4 ms·

OpenAI have no mathematicians capable of understanding what they put out

97 points by doener 1mo ago

japgolly 1mo ago
> our hypodissipative result (which is not public), but as I understand it part of their training data How did it become part of their training data if it wasn't public? /confused
- WoodenChair 1mo ago
  One of the researchers was using the product. They train on your private interactions unless you explicitly opt out in the settings.
  - rrobukef 1mo ago
    It wouldn't surprise me that even if you opt-out they still train on 'de-identified' chat data. After all, facts cannot be copyrighted and one cannot be sued for unethical behaviour.
    - ozgung 1mo ago
      I think Sam Altman already admitted that is a possibility.
- vessenes 1mo ago
  This is speculation right now. The idea would be that if someone used the product and granted training rights, which is the default for many subscription levels, then some knowledge would have been imparted into the general weights of the new model. oAI has made clear they did not specifically pull in any user data to context for this run.
  - dpiers 1mo ago
    Tristan Buckmaster’s post cited extensive use of LLMs in the process of his collaboration with Levent: “We used several LLMs throughout: Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s Codex, especially with GPT-5.6 Sol and, more recently, Astra. The latter was only used for writeups and auditing our arguments. For most of the past year progress was slow. We worked through the literature and upgraded various preliminary results, up to obtaining finite time blow up for the Incompressible Porous Media equation (with smooth forcing). This was until about a month ago, when we had real progress: on August 15th, we obtained the blow up results, with smooth forcing, for both Boussinesq and Euler. I can say the first LLM generated proof Levent sent me was the most horrendous I have ever read; we verified it on Lean on August 22nd. Since this point, we have been working around the clock to understand this proof and turn it into something readable.” The OpenAI research post states they began training GPT-6 internally on August 28th, and that user chats are used to train models. “We (the researchers and the agents) did not see any of their work through any means until they released it publicly — in particular, no specific user data was accessed in order to solve this problem. While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models .” For an incredibly niche topic like this, I believe it’s extremely likely that Buckmaster/Levant’s work would influence the direction of OpenAI’s agents’ work even as a de-identified drop in the overall bucket of training data.
    - vessenes 29d ago
      Yep, it's possible. But, we have literally no idea how much a set of prompts would impact training as far as general usefulness. I don't think we even know if Tristan's said he allowed training on his prompting or not. This is about money, ego, primacy, all the usual mathematician priority disputes.
  - rramadass 1mo ago
    Tristan Buckmaster, the mathematician at the center of it (https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/ https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/) put out a public statement that everybody should read (pdf) - https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf So what might have been the incentive for OpenAI to do all this shenanigans? It might have to do with getting its models certified for AGI and getting out of lockin with Microsoft - https://deadneurons.substack.com/p/the-quiet-unwinding-of-microsoft https://deadneurons.substack.com/p/the-quiet-unwinding-of-mi...
    - vessenes 29d ago
      Shenanigans is an inaccurate word; it implies underhanded behavior that's hidden / concealed. I think "to act so aggressively" is more balanced. Here's my answer: If you think we're getting to AGI in the next 9 months, then you believe, with all your heart, that these problems will fall soon. However, there's an ocean to boil in terms of what you could point your limited clusters at. In the meantime, the market is desperate for any sign your company might be first to AGI. Therefore, news of tractability with current models might focus an organization intensely - internally they have a huge leg up on the public, and therefore it's minimal compute to check - and if they are successful, they get approximately $50 million of free PR, likely adding 10-20% to their valuation. Likewise someone like Tristan is fighting for his (metaphorical) life right now, hoping to preserve his claims of primacy and have a shot at some of that prize money, despite being only partway to a full solution for N-S. I don't think we see any behavior at all that isn't simple to understand and well described by the setup here, but tell me what you see differently.
      - rramadass 28d ago
        OpenAI most certainly did not as you put it, "to act so aggressively". They have simply indulged in plagiarism/malpractice/fraud all for the sake of pumping up their evaluation in light of their forthcoming IPO and to one-up their arch-rival Anthropic and try to get themselves to AGI certification. In the process they have shafted real-world hardworking mathematicians, which is to say the least, despicable. Note that stories are now coming out from other mathematicians who have also been shafted in a similar manner. Also there are cases where they have had mathematicians accept their "deal" (like the one they offered Buckmaster that he refused) and have OpenAI name linked to their work. Regarding "their proof", their claim is only solving Navier-Stokes partially for when a smooth force is applied and not a fully general solution (which is maybe impossible). The proof is still being verified and we don't know whether it is just an approximation/hallucination or not. Their most blatant lie is that they "gave only the problem statement" to their system which then went ahead and solved it. This is almost an impossibility. Problems like these need to identify a specific lead/approach and some work to be done on that path before you can even know whether that approach is promising and worth pursuing. This problem has resisted all attempts at solution for over two centuries. This is where the Buckmaster/Levent's work's importance comes in. They identified a promising approach based on other mathematicians work and have been using both OpenAI and Anthropic's models to make progress and had reached a promising milestone which they published. But they inadvertently gave away their approach to the model's training data set which OpenAI capitalized on by throwing a large amount of compute at the problem to get to the finish first. This is straightforward stealing of other people's work and building upon it to claim it as your own which can and should be sued. All Scientists/Mathematicians/Researchers who feel OpenAI has done them dirty should band together and file suit. This whole thing could easily have been avoided if they had worked with the researchers so everybody's concerns/needs are met. By engaging in this sort of backstabbing, OpenAI has effectively killed the "Goose that laid the Golden Eggs". viz. Researchers were giving away their hard-earned highly specialized knowledge freely to the models in the hope that it will help them get quicker to the result. But now everybody is going to lockdown their research findings and will stop sharing it with the models to the overall detriment of advancement of Science.
- tristanj 29d ago
  It's baseless speculation and unfounded accusations of plagarism. OpenAI now categorically denies this: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/science/tristan-buckmaster-openai-math-navier-stokes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/science/tristan-buckmaste... “We can say categorically that it is impossible for Dr. Buckmaster’s Codex prompts over the last two months to have influenced the system in any way, including training.” “After investigating, we can say with full confidence that no user inputs past July 3rd could have influenced this system in any way.” Buckmaster reached the key result on August 15, far after the training cutoff.
oefrha 1mo ago
Loosely related, you may want to check your own privacy settings at https://chatgpt.com/codex/cloud/settings/data#settings/DataControls https://chatgpt.com/codex/cloud/settings/data#settings/DataC... https://claude.ai/new#settings/data-privacy-controls https://claude.ai/new#settings/data-privacy-controls I just realized I've been happily "improving the model for everyone"...
- tristanj 1mo ago
  That OpenAI setting helps, but there is a better way to do it. To completely opt-out of training, submit a request via the OpenAI privacy portal. Visit this website https://privacy.openai.com/policies/en/ https://privacy.openai.com/policies/en/ , click "Make a Privacy Request", choose "Do not train on my content", and complete the form. That submits a formal objection to training on your data, as required by GDPR/your local legislation.
  - rich_sasha 1mo ago
    Haha. I am 100% these companies will ignore this if they choose to. Just as they played fast and loose with copyright rules. They would do it, the say “ah sorry chaps, impossible to extract it from the dataset by now, anyway we anonymized it so can’t tell what’s what, and we can’t risk losing to China. Oh look - did you see Superman fly outside?”.
    - nicce 1mo ago
      European users have right to be forgotten. Waiting for the court order to delete all models.
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
    - tristanj 1mo ago
      This form is legally binding and has more legal weight than just clicking a toggle. If they still train on my data, they can get sued, and I'll get a payout.
tristanj 1mo ago
This post is out of date. OpenAI quietly updated the references on their paper earlier today and added several authors.
- kzrdude 1mo ago
  The main claim, that "they do not seem to have any mathematicians capable of understanding what they put out", was also corroborated by Sebastien (OpenAI) who explained they don't have any experts on Navier-Stokes.
simianwords 1mo ago
Can anyone explain to me why Tristan simply didn't go to settings page and turn off the thing? Especially when Levent was collaborating with him and Levent is completely aware of how the training data is used and the implications thereby? If it is oversight, then that's ok and OpenAI can volunteer to make him the lead author which they did. But he's pissed that OpenAI is not letting Levent as well, who had access to internal Anthropic models. So this guy thinks 1. oh my bad i forgot to turn off the consent thing in settings page 2. also i'll collaborate with a literal Anthropic employee who has access to their internal models 3. i'll also reject OpenAI's deal to be the lead author because i want an employee of the competitor to be a part of it I don't get the mindset.
- dogleash 29d ago
  > Can anyone explain to me why Tristan simply didn't go to settings page and turn off the thing? Maybe they were fine with contributing training data when their threat model didn't include the case of "OpenAI gets wind of our research and attempts to front-run us"?
  - simianwords 29d ago
    this is an effective way to stop OpenAI from doing anything, just flood it with your attempts.
- rasz 29d ago
  >simply didn't go to settings page and turn off the thing companies famously always honor those settings! https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/14/google-location-tracking-data-settlement https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/14/google-lo... https://techhq.com/news/amazon-and-microsoft-both-fined-millions-for-violating-childrens-data-privacy/ https://techhq.com/news/amazon-and-microsoft-both-fined-mill...
tetrisgm 1mo ago
The problem is that eventually, there will be no humans who can follow the results AI will give. That’s the endgame for this tech: to produce knowledge at speeds and quality beyond what we can
- uargos 1mo ago
  Which asks the question of what knowledge is. Can knowledge be super human ? Or is knowledge a human matter ? If so (like i believe), then what those ai labs are doing is far from the end of the story. Because the goal of science is not to produce a certificate of something, but more to produce an explanation that can fit in a human brain, that can be reasoned on, and that can be retargeted. In this sense, producing a million lines proof is not really producing knowledge, even less so doing science.
  - michaeljx 1mo ago
    Knowing something is proven true is knowledge, even if the mechanics of the proof are not understood.
    - rented_mule 1mo ago
      If the mechanics of the proof are not understood, how do we know it's been proven? Math proofs are not a "trust me, bro" kind of thing.
    - trolleski 1mo ago
      In maths, you go through proofs every step of the way. Same in physics, you start by performing even the most basic experiments, and build your way up.
    - uargos 29d ago
      It's not knowledge, it's belief.
  - curt15 1mo ago
    Suppose there is an oracle that can tell you whether a particular result in maths or physics is true. Would research still have any value?

97 points by doener 1mo ago

> our hypodissipative result (which is not public), but as I understand it part of their training data How did it become part of their training data if it wasn't public? /confused

WoodenChair 1mo ago
One of the researchers was using the product. They train on your private interactions unless you explicitly opt out in the settings.
- rrobukef 1mo ago
  It wouldn't surprise me that even if you opt-out they still train on 'de-identified' chat data. After all, facts cannot be copyrighted and one cannot be sued for unethical behaviour.
  - ozgung 1mo ago
    I think Sam Altman already admitted that is a possibility.
vessenes 1mo ago
This is speculation right now. The idea would be that if someone used the product and granted training rights, which is the default for many subscription levels, then some knowledge would have been imparted into the general weights of the new model. oAI has made clear they did not specifically pull in any user data to context for this run.
- dpiers 1mo ago
  Tristan Buckmaster’s post cited extensive use of LLMs in the process of his collaboration with Levent: “We used several LLMs throughout: Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s Codex, especially with GPT-5.6 Sol and, more recently, Astra. The latter was only used for writeups and auditing our arguments. For most of the past year progress was slow. We worked through the literature and upgraded various preliminary results, up to obtaining finite time blow up for the Incompressible Porous Media equation (with smooth forcing). This was until about a month ago, when we had real progress: on August 15th, we obtained the blow up results, with smooth forcing, for both Boussinesq and Euler. I can say the first LLM generated proof Levent sent me was the most horrendous I have ever read; we verified it on Lean on August 22nd. Since this point, we have been working around the clock to understand this proof and turn it into something readable.” The OpenAI research post states they began training GPT-6 internally on August 28th, and that user chats are used to train models. “We (the researchers and the agents) did not see any of their work through any means until they released it publicly — in particular, no specific user data was accessed in order to solve this problem. While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models .” For an incredibly niche topic like this, I believe it’s extremely likely that Buckmaster/Levant’s work would influence the direction of OpenAI’s agents’ work even as a de-identified drop in the overall bucket of training data.
  - vessenes 29d ago
    Yep, it's possible. But, we have literally no idea how much a set of prompts would impact training as far as general usefulness. I don't think we even know if Tristan's said he allowed training on his prompting or not. This is about money, ego, primacy, all the usual mathematician priority disputes.
- rramadass 1mo ago
  Tristan Buckmaster, the mathematician at the center of it (https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/ https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/) put out a public statement that everybody should read (pdf) - https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf So what might have been the incentive for OpenAI to do all this shenanigans? It might have to do with getting its models certified for AGI and getting out of lockin with Microsoft - https://deadneurons.substack.com/p/the-quiet-unwinding-of-microsoft https://deadneurons.substack.com/p/the-quiet-unwinding-of-mi...
  - vessenes 29d ago
    Shenanigans is an inaccurate word; it implies underhanded behavior that's hidden / concealed. I think "to act so aggressively" is more balanced. Here's my answer: If you think we're getting to AGI in the next 9 months, then you believe, with all your heart, that these problems will fall soon. However, there's an ocean to boil in terms of what you could point your limited clusters at. In the meantime, the market is desperate for any sign your company might be first to AGI. Therefore, news of tractability with current models might focus an organization intensely - internally they have a huge leg up on the public, and therefore it's minimal compute to check - and if they are successful, they get approximately $50 million of free PR, likely adding 10-20% to their valuation. Likewise someone like Tristan is fighting for his (metaphorical) life right now, hoping to preserve his claims of primacy and have a shot at some of that prize money, despite being only partway to a full solution for N-S. I don't think we see any behavior at all that isn't simple to understand and well described by the setup here, but tell me what you see differently.
    - rramadass 28d ago
      OpenAI most certainly did not as you put it, "to act so aggressively". They have simply indulged in plagiarism/malpractice/fraud all for the sake of pumping up their evaluation in light of their forthcoming IPO and to one-up their arch-rival Anthropic and try to get themselves to AGI certification. In the process they have shafted real-world hardworking mathematicians, which is to say the least, despicable. Note that stories are now coming out from other mathematicians who have also been shafted in a similar manner. Also there are cases where they have had mathematicians accept their "deal" (like the one they offered Buckmaster that he refused) and have OpenAI name linked to their work. Regarding "their proof", their claim is only solving Navier-Stokes partially for when a smooth force is applied and not a fully general solution (which is maybe impossible). The proof is still being verified and we don't know whether it is just an approximation/hallucination or not. Their most blatant lie is that they "gave only the problem statement" to their system which then went ahead and solved it. This is almost an impossibility. Problems like these need to identify a specific lead/approach and some work to be done on that path before you can even know whether that approach is promising and worth pursuing. This problem has resisted all attempts at solution for over two centuries. This is where the Buckmaster/Levent's work's importance comes in. They identified a promising approach based on other mathematicians work and have been using both OpenAI and Anthropic's models to make progress and had reached a promising milestone which they published. But they inadvertently gave away their approach to the model's training data set which OpenAI capitalized on by throwing a large amount of compute at the problem to get to the finish first. This is straightforward stealing of other people's work and building upon it to claim it as your own which can and should be sued. All Scientists/Mathematicians/Researchers who feel OpenAI has done them dirty should band together and file suit. This whole thing could easily have been avoided if they had worked with the researchers so everybody's concerns/needs are met. By engaging in this sort of backstabbing, OpenAI has effectively killed the "Goose that laid the Golden Eggs". viz. Researchers were giving away their hard-earned highly specialized knowledge freely to the models in the hope that it will help them get quicker to the result. But now everybody is going to lockdown their research findings and will stop sharing it with the models to the overall detriment of advancement of Science.
tristanj 29d ago
It's baseless speculation and unfounded accusations of plagarism. OpenAI now categorically denies this: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/science/tristan-buckmaster-openai-math-navier-stokes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/science/tristan-buckmaste... “We can say categorically that it is impossible for Dr. Buckmaster’s Codex prompts over the last two months to have influenced the system in any way, including training.” “After investigating, we can say with full confidence that no user inputs past July 3rd could have influenced this system in any way.” Buckmaster reached the key result on August 15, far after the training cutoff.

oefrha 1mo ago

Loosely related, you may want to check your own privacy settings at https://chatgpt.com/codex/cloud/settings/data#settings/DataControls https://chatgpt.com/codex/cloud/settings/data#settings/DataC... https://claude.ai/new#settings/data-privacy-controls https://claude.ai/new#settings/data-privacy-controls I just realized I've been happily "improving the model for everyone"...

tristanj 1mo ago
That OpenAI setting helps, but there is a better way to do it. To completely opt-out of training, submit a request via the OpenAI privacy portal. Visit this website https://privacy.openai.com/policies/en/ https://privacy.openai.com/policies/en/ , click "Make a Privacy Request", choose "Do not train on my content", and complete the form. That submits a formal objection to training on your data, as required by GDPR/your local legislation.
- rich_sasha 1mo ago
  Haha. I am 100% these companies will ignore this if they choose to. Just as they played fast and loose with copyright rules. They would do it, the say “ah sorry chaps, impossible to extract it from the dataset by now, anyway we anonymized it so can’t tell what’s what, and we can’t risk losing to China. Oh look - did you see Superman fly outside?”.
  - nicce 1mo ago
    European users have right to be forgotten. Waiting for the court order to delete all models.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - tristanj 1mo ago
    This form is legally binding and has more legal weight than just clicking a toggle. If they still train on my data, they can get sued, and I'll get a payout.

tristanj 1mo ago

This post is out of date. OpenAI quietly updated the references on their paper earlier today and added several authors.

kzrdude 1mo ago
The main claim, that "they do not seem to have any mathematicians capable of understanding what they put out", was also corroborated by Sebastien (OpenAI) who explained they don't have any experts on Navier-Stokes.

simianwords 1mo ago

Can anyone explain to me why Tristan simply didn't go to settings page and turn off the thing? Especially when Levent was collaborating with him and Levent is completely aware of how the training data is used and the implications thereby? If it is oversight, then that's ok and OpenAI can volunteer to make him the lead author which they did. But he's pissed that OpenAI is not letting Levent as well, who had access to internal Anthropic models. So this guy thinks 1. oh my bad i forgot to turn off the consent thing in settings page 2. also i'll collaborate with a literal Anthropic employee who has access to their internal models 3. i'll also reject OpenAI's deal to be the lead author because i want an employee of the competitor to be a part of it I don't get the mindset.

dogleash 29d ago
> Can anyone explain to me why Tristan simply didn't go to settings page and turn off the thing? Maybe they were fine with contributing training data when their threat model didn't include the case of "OpenAI gets wind of our research and attempts to front-run us"?
- simianwords 29d ago
  this is an effective way to stop OpenAI from doing anything, just flood it with your attempts.
rasz 29d ago
>simply didn't go to settings page and turn off the thing companies famously always honor those settings! https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/14/google-location-tracking-data-settlement https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/14/google-lo... https://techhq.com/news/amazon-and-microsoft-both-fined-millions-for-violating-childrens-data-privacy/ https://techhq.com/news/amazon-and-microsoft-both-fined-mill...

tetrisgm 1mo ago

The problem is that eventually, there will be no humans who can follow the results AI will give. That’s the endgame for this tech: to produce knowledge at speeds and quality beyond what we can

uargos 1mo ago
Which asks the question of what knowledge is. Can knowledge be super human ? Or is knowledge a human matter ? If so (like i believe), then what those ai labs are doing is far from the end of the story. Because the goal of science is not to produce a certificate of something, but more to produce an explanation that can fit in a human brain, that can be reasoned on, and that can be retargeted. In this sense, producing a million lines proof is not really producing knowledge, even less so doing science.
- michaeljx 1mo ago
  Knowing something is proven true is knowledge, even if the mechanics of the proof are not understood.
  - rented_mule 1mo ago
    If the mechanics of the proof are not understood, how do we know it's been proven? Math proofs are not a "trust me, bro" kind of thing.
  - trolleski 1mo ago
    In maths, you go through proofs every step of the way. Same in physics, you start by performing even the most basic experiments, and build your way up.
  - uargos 29d ago
    It's not knowledge, it's belief.
- curt15 1mo ago
  Suppose there is an oracle that can tell you whether a particular result in maths or physics is true. Would research still have any value?