Ask HN: Is anyone else concerned about OpenAI and safety?

Given all that is going on (battling factions, loose governance, general drama) is anyone else concerned with OpenAI’s ability to develop AI safely?

considering all the articles over the past few months on the general theme of "AI will kill us all," I'd say that yes, there are people who are concerned.

If the corporate drama / PR kabuki that this one company has gone through the past couple days has markedly changed your opinion of the question of "AI safety" then I suggest you may have needed to examine it in more depth before the drama, anyway.

Of course I am but only because I think developing safe AI is going to be such a monumental challenge (greater than manhattan project).

However honestly I think recent events give me more hope that things will go well. My impression from Sam's comments/interviews is he's closer to the techno-maximalist, move fast and break things mindset then someone who really takes AI risks seriously.

I think this fight was going to happen sooner or later and it's better that OpenAI split up into safety focused vs commercialize and move fast teams. These two viewpoints are probably irreconcilable

For me, the danger of AI is that we've made something that feels like a wise oracle, and we've begun treating it like one (to the point that a large percentage of the work we create and consume is actually coming from AI) but it actually has no underlying wisdom or noble guiding principles. OpenAI seems to encode the moral sense that is expedient to their business model, and not much else. But there are so many important topics that you can't get ChatGPT to talk honestly about: sexuality, drugs, etc. We've made ourselves a God, but is this God really good for humanity?

Granted there's a paucity of public info, but taking news stories at face value, they gave Altman the boot for recklessly chasing growth.

So the rumor that OpenAI will cave and bring back Altman worries me a bit.

AI probably will be, at a minimum, as world-changing as the automobile or telephone, so God help us all if the company behind it operates like Facebook or Google.