The latest math problem OpenAI is trying to solve is a bunch of angry mathematicians.
A researcher at OpenAI said on Thursday that the ChatGPT maker is no longer sponsoring Caltech’s “math hackathon,” an event where participants use large language models to solve research problems.
OpenAI’s exit follows an open letter released on Wednesday from current and former Caltech mathematicians, who said the event, which is sponsored by AI companies, “is likely to have destructive impacts for the mathematical community.”
“We recognize that the rapid progress of AI in mathematics is disruptive,” Dan Roberts, OpenAI’s research lead, said on X. “We’re looking to engage with the math community more on the best way to integrate this technology and communicate its impacts.”
At issue, according to the mathematicians, is the manner in which AI companies claim to solve outstanding theoretical problems using their models and then leave practical applications and proofs to actual researchers. They call this “slop mathematics.”
“After the latest result is dropped, research mathematicians are compelled to step in to properly verify, disseminate, and sometimes discredit entirely the claimed results,” the academics said. “This labor goes uncompensated, uncredited, and unacknowledged.”
The drama reached a fever pitch on Tuesday when OpenAI announced its agents had solved the Navier-Stokes equations, a 90-year-old set of mathematical formulas that can predict how liquids and gases move.
Tristan Buckmaster, an NYU mathematician who, alongside another academic, published research on the problem on Monday, said on Tuesday that OpenAI might have used his conversations with AI chatbots, including OpenAI’s, to arrive at a solution. OpenAI said it couldn’t rule out that “de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models.”
The mathematicians also said they believed the CalTech event would serve as unfair advertising for AI companies, who “will take credit for the effort of talented undergrads.”
Anthropic, which is also sponsoring the event, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Nor did OpenAI.
The “mathathon” is billed as a practice ground for young mathematicians to “responsibly use AI tools to augment human understanding of mathematics,” according to an application page.
Event organizers, many of whom are undergraduates, said in a response letter on Thursday that they didn’t intend to cause such a stir.
“Events like Mathathon encourage young people to stay excited about mathematics, engage their interests with modern tools, and maintain hope in a confusing time,” the organizers wrote. “It’s our first time running an event at this scale, and we are grateful for all the feedback we have received.”
As designed, participants in the mathathon will compete in a first round, where they’re given 40 hours and $20,000 in tokens to solve an open problem.
Then, a certain number of teams whose answers are “promising and well explained” will advance to the second round, where they receive six months and additional AI tokens to further their work.
Anthropic and OpenAI agreed to support the event by donating $2 million in AI credits. It was unclear on Thursday how many of those tokens were provided by OpenAI, and what happens to them now.
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