OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by EagnaIonat » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 5:39 AM UTC

duxup wrote: post #317

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…

What does AI ethics even mean? They can't fully control the model, it does stuff even with instructions not to. And sometimes it's clear safety mechanisms overcorrect and make the model useless in some situations. I tried asking Claude about some scenario's for a security hole we fixed to see how it would respond, it refused to talk to me seemingly assuming I was trying to introduce a hole that was now fixed. It just…

> What does AI ethics even mean?

It's a broad statement and can mean different things depending where you are in that chain.

You have design and compliance. Compliance is what you are allowed to do (laws). Design is how you construct your applications to understand how it will impact the people directly or indirectly.

Then you have the accountability, transparency, auditing and reproducing. Understanding why the model worked the way it did. Models can go wrong, but if you have the details of how it went wrong and who is at fault, it can protect people who use it.

Then there is alignment, which is a higher longer goal.

Your comment about security questions is a matter of ethics as well.

If you say apply it to medical, is it ethical to allow a model to give medical advice, knowing that it can be wrong. Most people would say no, but by doing so you are denying people who can't afford medical advice, so there has to be a balance. Most companies err on the side of not getting sued.

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

#402

Post by BloondAndDoom » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 5:43 AM UTC

seanhunter wrote: post #399

Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last. If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group…

I get what you are saying but that’s exactly how security and compliance work. And I don’t think amount of people who want to be ethical in an organization ia that different than people who want to build secure software (but possibly no one gives a shit compliance other than it’s something that needs to be done)

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

#403

Post by tgv » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 5:46 AM UTC

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #402

seanhunter wrote: post #399

Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last. If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group…

I get what you are saying but that’s exactly how security and compliance work. And I don’t think amount of people who want to be ethical in an organization ia that different than people who want to build secure software (but possibly no one gives a shit compliance other than it’s something that needs to be done)

There are at least some penalties for failed security and compliance. Ethics is the first victim of greed.

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

#404

Post by dannyw » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 5:49 AM UTC

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #402

seanhunter wrote: post #399

Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last. If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group…

I get what you are saying but that’s exactly how security and compliance work. And I don’t think amount of people who want to be ethical in an organization ia that different than people who want to build secure software (but possibly no one gives a shit compliance other than it’s something that needs to be done)

Security and compliance tends to be a lot less subjective than ethics. Not saying it’s objective, but there’s a huge difference.

The downside is it can often feel like a box-checking exercise than actual security or compliance, but “you need 2FA” is less debatable than, say, AI and copyright.

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

#405

Post by nakedrobot2 » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 5:50 AM UTC

seanhunter wrote: post #399

Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last. If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group…

this is a strong reminder of the character of Toby from The Office.... :-)

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

#406

Post by p0w3n3d » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 5:53 AM UTC

Marketing and management - the root of 50-80% of evil in the word (or as Christians say: greed - second deadly sin)

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

#407

Post by hypfer » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 5:55 AM UTC

seanhunter wrote: post #399

Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last. If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group…

> whose only job is to say no to some other group

I suspect that people will miss just how precise you've been there.

Your proposal - if I understand correctly - is not just to spread the "ethics team" onto everyone (which is correct), but also to have someone in a dedicated role. However, they need to have not _just_ that role, but also some skin in the game.

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

#408

Post by Honali » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 5:56 AM UTC

The most interesting detail here isn't that an ethics lead left, but that she was apparently the only dedicated ethicist at the company and there’s no replacement

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

#409

Post by lnsru » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 6:00 AM UTC

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #402

seanhunter wrote: post #399

Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last. If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group…

I get what you are saying but that’s exactly how security and compliance work. And I don’t think amount of people who want to be ethical in an organization ia that different than people who want to build secure software (but possibly no one gives a shit compliance other than it’s something that needs to be done)

During my years at big corp we did tons of work just to go around the law department. While for core business it made absolute sense to have lawyers involved in daily business we were satellite office decoupled from core business. Local management failed to communicate that and we were stalked by lawyers from main office. Pretty sure others do the same with compliance, law, ethics departments. Just work around to get things done instead of stuck for weeks in stupid meetings.

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

#410

Post by hnlmorg » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 6:07 AM UTC

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #402

seanhunter wrote: post #399

Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last. If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group…

I get what you are saying but that’s exactly how security and compliance work. And I don’t think amount of people who want to be ethical in an organization ia that different than people who want to build secure software (but possibly no one gives a shit compliance other than it’s something that needs to be done)

And organisations fail at security when security and compliance is only considered important by that one teamnn

Security requires the whole business to buy in. And it requires processes that allow people to get shit done without people resorting to shadow IT; thus working around that one team.

So the GPs point still works.