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OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

ft.com

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Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

#251

Post by financetechbro »

throwaway324098 wrote: post #226
sgustard wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's "obvious" is she was chief ethicist at the most unethical companies on the planet - it's like being a lawyer for the mafia - doesn't inspire longevity, either via scapegoating or preservation of one's own sanity.

"The most unethical companies on the planet" - if you believe this maybe its time to log off for a bit.

You made an account just to post this comment. And then you provided no evidence to back your counterclaim that OAI is in fact ethical (or more ethical than the most unethical companies in the planet)

Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

#253

Post by teiferer »

beloch wrote: post #223
wxw wrote: post #200

> Previously, she was chief ethicist at Meta. She spent 6 years at Meta. I get the sense there are other factors at play than "ethics departments are just PR stunts". There's no way she isn't already aware of that. Unfortunately, the article is light on any other details.

If "ethics departments are just PR stunts", then Bakalar would have been a terrible hire for OpenAI. Facebook's grudging and lacklustre response to their role in the Rohingya genocide would have happened mostly under her watch. While she was there, Meta went from being a company that lacks ethics to a company that lacks ethics and is widely perceived as lacking ethics. Perhaps she was the only person in the room rais…

> This comes at a time when there is huge pushback against all AI companies due to, in large part, ethical concerns.

I don't think ethics is fueling the outrage. It's people not wanting big noisy data centers close to their communities, driving up utility costs. Nobody would care if these things stood in Africa. Just like people don't want wind turbines close by but have no issue with them being abroad or in $remote_location or uranium mines polluting a far away country.

Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

#254

Post by cm2012 »

beloch wrote: post #223
wxw wrote: post #200

> Previously, she was chief ethicist at Meta. She spent 6 years at Meta. I get the sense there are other factors at play than "ethics departments are just PR stunts". There's no way she isn't already aware of that. Unfortunately, the article is light on any other details.

If "ethics departments are just PR stunts", then Bakalar would have been a terrible hire for OpenAI. Facebook's grudging and lacklustre response to their role in the Rohingya genocide would have happened mostly under her watch. While she was there, Meta went from being a company that lacks ethics to a company that lacks ethics and is widely perceived as lacking ethics. Perhaps she was the only person in the room rais…

She made Meta the most serious of all the ad platforms on transparency, then. I work in the industry and Meta led the field then in public ad libraries, political restrictions, mandatory ad disclosures, etc.

Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

#255

Post by nick__m »

sgustard wrote: post #210
ak830 wrote: post #193

I'm super confused as to why no one is theorizing the obvious...? Given none of us know the inner workings of why she left, why not resort to the most simple and straightforward conclusion: she left because OpenAI needed a scapegoat to blame the HuggingFace incident on. Given she is the chief "ethicist", even if not directly her fault, the HF incident could be directly blamed on her by not steering the implementation…

What's "obvious" is she was chief ethicist at the most unethical companies on the planet - it's like being a lawyer for the mafia - doesn't inspire longevity, either via scapegoating or preservation of one's own sanity.

I am pretty certain that Nestlé ranks well above openai on the most unethical companies on the planet rankings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_of_Nestl%C3%A9

Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

#256

Post by walrus01 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #252

Head of ethics at Meta then head of Ethics at OpenAI. Sorry, but if that doesn’t scream useless puffy PR positioning then I don’t know what does. What’s next? Head of ethics for United Healthcare?

Head of Ethics at Palantir, obviously.

Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

#257

Post by dickiedyce »

georgemcbay wrote: post #151
insanitybit wrote: post #102

I've never worked at a company with an "ethics" employee. It seems odd. Can someone explain what the point is? > She has held a variety of academic positions at Temple University, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania – where she completed her PhD in Political Science and Government. Her Dissertation was titled “Small Talk: The Socialities of Speech in Liberal Democratic Life.” This doesn't even feel relevant…

> I've never worked at a company with an "ethics" employee. It seems odd. Can someone explain what the point is? An ethics department is like a human resources department, but for broader ethics related matters. HR: Ostensibly exists to support the employees, but really exists to shield the company from both a PR and legal liability standpoint when the company has a rift with one or more employees. Ethics Department:…

I’ve always thought of both as the departmental equivalent of “cleanup crew to aisle nine“

Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

#258

Post by teiferer »

smcg wrote: post #196
KennyBlanken wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt she and others left just because of this one incident. My guess is that OpenAI has been doing more and more domestic spying type work as well as more and more military work - target selection and the like. That's how the schoolhouse was blown up by a Tomahawk. An AI was fed old information, didn't realize or do proper validation, an analyst copy-pasted, then someone just punched the coordinates into the their…

The schoolhouse was an intentional target - the children of some military leaders went there. They triple-tapped the school hoping to kill parents going in to save the kids.

How is that better? If true then that would be an even clearer war crime.

Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

#259

Post by nradov »

madrox wrote: post #247

In five years, I'd love to read a book about the history of AI ethics. I suspect it will read like Voltaire. My sense is that it is radically shifting from a fluffy marketing arm to a department expected to contribute meaningfully to development and justify its impact. I would expect an ethics team to build frameworks that can help train/eval the model that the company spend millions of dollars and months training is…

It's not technically possible to prove model alignment. At best you can establish a probability of alignment within certain constraints.

Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

#260

Post by NBJack »

madrox wrote: post #247

In five years, I'd love to read a book about the history of AI ethics. I suspect it will read like Voltaire. My sense is that it is radically shifting from a fluffy marketing arm to a department expected to contribute meaningfully to development and justify its impact. I would expect an ethics team to build frameworks that can help train/eval the model that the company spend millions of dollars and months training is…

I regret to say such a book may end up as a pamphlet. I don't see much going into it.
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