Abstract:
On September 11, Business Insider reported that the latest mathematical problem OpenAI is currently trying to solve is a group of angry mathematicians. An OpenAI researcher said Thursday that the company will no longer sponsor the Caltech Math Hackathon. This activity lets participants solve research problems using large language models.
Just before OpenAI withdrew from the event, current and former Caltech mathematicians released an open letter on Wednesday saying that the event sponsored by the AI company "could have a damaging impact on the mathematics community."
Dan Roberts, head of research at OpenAI, said on
Anthropic and OpenAI agreed to support the effort by donating $2 million worth of AI usage credits. As of Thursday, it was unclear how many of those tokens were provided by OpenAI and how those tokens will now be processed.
An open letter from mathematicians
The problem, mathematicians say, is that AI companies claim to use their models to solve unsolved theoretical problems, and then leave the practical applications and proofs to real researchers. This approach is called "junk mathematics".
"Once the latest results are released, research mathematicians have to step in to properly verify, disseminate these claimed results, and sometimes completely overturn them. This labor is neither paid, signed, nor recognized." These mathematicians said.
The controversy reached its climax on Tuesday: OpenAI announced that its agent had solved the Navier-Stokes equations. This 90-year-old set of mathematical formulas can be used to predict the movement of liquids and gases.
New York University mathematician Tristan Buckmaster and another scholar published research on the problem on Monday. He said on Tuesday that OpenAI may have used conversations he had with AI chatbots, including OpenAI, to arrive at the solution. OpenAI said it could not rule out the possibility that "de-identified data helped improve our models" and was generated by mathematicians such as Buckmaster using OpenAI products.
The mathematicians also said they believed the Caltech event would serve as an unfair publicity stunt for AI companies that "will take credit for the efforts of talented undergraduates."
According to the event application page, this "math hackathon" is promoted as a practical field for young mathematicians to "responsibly use AI tools to enhance human understanding of mathematics."
Many of the event organizers are undergraduate students. They said in a response letter on Thursday that they had no intention of causing such a big disturbance. Organizers wrote: "Events like the Math Hackathon encourage young people to maintain their passion for mathematics, spark their interest with modern tools, and maintain hope in a confusing time. This is the first time we have hosted an event of this scale, and we appreciate all the feedback we have received."
According to the event design, contestants of the Math Hackathon will first participate in the first round. They have 40 hours and $20,000 worth of AI words to solve an unsolved mathematical problem. A certain number of teams will then advance to the second round. The answers submitted by these teams must have "potential and clear explanations." Qualifying teams will receive 6 months and additional AI tokens to further conduct research.
Anthropic is another event sponsor and has not yet commented.
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