OpenAI keeps bulldozing mathematicians

PUBLISHER ARTICLE PREVIEW

From the original article

The Verge spoke to one of the mathematicians advising OpenAI as the field braces for a new wave of results that could upend their work.

The Verge spoke to one of the mathematicians advising OpenAI as the field braces for a new wave of results that could upend their work.

In a chaotic few months, OpenAI has demonstrated it can do two things with remarkable consistency: make impressive breakthroughs in mathematics, then colossally screw up announcing them. OpenAI is now trying to do better. Somehow, it has botched that too.

OpenAI’s latest attempt to repair fractured relations with a mathematical community it has repeatedly alienated is to consult a new independent advisory group of elite practitioners. But mathematicians speaking to The Verge, including one of the group’s members, describe a messy and confusing affair bearing many of the hallmarks of OpenAI’s previous rushed forays into mathematics, suggesting the company has learned little from its mistakes.

And then there’s the daunting task the group has been handed first: helping coordinate the release of scores more results OpenAI says its unreleased model has produced, the prospect of which is already stirring dread among researchers over what this looming tidal wave of breakthroughs could do to their field.

On September 21st, an assortment of eminent mathematicians announced the formation of the Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (AGMAI) in a guest post on the blog of UCLA mathematics professor Terence Tao, a Fields Medalist and outspoken critic of AI companies’ conduct in mathematics. The group was to be an independent body of nine elite mathematicians at the very top of their field.

The post said the group will operate independently from OpenAI and advise it and other frontier AI labs “on the review and communication of emerging results.” In its own announcement, OpenAI repeatedly stressed the group’s independence, saying members would be free to challenge the company publicly, publish their advice, and offer guidance it had not requested.

It also stressed the limits of the group’s influence, noting that it “will not be responsible for advising us on how to pace our internal progress on mathematics.”

But many mathematicians, and certainly most people outside of that community, learned about that group only through OpenAI’s much louder rollout.

The result was widespread confusion over whether AGMAI was truly independent or if it was, as several mathematicians The Verge spoke to in the days after the announcement assumed, some kind of OpenAI-appointed body. That impression wasn’t entirely unreasonable, given AGMAI’s website says it formed after OpenAI approached some of its eventual members about establishing an advisory board, before they decided to strike out independently and invite others to join.

It remains unclear which of the nine members OpenAI initially approached.

Speaking to The Verge on a video call from a lecture theater, Martin Hairer, an AGMAI member and mathematics professor at Imperial College London and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), was keen to stress the group’s independence from OpenAI. While acknowledging that OpenAI approaching some mathematicians was the original impetus for its formation, he said the group receives no financial, technical, or other support from the company, and that none of its members have signed agreements restricting what they can say or do beyond standard confidentiality requirements needed to give them advanced access to research.