Did you read what they said? The question is now if OAI produced something new or just stole the researchers' good ideas.

You seem to be unfamiliar about how research works. It's common to make an incremental advancement while citing prior work. The vast majority of papers out there fall into this bucket. Did the AI make incremental progress? Yes. Did it cite prior art? After some nudging, yes.

It seems to me the academics are upset that AI scooped them. But scooping is a time-honored tradition between researchers. First to print and all that. In a nutshell, they are upset that they lost out on a publication.

I will also point out for those unaware that any mathematics that is produced is automatically part of the public domain and can be used freely in derivative works. It is not a protected intellectual class like other works of art.

Name one discovery ever that didn't depend on someone else's work.