OpenAI’s feud with mathematicians is only escalating
techcrunch ·
Twenty-five leading mathematicians, all Fields Medalists, signed an open letter warning that AI labs are threatening their intellectual work as they compete to solve famous math problems. This week, NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster accused OpenAI of pressuring him not to credit a collaborator at Anthropic for solving an important math problem, and questioned whether OpenAI used their Codex work to produce its own proof over a weekend. On Thursday, OpenAI withdrew its sponsorship of a CalTech math event after criticism from university researchers. The letter says AI solutions to major math challenges could benefit humanity only if the math community and broader public can understand and communicate them. It criticizes rushed announcements that leave no time for proper writeups, isolating new methods, or citing prior work, and notes OpenAI's proof remains unverified, raising serious attribution and plagiarism concerns. Mathematicians fear open research culture will be threatened as frontier labs can spend tens of millions of dollars using LLMs to beat original researchers to proofs, incentivizing secrecy. The letter follows the June Leiden Declaration, which also addresses how LLM proofs will change math and offers recommendations. It argues math's value includes the intellectual structure that trains students, finds new questions, and integrates ideas into civilization, and warns other fields face similar issues.
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