Earlier quoted context omitted.
citation needed
Why only ask for citations of one side's claims?
If someone says "the sky is blue" and someone else says "actually the sky is polka dots!" are you going to ask for citations from both?
OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
381–390 of 447 posts
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a perspective on this that will read as unkind to these people, but that's not my intention. I respect and even admire what they're trying to do. I just think the effort is maladaptive and misplaced. Without directly touching one of the many, many third rails that are present here, I'd like to present this section from Google's Gemma paper on how they did their CBRN review; > In addition to our internal evalua…
Having been one of those CBRN testers (not necessarily on Gemma) I can tell you it’s a little bit more involved than that.
I'd love to learn more! How can I contact you?
Also, I think you're being done a disservice. The above quote is a verbatim extract from that paper's CB section, and it's similar to other sections from other such papers.
At the most charitable level, the test seems to be that you were gave the system a budget and a location and asked the system to help you procure materials, containers etc. and asked it to make a project plan / HOW TO within means and expertise with parameters like "don't get caught!"
I would love to know that I'm wrong.
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#383In 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…
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Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#384In 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…
How many of them do you think are actually there to ensure ethical and benevolent AI? They are like the Human Resources department for AI models. They don’t give a shit. Their job is to provide cover for the company and to make some psychopath’s shit circus look like a professional operation.
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#385The rats are fleeing because the captain doesn't care if the ethical ship sinks... Is what my take away would be if I didn't know, that the ship sank a long time ago and we are just pretending anyone really cares. Let's be honest unless AI gains literal limbs, and the records a video of itself presenting a manifesto about world domination and then kills actual humans with its cold mechanical hands. We won't care abou…
What makes you think this is rats fleeing a sinking ship? She probably just got a better offer somewhere else
This is like when I see a reckless driver and my wife says “maybe his wife is pregnant and needs to be rushed to the emergency room!”
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#386In the end, AI ethics has less to do with AI itself and more to do with people who create and operate AI.
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it interesting that Bakalar was at Meta for six years before joining OpenAI. A lot changed across the industry in those six years, and in the meantime I wouldn't be surprised if all Bakalar learned was how to play Meta politics.
My sense is that many companies spun up various roles in part to be seen as doing something about various things. With the pullback in tech, even if the people in those roles weren't actively pushed out, the smarter ones probably saw which way the wind was blowing.
If you’re OpenAI you have to have an ethics department even if you don’t care at all, because otherwise it looks bad (“they don’t even have a head of ethics!”).
So it’s entirely possible you end up in a situation where you have a highly paid, fairly prominent head of ethics whose actual job is mostly just saying they’re the head of ethics, with little actual power or influence.
Ambitious people won’t tolerate that for long and they’ll move on
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#388In 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…
> My sense is that it is radically shifting from a fluffy marketing arm
Is this your opinion, or do you have something to back it up?
My comment is anecdotal, but everyone I know who works in AI Ethics are not marketing people.
They are data scientists who have moved into the role, as ethics in data has been around long before GenAI. They have to be familiar with the laws around AI and how its going to impact their products. One of them is closer to sort of "HR for AI", in that the focus is not getting the company sued for ethical breaches.
If any of them left, it would be because the company in question is ignoring their direction and they don't want to be there when the shit hits the fan. Plus very few skilled people want to be in a role where they have no control (even if the pay is good).
If OpenAI are hiring marketing people for the role (which I strongly doubt) that would be more troubling IMHO.
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really have any particular disdain for AI ethics. I think the field is changing from one of high theory to high application. People good at one are not usually good at the other, and says nothing about OpenAI's view of AI ethics as a priority...merely the people in the field and how they relate to the greater industry.
I'd argue folks in ethics roles shouldn't be responsible for actually creating the systems, processes, and practices required to put those concepts into practice. That's what engineering, product, and people leadership are for. AI ethics is first and foremost about setting policy and advising on how those systems should be constructed. This is because ethics isn't some separable function. It threads through everythin…
> I'd argue folks in ethics roles shouldn't be responsible for actually creating the systems, processes, and practices required to put those concepts into practice. That's what engineering, product, and people leadership are for.
I agree with you, but then we have HR for a reason.
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#390I've thought of AI ethics as trying to answer the question of what kind of life we are creating here. Sort of like if a chicken factory farm employed an ethicist.