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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

#251

Post by wolvoleo »

lkey wrote: post #244
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.

I think you're taking the OP's funny comment way too seriously :)

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

#252

Post by ta8903 »

lkey wrote: post #244
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.

Would you be less mad if he used the word android instead, or is that also etymologically problematic?

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

#253

Post by gradys »

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?

This was long before. Google had conversational LLMs before ChatGPT (though they weren’t as good in my recollection), and they declined to productize. There was a sense at the time that you couldn’t productize anything with truly open ended content generation because you couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t say something problematic.

See Facebook’s Galactica project for an example of what Google was afraid would happen: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/18/1063487/meta-lar...

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

#254

Post by wolvoleo »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #232
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the thinking more along the lines of 'let's not provide personal chemical weapons manufacture experts and bioengineers to homicidal people'?

These already exist. They are called textbooks, and anyone can check them out in any library. There was a time when a group of zealots made the same argument about libraries themselves.

Ease of access matters. To read those textbooks you have to basically be a chemist and know where to find them, which books etc. An AI model can just tell you step by step and even make a nice overview of which chemical will have the most effect.

Id compare it to guns. You can't just buy guns here in the corner store in most of Europe. Doesn't mean they are impossible to get and people could even make their own if they put enough effort in. But gun violence is way lower than the US anyway. Because really most people don't go that far. They don't have that kind of drive or determination.

Making a fleeting brain fart into an instantly actionable recipe is probably not a great idea with some topics.

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

#256

Post by wolvoleo »

FireBeyond wrote: post #132
overgard wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings on this (besides obviously being sad about the loss of a good person). I think one of the useful things about AI chat is that you can talk about things that are difficult to talk to another human about, whether it's an embarrassing question or just things you don't want people to know about you. So it strikes me that trying to add a guard rail for all the things that reflect poorly on a chat age…

> One thing that I think is dangerous with the current LLM models though is the sycophancy problem. Like, all the time chatGPT is like "Great question!" 100% In ChatGPT I have the Basic Style and Tone set to "Efficient: concise and plain". For Characteristics I've set: - Warm: less - Enthusiastic: less - Headers and lists: default - Emoji: less And custom instructions: > Minimize sycophancy. Do not congratulate or pr…

Yeah why are basically all models so sycophantic anyway. I'm so done with getting encouragement and appreciation of my choices even when they're clearly wrong.

I tried similar prompts but they didn't really work.

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

#257

Post by wolvoleo »

magicalhippo wrote: post #126
overgard wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings on this (besides obviously being sad about the loss of a good person). I think one of the useful things about AI chat is that you can talk about things that are difficult to talk to another human about, whether it's an embarrassing question or just things you don't want people to know about you. So it strikes me that trying to add a guard rail for all the things that reflect poorly on a chat age…

> Like, all the time chatGPT is like "Great question!". I've been trying out Gemini for a little while, and quickly got annoyed by that pattern. They're overly trained to agree maximally. However, in the Gemini web app you can add instructions that are inserted in each conversation. I've added that it shouldn't assume my suggestions as good per default, but offer critique where appropriate. And so every now and then…

You can insert a custom default prompt on pretty much every AI under the sun these days, not just Gemini

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

#260

Post by wcfrobert »

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...

This is hilarious. Reminds me of the commandments revisions in animal farm.

No animal shall sleep in a bed. Revision: No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.

No animal shall drink alcohol. Revision: No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.

No animal shall kill any other animal. Revision: No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.

All animals are equal. Revision: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

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