the simple difficulty of finding a solution.
Bryna Kra, a mathematics professor at Northwestern University, told Business Insider that AI could advance research, but she warned that publishing so much work at once could undermine the collaborative culture that helped make those advances possible.
“Mathematics is an extraordinarily collaborative field,” Kra said. “No one at this company could give a talk or answer technical questions on any of these results.”
Researchers regularly share unfinished ideas in discussions and conversations, Kra said, and she worries that fear that these ideas could be absorbed by AI before being made public will make mathematicians more secretive.
Buckmaster also expressed concerns about whether unpublished work submitted to AI tools could have contributed to the development of OpenAI. mathematical results.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
“You have to understand that they have access to all of our research proposals,” Buckmaster said. “So if you submit a research proposal, a panelist will review that research proposal, and will have to write an abstract, and often, depending on how they write abstracts, they will put it in the (LLM),” Buckmaster said.
OpenAI said in its announcement that the mathematical results included review and citation protocols, and that it planned to improve paper presentation and fund workshops to help researchers understand AI-generated results.
Alex Kontorovich, a distinguished mathematics professor at Rutgers University, sees reason for optimism. Kontorovich told Business Insider that math training could become more valuable as AI forces academia to rethink recruiting and rewards.
“I don’t think we have any interest in giving prizes to someone who pushed the button,” Kontorovitch said.
“Above all, mathematics teaches people to think clearly and deeply and for long periods of time about big problems,” Kontorovich added. “And I think in the future there will be even more demand for such skills, which are difficult to acquire and require a lot of training. »
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