Privileged access is bad for science

Despite some problems of its own, the ongoing Microsoft Majorana saga has been striking a pleasant contrast with the rush by artificial intelligence (AI) companies like Anthropic and OpenAI to show their proprietary models can do research-level mathematics. Of course, experts verify an experiment in condensed matter physics and a mathematical proof in significantly different ways. In mathematics, once a machine has produced a proof, another mathematician can still check it step by step. With the ‘Majorana’ chips, the claims by Microsoft Quantum rest on specific devices and choices of parameters — but the important difference is that Microsoft has been transparent.In an essay in August titled ‘Mathematics in the age of AI’, the mathematician Terence Tao said AI companies have valuable incentives to optimise for achievements that are solvable, and that are amenable to being benchmarked, by machines even as the companies’ proprietary models hide much of the actual problem-solving process…