Comment by modeless
8 hours ago
Apparently forcing is allowed in the Millenium Prize problem statement. So OpenAI's claimed proof could win the prize. OTOH the results Tristan and Levent are publishing here do not go far enough to win the prize, though apparently they are suggestive of a general approach that could produce a solution, which seems likely to be the general approach OpenAI's proof uses.
The question is whether OpenAI's pursuit of this direction happened spontaneously, or as a result of them learning about Tristan's work somehow. To be clear, while the tone of this post seems quite accusatory, Tristan does not claim to know for sure whether OpenAI unfairly benefited from his work. Sholto Douglas from Anthropic is also on record saying the suggestion that OpenAI used Tristan's codex transcripts somehow is extremely unlikely to be true[1], which I agree with, though it doesn't rule out them learning of Tristan's work some other way. I am sure OpenAI will have a statement out tomorrow clarifying their position.
Why do you find it to be extremely unlikely?
Because very few people actually have access to these logs, all access is monitored and recorded, and improper access will get you fired. It's not worth risking your job over something like this.
If there's one thing I'm absolutely confident in, it's that Sam Altman personally goes to great lengths ensuring that ethical standards are upheld at his company.
> Because very few people actually have access to these logs, all access is monitored and recorded, and improper access will get you fired. It's not worth risking your job over something like this.
That's beyond naive. The money this would mean for OpenAI (and the money they've already spent)...
Not that I have strong reasons to think this is not true, but what reasons do we have to think it is? Has this been audited before?
There is almost zero risk to your job (quite the opposite, you might be richly rewarded!) if you're simply doing something here which the company wants done. (remember, billions and billions of dollars are at stake here! Do you really think there is no chance at all they would do it??)
As modeless said, Sholto Douglas works for Anthropic!
So to be fair, if Anthropic is *also* doing this (quite likely!) then Sholto would have a very strong incentive to try and spin it as highly unlikely that any of the big AI labs are possibly doing this.