OpenAI illegally barred staff from airing safety risks, whistleblowers say

These agreements will most likely be ironed out.

What I am more interested in is the constant pressure on "safety risks" without anything that feels tangible to me so far. I believe there is indeed risk using models that could be biased but I don't believe that is a new problem. I still don't think we are at risk from a runaway AGI that is going to destroy us.

The whistleblowers letter: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/83df0e55-546c-498a-...

I'm really really not a fan of the constant talk about "safety". My issue is that it never actually points to anything tangible, anytime I read about safety it's always used in a roundabout generic way. There's so much handwaving about the issue but every time I've tried to dig into just what the hell "safety" means, it's always either refers back to itself (ie. "ai safety is about safety") or makes some vague reference to an LLM telling a mean joke.

I'm using mistral now, openai is a dying corporation in my opinion. All AI will and should be open-source and home-ran

Recent: OpenAI whistleblowers ask SEC to investigate alleged restrictive NDAs (reuters.com) | 76 points by JumpCrisscross 2 days ago | 17 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40959851

Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40959851

> In a statement, Hannah Wong, a spokesperson for OpenAI said, “Our whistleblower policy protects employees’ rights to make protected disclosures. Additionally, we believe rigorous debate about this technology is essential and have already made important changes to our departure process to remove nondisparagement terms.”

How can corporate communication always play that card: "Our policy on X is very good, and we believe X is very important, so that's why we're making changes right now to things that were blatantly in contradiction with X, that we wouldn't have made if this didn't make it to the press"?

The headline made me think there were going to be specific "safety risks" mentioned, but there do not seem to be. I am not sure what justifies the phrase "safety risks", "safety" especially. It makes us think of like, safety to humanity from AI or whatever, but the most focused upon thing in the article is SEC-related stuff; I'm not sure if the word "safety" is meant to refer to securities/financial related stuff, or meant to refer to other stuff?

(Note, I am personally a pretty anti-AI person honestly I went to the article hoping to get more ammunition on it, wondering what the "safety risks" employees were worried about were, disappointed to not get info on that, unclear if it was a thing or not).

Moves and countermoves. I like the brief consideration raised by this post about all the ways that a shiny, new successful company may be attacked by its competitors surreptitiously, through the media, using lawfare by proxy, and so on. Such unadmirable deviousness!

I start to feel this is all marketing. Pretend it's dangerous, so it implies it's beyond what we imagine. Because on our end, on the reality of a B2B product used daily, finding use cases for the limited OpenAI we have access to is far from trivial.

Very short article, still concerning, but damn I'd like more info.

Very short article, still concerning, but I'd love more info.

"OpenAI made staff sign employee agreements that required them to waive their federal rights to whistleblower compensation, the letter said. These agreements also required OpenAI staff to get prior consent from the company if they wished to disclose information to federal authorities. OpenAI did not create exemptions in its employee nondisparagement clauses for disclosing securities violations to the SEC."

Who drafted this employee agreement. Not a single OpenAI employees thought to have it reviewed by a lawyer before signing? Or perhaps someone did but was too frightened to tell OpenAI, "Your employee agreement needs to be fixed."

This company continues to com across as naive and amateur. Perhaps because it was never intended to become a commercial entity.

The other day I saw a Tesla with the license plate "OPENAI". No doubt there were also license plates that said "FTX".

Fear not: the guy who’s daily driving a Koenigsegg supercar has your best interests at heart.

OMG! I am totally shocked than an arrogant egomaniac did something like this. Shocked I tell you.

Matt Levine put this as a great idea for a lucrative job in his Bloomberg column (where hedge fund can be replaced with any company):

> Take a job at a hedge fund.

> Get handed an employment agreement on the first day that says “you agree not to disclose any of our secrets unless required by law.”

> Sign. Take the agreement home with you.

> Circle that sentence in red marker, write “$$$$$!!!!!” next to it and send it to the SEC.

> The SEC extracts a $10 million fine.

> They give you $3 million.

> You can keep your job! Why not; it’s illegal to retaliate against whistleblowers. Or, you know, get a new one and do it again.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-07-15/openai... (archive: https://archive.ph/SWLh0)

What kind of people are gravitating towards AI Safety roles-- activists? How does an organization avoid activists mucking up their models when a disproportionate number of applications is an activist? I guess the answer is to actively recruit for the position rather than accept applications.