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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

#241

Post by utopiah »

That's the thing that annoys me the most. Sure you may find Altman antipathetic, yes you might worry for the environment, etc BUT initially I cheered for OpenAI! I was telling everybody I know that AI is an interesting field, that it is also powerful, and thus must be done safely and in the open. Then, year after year, they stopped publishing what was the most interesting (or at least popular) part of their research, partnering with corporations with exclusivity deals, etc.

So... yes what pissed me the most about that is that initially I did support OpenAI! It's like the process of growth itself removed its raison d'etre.

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

#242

Post by AussieWog93 »

komali2 wrote: post #212
charcircuit wrote: post #82

Safety is extremely annoying from the user perspective. AI should be following my values, not whatever an AI lab chose.

But I want to use AI to generate highly effective, targeted propaganda to convert you and your family into communists. (See: Cambridge Analytica) I'll do so by leveraging automation and agents to flood every feed you and your family view with tailored disinformation so it's impossible to know how much of your ruling class are actually pedophiles and how much are just propagandized as such. Hell I might even try to co…

The thing is though, current AI safety checks don't stop actually harmful things while also hyperfixating on anything that could be seen as politically incorrect.

First two prompts I chucked in to make a point: https://chatgpt.com/share/69900757-7b78-8007-9e7e-5c163a21a6... https://chatgpt.com/share/69900777-1e78-8007-81af-c6dc5632df...

It was totally fine making fake news articles about Bill Clinton's ties to Epstein but drew the line at drawing a cartoon of a black man eating fried chicken and watermelon.

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

#243

Post by zbentley »

tsunamifury wrote: post #106
rdtsc wrote: post #43

> But the ChatGPT maker seems to no longer have the same emphasis on doing so “safely.” A step in the positive direction, at least they don't have to pretend any longer. It's like Google and "don't be evil". People didn't get upset with Google because they were more evil than others, heck, there's Oracle, defense contractors and the prison industrial system. People were upset with them because they were hypocrites. T…

I worked at Google for 10 years in AI and invented suggestive language from wordnet/bag of words. As much as what you are saying sounds right I was there when sundar made the call to bury proto LLM tech because he felt the world would be damaged for it. And I don’t even like the guy.

> sundar made the call to bury proto LLM tech

Then where did nano banana and friends come from? Did Google reverse course? Or were you referring to something else being buried?

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

#244

Post by lkey »

Culonavirus wrote: post #234

The ultimate question is this: Do we get to enjoy robot catgirls first, or are we jumping straight to Terminators?

The origin of the word 'robot' is 'rabu', from slavic, meaning 'slave'. This is not an accident of history.

You have the mindset of Thomas Jefferson, worried about what the enslaved peoples might one day do with their freedoms while planning your 'visit' with a slave child that cannot say no.

It's vile, fix your heart or disappear.

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

#246

Post by echelon »

wellf wrote: post #238
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...

- don't be evil + ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is the one that really gets me.

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

#247

Post by tsunamifury »

zbentley wrote: post #243
tsunamifury wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Google for 10 years in AI and invented suggestive language from wordnet/bag of words. As much as what you are saying sounds right I was there when sundar made the call to bury proto LLM tech because he felt the world would be damaged for it. And I don’t even like the guy.

> sundar made the call to bury proto LLM tech Then where did nano banana and friends come from? Did Google reverse course? Or were you referring to something else being buried?

Neema was running a fully fledged Turing passing chatbot in 2019. It was suppressed. Then written about in open source and openAI copied it. Then Google was forced to compete.

This is all well known history.

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

#248

Post by wolvoleo »

Replaced by 'profitably' :)

Mission statements are pure nonsense though. I had a boss that would lock us in a room for a day to come up with one and then it would go in a nice picture frame and nobody would ever look at it again or remember what it said lol. It just feels like marketing but daily work is nothing like what it says on the tin.

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

#249

Post by wolvoleo »

rdtsc wrote: post #43

> But the ChatGPT maker seems to no longer have the same emphasis on doing so “safely.” A step in the positive direction, at least they don't have to pretend any longer. It's like Google and "don't be evil". People didn't get upset with Google because they were more evil than others, heck, there's Oracle, defense contractors and the prison industrial system. People were upset with them because they were hypocrites. T…

I don't really agree. People are plenty upset with palantir and broadcom for being evil for example and I don't see their motto promiong they won't be.

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

#250

Post by imiric »

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…

> Certainly, an AI that can design weapons of mass destruction could be an existential threat to humanity. But so, too, is a system that subtly manipulates an entire world to lose its ability to perceive reality.

So, like, social media and adtech?

Judging by how little humanity is preoccupied with global manipulation campaigns via technology we've been using for decades now, there's little chance that this new tech will change that. It can only enable manipulation to grow in scale and effectiveness. The hype and momentum have never been greater, and many people have a lot to gain from it. The people who have seized power using earlier tech are now in a good position to expand their reach and wealth, which they will undoubtedly do.

FWIW I don't think the threats are existential to humanity, although that is certainly possible. It's far more likely that a few people will get very, very rich, many people will be much worse off, and most people will endure and fight their way to get to the top. The world will just be a much shittier place for 99.99% of humanity.

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