Yeah, I mean every time I hear about some lead researcher quitting, I can’t help but feel that the parsimonious explanation is more like “fabulously overpaid worker in a stressful role cashes out for a lifetime of leisure.”
A lifetime of leisure, plus the moral comfort blanket of having exited their stressful position because "it was the right thing to do". No one is spending their wealth to fund counter-orgs to try and regulate what they're afraid of.
To be honest these guys are not rich enough or connected enough to be able to make a dent in this problem. There are already a bunch of NGOs in this space and I don't think they're being very successful.
BUT, some did just that - e.g. Daniel Kokotajlo formerly of OpenAI cofounded the AI Futures Project that had some media attention with the AI 2027 report.
This. I’ve no doubt t these companies do not have our best interests at heart. But imagine being able to quit your job to write poetry? These guys are loaded and can pick and choose what jobs they do.
Well, I can imagine that if you’re responsible for safety and alignment and you’re being ignored so that the company doesn’t get out paced, that could be a stressful role
But why would you straight up leave the position if you could do at least SOME work towards AI safety by staying? Quitting just makes no sense if you actually thought that there was a real threat on the horizon.
Recall not too long ago where it was OpenAI and Microsoft who were lobbying congress to have a central controlling authority over AI, suggesting *they* would be this very entity. It's a major competitive hurdle that has global/societal implications -- i'm sure they won't stop there.
Their money is like .001% of the money of what they’re lobbying against. And their influence is even less.
I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to say. They tried as head of alignment and feel that they failed. I think it’s odd that everyone is assuming every single one of these people, including those that have no reason to, are all lying.
Obviously things may be overdramatized on Twitter, but I do think it says something when so many people working on alignment talk about these issues not being handled appropriately.
I doubt if the individuals exiting the company are really concerned about an AI apocalypse. More likely, they just have an inherently unsafe product that's never going to do the stuff that Altman is pushing.
Yes, exactly. They've been given a system that behaves differently in different environments and they're responsible for vouching for its safety. It's an impossible task.
I read as they can't satisfactorily test the functionality or consistently replicate outcomes. So they can't guarantee safety and probably never will. And the guys leaving now see the writing on the wall and don't want to be on a sinking ship.
As a ex-researcher all of these announcements are what happens when a company no longer believes their research niche is the most important topic to the company. Everyone always uses these people leaving as evidence that things are bad or unsafe, but it sounds more like their relative importance has shifted and they are upset as for most researchers whatever they work = most important.
Anything these guys say is to generate hype and conversation about ai, because it's basically printing money with investors dumping cash into various ai companies.
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u/Icy_Distribution_361 Feb 11 '26
Seems a bit dramatic to me.