The Verge· 2h agoOpenAI announces three big science discoveries and a new way to work with academics
OpenAI publishes three science proofs, with outside experts guiding release
Research paper
OpenAI is publishing three claimed discoveries in math, computer science and physics, and this time it says outside scientists helped decide how the results reach researchers.
- For the computer science result, an independent group led by Russell Impagliazzo, Ramamohan Paturi and Ryan Williams will examine and explain a proof that the Exponential Time Hypothesis is false, and at the group's request OpenAI made the materials public immediately.
- The physics work is not released in full; OpenAI says it is a mathematically rigorous existence proof of certain interacting quantum field theories containing gauge fields and fermions in four dimensions, including Quantum Chromodynamics and a unified completion of the Standard Model, and that David Gross will lead a group including Michael Douglas, Arthur Jaffe, Igor Klebanov and Nikita Nekrasov to shepherd it.
- For the math problem, OpenAI says advisers told it to release the AI output directly so researchers can work through their own explanations, as it did in its October 6 release.
- The company admits the approach could have its own issues: the AGMAI panel of math advisers said yesterday that it recommends AI companies do not adopt the practice of designating certain people to receive output first, citing unequal access, borrowed reputation and biased selection, and instead recommended releasing output on scholarly repositories with Lean-formalized proofs and funding for people working to understand the results.
From the source
This time OpenAI says it’s taking new advice from scientists on how to release the results.
Less than a month after its mass release of hundreds of manuscripts that it said contained solutions to long-standing mathematics questions, OpenAI is back with three more “major” discoveries in math, computer science, and physics . What’s different this time is the choice to have external experts that OpenAI describes as “shepherds” guiding the results in computer science and physics, while for the math problem it says that they advised it to release the AI output for researchers to work through their own explanations.
Local smoothing for the Euclidean wave equation. The proof uses an auxiliary partial differential equation to establish Sogge’s local smoothing for waves in every spatial dimension at least two. It also yields the Kakeya maximal and dimension conjectures and Stein’s spherical restriction estimates throughout the interior of the conjectured range. We are releasing the model output directly, as we did in our October 6 release.
The Exponential Time Hypothesis is False.