But that is exactly what I'm implying is the core reason, whether people realize it or not.
I totally agree that the vast majority of software dev is not novel. I have even made several comments to that effect. The same can be said for a lot of creative work as well. Yet many, many devs and creators are very unhappy with AI, and a lot of their complaints are variations on accusations of plagiarism.
And note, I am not saying it is wrong, it is completely understandable, but we need to be clear about where this turmoil is coming from.
If I were in the same situation as these researchers, I would publish all pertinent research work and chats so that the rest of the world can see how close the model's work is to my own. It's been scooped anyway, so there is no reason to keep it private.
I am working on two applications using ChatGPT and Claude. I have no illusions these people won't steal/copy whatever you want to call it, "train their models". Yes, I keep unticking the boxes that allow it, that they so kindly tick for me.
But what happened to these math researchers is something else and I am not sure it's about the money for them. You don't do math research to get rich, but to get acknowledged by your peers. Yes, we live in a capitalist world so obviously you need money to feed yourself. but for some people, that is secondary.
OpenAI stole their thunder, and that's just fucked up. It's not equivalent to cranking out a CRUD app for profit.
As to OpenAI stealing their thunder, from all I can tell that is not what they intended. If we step away from the drama, it's low-key hilarious what happened: OpenAI heard somebody had already solved a much bigger problem -- which in fact they had not -- so they set their latest model to work on it... and it actually solved it!
Now if they had stolen the researchers work this would be a very different matter. This is something I myself have called out as a risk in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48839896 -- so I'm particularly sensitive to this aspect, but as far as I can tell this is not the case here.
collaborating with ChatGPT on a novel solution to an unsolved problem, getting 90% of the way there, and then being "scooped" by your AI collaborator (or rather by the company behind it) is a totally different situation. were i in the same situation as these researchers, it would be extremely hard to take OpenAPI's explanation + denial of plagiarism seriously