Codex · OpenAI · Anthropic · TechCrunch AI
This letter follows the Leiden Declaration, published by a working group of mathematicians in June
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As with software engineering and other areas where AI tools are changing workflows, mathematicians find a justification in the work around the work: The value in math isn’t the proofs and who gets credit, but the intellectual super-structure that nourishes students, finds new questions and ideas, and integrates them…
Key facts
- On Thursday, OpenAI withdrew its sponsorship of a math event at CalTech after the company was criticized by researchers at the university
- This letter follows the Leiden Declaration, released by a working group of mathematicians in June
- As in all creative professions, this raises severe attribution and plagiarism questions
- And if you don’t particularly care about the cutthroat world of high-stakes mathematical proofs, don’t forget: Your field of interest is next
Summary
Twenty-five leading mathematicians signed an open letter arguing that AI labs are threatening their intellectual work as they seek to one-up each other with solutions to famous math problems. This week, NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster accused OpenAI of pressuring him not to credit a collaborator who works for Anthropic for solving an important math problem, and wondered if the company had used their work with Codex to produce its own groundbreaking proof over a marathon weekend of inference. On Thursday, OpenAI withdrew its sponsorship of a math event at CalTech after the company was criticized by researchers at the university. While the ability of AI models to solve the world’s outstanding mathematical challenges could be a boon to humanity, the signatories of the new letter argue that will only be the case if those solutions can be understood and communicated by the math community and, ultimately, the rest of the world.