Caltech mathematicians protest a hackathon where open problems are solved with SI, and OpenAI withdraws its sponsorship
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Publication time restored from the build log. . Updated: .
SI is already solving real mathematical problems, and scientists have to renegotiate who is responsible for what — the dispute over the rules is only a sign that the shift is real.
An open letter against the Caltech Mathathon was signed by 771 current and former Caltech mathematicians and researchers with degrees. At the hackathon, scheduled for October 30, participants are to solve open scientific problems with the help of language models, and Anthropic and OpenAI have put up $2 million in credits for it. The letter's authors call the venture "scientific misconduct": the companies will get PR, while hastily checked results will land as free workload on mathematicians. After the letter, OpenAI withdrew its sponsorship, and the organizers rewrote the wording on the website.
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