OpenAI just wants to win
OpenAI just wants to win
OpenAI 只想赢
Two mathematicians at the heart of recent controversies tell The Verge how AI giants’ ‘childish’ rivalries are upending the field. 两位处于近期争议核心的数学家向《The Verge》讲述了人工智能巨头们“幼稚”的竞争是如何颠覆数学领域的。
OpenAI has spent the last few years planting flags across the increasingly difficult terrain in mathematics. This week, it claimed one of its biggest prizes yet: a solution to a legendary Millennium Prize problem. In normal circumstances, this would have been celebrated as a historic achievement. 过去几年里，OpenAI 一直在数学这一日益艰难的领域中攻城略地。本周，它摘取了迄今为止最大的奖项之一：解决了著名的“千禧年大奖难题”。在正常情况下，这本应被誉为一项历史性的成就。
Instead, many mathematicians have watched OpenAI’s relentless advance with growing unease. To them, the company appears less like an enthusiastic newcomer than an impossibly well-resourced interloper, charging into problems they have dedicated their lives to studying with little apparent regard for long-standing norms or the consequences for those left in its wake. At the heart of that unease is a sense that OpenAI is doing mathematics for different reasons. Mathematicians want to advance the field. OpenAI wants to win. 然而，许多数学家却怀着日益不安的心情注视着 OpenAI 的步步紧逼。在他们看来，这家公司与其说是一个热情的后来者，不如说是一个资源极其雄厚的闯入者。它冲进数学家们毕生研究的课题，却似乎完全无视长期以来的学术规范，也不顾及对他人造成的影响。这种不安的核心在于一种感觉：OpenAI 研究数学的动机与众不同。数学家们是为了推动领域发展，而 OpenAI 只是为了赢。
Mathematics is not normally this dramatic, so how did things get this bad? This week, The Verge spoke with more than a dozen mathematicians, including Tristan Buckmaster and Andreas Thom, who are at the center of recent controversies surrounding OpenAI’s work in the field. Even those skeptical of the most serious allegations described a field shaken by the tech giant’s conduct and fearful of what it might do next in its determination to trounce its rivals. 数学领域通常不会如此戏剧化，那么事情为何会变得如此糟糕？本周，《The Verge》采访了十几位数学家，其中包括处于近期 OpenAI 相关争议核心的 Tristan Buckmaster 和 Andreas Thom。即使是那些对最严重的指控持怀疑态度的人也表示，该领域正因这家科技巨头的行为而动荡不安，并对其为了击败竞争对手而不择手段的后续行动感到恐惧。
Buckmaster has accused OpenAI of failing to adequately explain whether work he did through its tool Codex could have contributed to its recent successes. In a statement to The Verge, OpenAI spokesperson Laurance Fauconnet strenuously denied that material from his prompts had played a role: “We can say categorically that it is impossible for Dr. Buckmaster’s Codex prompts over the last two months to have influenced the system in any way, including training.” Buckmaster 指责 OpenAI 未能充分解释他通过其工具 Codex 所做的工作是否对其近期的成功有所贡献。OpenAI 发言人 Laurance Fauconnet 在给《The Verge》的一份声明中极力否认了他的提示词（prompts）发挥了作用：“我们可以断言，Buckmaster 博士过去两个月在 Codex 上的提示词不可能以任何方式影响该系统，包括训练过程。”
Buckmaster remains unconvinced. “Given their behavior up until this point, one should take such statements with great skepticism,” he said. Buckmaster 仍不买账。他说：“鉴于他们迄今为止的表现，人们应该对这种声明持极大的怀疑态度。”
OpenAI says it heard some researchers were making progress on Millennium Prize problems and decided to see whether one of its advanced, unreleased models could make headway too. It turns out it could. OpenAI says it took roughly 10,000 agents, tens of millions of dollars of compute, and just 88 hours to find a solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, which concerns the flow of fluids. OpenAI 表示，他们听说一些研究人员在“千禧年大奖难题”上取得了进展，于是决定看看其先进的未发布模型是否也能有所突破。事实证明确实可以。OpenAI 称，他们动用了大约 10,000 个智能体、耗资数千万美元的算力，仅用了 88 小时就找到了关于流体流动的“纳维-斯托克斯方程”（Navier-Stokes problem）的解。
The company had also discovered who it was racing against: Buckmaster, an NYU professor, and Levent Alpöge, a researcher at one of its fiercest rivals, Anthropic. Among several lines of research, the pair were pursuing Navier-Stokes, though had not yet completed a proof. Some details of what happened next are fiercely contested, but the two sides broadly agree on the basic sequence of events. One thing is particularly clear: Alpöge’s involvement was a problem for OpenAI, despite his saying it was a “personal collaboration” independent of his work with Anthropic. 该公司还发现他们的竞争对手是谁：纽约大学教授 Buckmaster，以及其最强劲对手之一 Anthropic 的研究员 Levent Alpöge。在多项研究中，两人一直在攻克纳维-斯托克斯问题，尽管尚未完成证明。后续发生的一些细节存在激烈争议，但双方对基本事件顺序大致认同。有一点特别明确：Alpöge 的参与对 OpenAI 来说是个问题，尽管他声称这只是独立于他在 Anthropic 工作之外的“个人合作”。
Buckmaster said he contacted OpenAI after learning the company had become aware of their progress and was racing toward a solution of its own. He said discussions with OpenAI researcher Sébastien Bubeck grew contentious and, in his view, threatening, but the company offered a path forward for him — one that excluded Alpöge. Buckmaster said he was offered practically “unlimited compute” to finish his own work, and the opportunity to be the sole author of OpenAI’s paper announcing the breakthrough, which would of course credit its tools. Buckmaster 表示，在得知 OpenAI 已经获悉他们的进展并正竞相寻求自己的解决方案后，他联系了该公司。他说，与 OpenAI 研究员 Sébastien Bubeck 的讨论变得充满争议，在他看来甚至带有威胁性，但公司为他提供了一条出路——一条将 Alpöge 排除在外的出路。Buckmaster 说，公司向他提供了几乎“无限的算力”来完成他自己的工作，并让他有机会成为 OpenAI 宣布这一突破性论文的唯一作者，当然，论文会注明使用了其工具。
“All I had to do was throw Levent under the bus,” Buckmaster told The Verge in a phone interview. He said he flatly rejected Bubeck’s offer, which he viewed as a “bribe,” and also began questioning whether OpenAI may have benefited from his use of Codex, one of the company’s AI tools he had been using to tackle the problem. “我所要做的就是出卖 Levent，”Buckmaster 在电话采访中告诉《The Verge》。他说他断然拒绝了 Bubeck 的提议，他将其视为一种“贿赂”，并开始质疑 OpenAI 是否从他使用 Codex（他一直在用该公司的这款 AI 工具来解决问题）的过程中获益。
Bubeck has rejected Buckmaster’s characterization of the conversations on social media and in an interview with The New York Times. He acknowledged offering OpenAI’s resources to help Buckmaster complete his own proof or to have him take over the writing of the company’s. Strikingly, Bubeck said OpenAI had made similar arrangements with other mathematicians, though did not identify them. Bubeck 在社交媒体和接受《纽约时报》采访时否认了 Buckmaster 对这些对话的描述。他承认曾提供 OpenAI 的资源来帮助 Buckmaster 完成他自己的证明，或者让他接手撰写公司的论文。引人注目的是，Bubeck 表示 OpenAI 曾与其他数学家达成过类似的安排，但他没有透露这些人的身份。
But his account nevertheless makes clear that Alpöge’s affiliation with Anthropic was a sticking point. “From our perspective, how can we have an internal OpenAI project with an Anthropic employee?” he told the Times. 但他的陈述依然明确指出，Alpöge 与 Anthropic 的关系是一个症结所在。“从我们的角度来看，我们怎么能让一个 Anthropic 的员工参与 OpenAI 的内部项目呢？”他告诉《纽约时报》。