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OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission

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Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission

#191

Post by mmaunder »

echelon wrote: post #167
ai_critic wrote: post #118

Remember everyone: If OpenAI successfully and substantially migrates away from being a non-profit, it'll be the heist of the millennium. Don't fall for it. EDIT: They're already partway there with the PBC stuff, if I remember correctly.

> Don't fall for it. The vast majority of people here have no exposure to investing in OpenAI. It was cool to dunk on OpenAI for being a non-profit when they were in the lead, but now that Google has leapfrogged them and dozens of other companies are on their tail, this is a lame attack. We should want competition. Lots of competition. The biggest heist of all would be if Google wins outright, trounces the competitio…

This. Root for them all!!! Benefit from diversity, price competition, and the innovation driven by competitors snapping at each others heels, driving very long hours for those teams. The whole of humanity benefits from this.

Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission

#192

Post by spondyl »

simonw wrote: post #37

You can see the official mission statements in the IRS 990 filings for each year on https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/810... I turned them into a Gist with fake author dates so you can see the diffs here: https://gist.github.com/simonw/e36f0e5ef4a86881d145083f759bc... Wrote this up on my blog too: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/13/openai-mission-stateme...

It seems like a lot of punctuation was removed in those gist extracts?

Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission

#193

Post by zer00eyz »

fghorow wrote: post #18

Yes. ChatGPT "safely" helped[1] my friend's daughter write a suicide note. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/opinion/chat-gpt-mental-h...

Do I feel bad for the above person.

I do. Deeply.

But having lived through the 80's and 90's, the satanic panic I gotta say this is dangerous ground to tread. If this was a forum user, rather than a LLM, who had done all the same things, and not reached out, it would have been a tragedy but the story would just have been one among many.

The only reason we're talking about this is because anything related to AI gets eyeballs right now. And our youth suicides epidemic outweighs other issues that get lots more attention and money at the moment.

Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission

#194

Post by willis936 »

pdonis wrote: post #157
bigwheels wrote: post #128

The 2024 shift which nixed "unconstrained by a need to generate financial return" was really telling. Once you abandon that tenet, what's left?

Not only really telling, but AFAIK illegal for a 501(c)(3) organization.

Ah well then the executive branch will execute the law anyday now.

Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission

#197

Post by scoofy »

They were supposed to be a nonprofit!!!

They lost every shred of credibility when that happened. Given the reasonable comparables, that anyone who continues to use their product after that level of shenanigans is just dumb.

Dark patterns are going to happen, but we need to punish businesses that just straight up lie to our faces and expect us to go along with it.

Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission

#198

Post by webdoodle »

btown wrote: post #42

One of the biggest pieces of "writing on the wall" for this IMO was when, in the April 15 2025 Preparedness Framework update, they dropped persuasion/manipulation from their Tracked Categories. https://openai.com/index/updating-our-preparedness-framework... https://fortune.com/2025/04/16/openai-safety-framework-manip... > OpenAI said it will stop assessing its AI models prior to releasing them for the risk that they…

Right on point. That is the true purpose of this 'new' push into A.I. Human moderators sometimes realize the censorship they are doing is wrong, and will slow walk or blatantly ignore censorship orders. A.I. will diligently delete anything it's told too.

But the real risk is that they can use it to upscale the Cambridge Analytica personality profiles for everyone, and create custom agents for every target that feeds them whatever content they need too manipulate there thinking and ultimately behavior. AKA MkUltra mind control.

Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission

#199

Post by MYEUHD »

longfacehorrace wrote: post #184
simonw wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to know why their lawyers appear to hate apostrophes so much. The most recent one is: > OpenAIs mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Many of the older ones skipped some but not all of the apostrophes too.

Doubt a lawyer actually modified a website. That's what GPT is for. Trivial syntax glitches matter when it is math and code. In law what matters is the meaning of the overall composition, "the big picture", not trivial details a linguist would care about. Stick to contextualizing the technology side of things. This "zomg no apostrophe" just comes off as cringe.

It's hard to believe that a LLM would make a mistake like this. It's literally called a Large Language Model.
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