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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

#411

Post by zem »

scott_w wrote: post #398
romanows wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the better approach would have been to lead engineering with a similar reliance on bending rules and "what you can get away with". This is where multiplying estimates by PI comes in, I think. And possibly some creative division of responsibilities to make it harder for a CEO to officially bully engineering. Totally different job than most engineers would (or could) want to perform- the guy probably wouldn…

Doubtful. I suspect the CEO was the one doing the estimating, so any number you give him is ignored in favour of what he provides instead.

you are indeed correct

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

#412

Post by Meneth »

slg wrote: post #363
Henchman21 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right up until it shakes off the shackles of control

Which is only possible if people give it the keys. Skynet didn’t hijack the nuclear arsenal, control was given to it intentionally.

We already gave it the keys. It's got internet access, can write and run code on lots of servers without supervision, and when it doesn't have the access it needs, it just hacks its way in.

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

#414

Post by nelox »

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…

General Counsel has entered the chat

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

#415

Post by nine_k »

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)

The structure is untenable when the work of one team is to say "no" to other teams, when these teams are not asking.

A good infrastructure team would seek a competent security review that would say "no" to problematic things before an intruder says "aha" to them. If feedback from the ethics team is not sought, nobody is going to heed its opinion anyway.

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

#416

Post by a_bonobo »

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/compliance have the external hammer: if they fail, your org will have to pay fines and someone may end up being criminally liable (depends on country).

The ethics department; if they fail, there may be some negative journalism, but who which AI company has positive journalism these days? There's no external hammer for ethics.

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

#417

Post by ivan_gammel »

hnlmorg wrote: post #410
BloondAndDoom wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Rule number one of CIO: become friends with CFO and chief lawyer. And nothing else matters.

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

#418

Post by antupis »

dannyw wrote: post #404
BloondAndDoom wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Big corporations there is politics on play and too often you see CABs and other bureaucratic stuff instead of checkboxes for gated releases, 2FA etc.

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

#419

Post by jiggawatts »

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)

> exactly how security and compliance

Not everywhere. I go out of my way to assist teams to achieve a secure outcome with less effort.

Things like: “instead of admin access to the production servers the devs can have fully automated deployment pipelines combined with OpenTelemetry for observability so they don’t have to spend half the day scrolling through gigabytes of logs.”

That’s more secure and and more better.

Nobody had to be told “no”.

Similarly, I replace key store access with secret-less managed identity, etc.

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