AI Labs Face Backlash From Top Mathematicians Over AI Proofs, Credit and Plagiarism, Amid OpenAI's Math Breakthrough
AI companies’ feud with mathematicians is only escalating, after an open letter raised questions about plagiarism and uncredited work. This comes on the heels of OpenAI withdrawing a sponsorship of a math conference at Caltech. Fields Medalists Warn of ‘Severe Misalignment ‘ Twenty-five winners of the Fields Medal, including Terence Tao and Maryna Viazovska, two of the most respected mathematicians working today, signed a letter titled “A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics.” In the letter, they argued that AI companies’ efforts to compete in solving famous mathematical problems are harmful to the field of mathematics and to the broader mathematical community. They also said that these solutions are often announced in a rush, leaving no time for proper write-ups, isolating new methods and ideas, or crediting relevant prior work. “As in all creative professions, this raises severe attribution and plagiarism questions,” the mathematicians noted. The letter follows June’s Leiden Declaration, another mathematician-led effort addressing AI’s impact on proof verification and academic credit. Read Also: Elon Musk Says Technology Is The 'Most Important Advantage' In War, as John Carma
AI companies’ feud with mathematicians is only escalating, after an open letter raised questions about plagiarism and uncredited work. This comes on the heels of OpenAI withdrawing a sponsorship of a math conference at Caltech. ” In the letter, they argued that AI companies’ efforts to compete in solving famous mathematical problems are harmful to the field of mathematics and to the broader mathematical community. They also said that these solutions are often announced in a rush, leaving no time for proper write-ups, isolating new methods and ideas, or crediting relevant prior work.
“As in all creative professions, this raises severe attribution and plagiarism questions,” the mathematicians noted. The letter follows June’s Leiden Declaration, another mathematician-led effort addressing AI’s impact on proof verification and academic credit.
Read Also: Elon Musk Says Technology Is The 'Most Important Advantage' In War, as John Carmack Warns AI Could Make Traditional Coding Skills Obsolete Buckmaster Details Dispute Over Authorship Earlier this week, NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster separately wrote that OpenAI researcher Sebastien Bubeck twice proposed removing his Anthropic -affiliated collaborator, Levent Alpoge, from authorship on a paper about OpenAI’s Navier-Stokes result. Buckmaster said he has not personally seen OpenAI’s proof and stressed he was not accusing the company of wrongdoing, but wanted to publicly clarify what he had been told.
Buckmaster and Alpoge separately released their own findings this week, including finite-time blowup results for the incompressible Euler equations, crediting mathematicians Diego Cordoba and Luis Martinez-Zoroa for the underlying program their work built upon. On Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called the Navier-Stokes breakthrough “ one of the most amazing moments ” in company history, saying roughly 10,000 AI agents worked 88 hours to produce the disputed proof. In the latest letter, award-winning mathematicians called for urgent action from the mathematical community, AI companies, and society at large to address these issues as they reshape intellectual work broadly.
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