Th New York Times: “A group of OpenAI insiders is blowing the whistle on what they say is a culture of recklessness and secrecy at the San Francisco artificial intelligence company, which is racing to build the most powerful A.I. systems ever created. The group, which includes nine current and former OpenAI employees, has rallied in recent days around shared concerns that the company has not done enough to prevent its A.I. systems from becoming dangerous. The members say OpenAI, which started as a nonprofit research lab and burst into public view with the 2022 release of ChatGPT, is putting a priority on profits and growth as it tries to build artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., the industry term for a computer program capable of doing anything a human can. They also claim that OpenAI has used hardball tactics to prevent workers from voicing their concerns about the technology, including restrictive nondisparagement agreements that departing employees were asked to sign.
See also Casey Newsom at Platformer: “Eleven current and former employees of OpenAI, along with two more from Google DeepMind, posted an open letter today stating that they are unable to voice concerns about risks created by their employees due to confidentiality agreements. Today let’s talk about what they said, what they left out, and why lately the AI safety conversation feels like it’s going nowhere.  Here’s a dynamic we’ve seen play out a few times now at companies including Meta, Google, and Twitter. First, in a bid to address potential harms created by their platforms, companies hire idealistic workers and charge them with building safeguards into their systems. For a while, the work of these teams gets prioritized. But over time, executives’ enthusiasm wanes, commercial incentives take over, and the team is gradually de-funded. When those roadblocks go up, some of the idealistic employees will speak out, either to a reporter like me, or via the sort of open letter that the AI workers published today. And the company responds by reorganizing the team out of existence, while putting out a statement saying that whatever that team used to work on is now everyone’s responsibility…”