The comment you replied to quoted "no user inputs after July 3rd" with no restriction to Buckmaster or Codex.

Obviously the result of OpenAI's investigation was that no usage data has interacted with the system after that date.

What else do you expect them to investigate?

If Buckmaster and co. provide their chats, OpenAI could potentially search for them in the anonymized opted-in usage data. Then they could say if any data has been used.

By all accounts individual usage data does not have the direct impact on the model most here fantasize about. To prove this, OpenAI would need to do new training runs to replicate the system used minus the particular usage data in question, if it exists, and then benchmark this on the problem again.

Potentially multiple times, in order to reach a conclusion.

The cost might be in the hundreds of millions.

Just knowing that there had been progress is enough to have an idea that throwing more compute at it might work (OpenAI had previously tried all the Millennium Prize problems with somewhat limited compute and failed).

It's comparable to Magnus Carlson saying that if he wanted to cheat, all he would need would be for someone to tell him to spend more time thinking about a specific move (just a wink would be enough) as an indication that a computer had found something interesting.

It's as-if after OpenAI first failing on Navier-Stokes (which OpenAI had just tweeted about 2 days earlier!), someone winked at them and said "you might want to try a little harder ...".

When reading human comments, we should be generous; when we read corporate texts, we may assume paltering.

(TIL: paltering: exact and technically correct statement usage to create misleading impression)