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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

#461

Post by mrits »

plaidfuji wrote: post #457
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…

If this were true, food companies wouldn’t have a Regulatory team. Except every single one of them does, and they function similarly to how you describe, but without dissolving. They’re treated as a constraint that must be checked before major projects can advance. Sometimes they’re the longest-lead item on a new project and if you don’t get them involved early, your project can sink at a late stage after great expen…

Food companies produce literal poison. Not a great example

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

#462

Post by tokai »

impendia wrote: post #451
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People confuse morals with ethics. It can be perfectly acceptable, ethically, to do something that is morally reprehensible.

How are you distinguishing them? I had the impression they were essentially synonyms, and this was borne out by two university courses in philosophy which I took. That said, googling "morals vs ethics" turns up quite an interesting mess. A variety of contrasting perspectives showed up: - Ethics come from an external source, whereas morals come from within - Ethics are rational and structured, whereas morals are more…

[dead]

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

#463

Post by jkahrs595 »

plaidfuji wrote: post #457
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…

If this were true, food companies wouldn’t have a Regulatory team. Except every single one of them does, and they function similarly to how you describe, but without dissolving. They’re treated as a constraint that must be checked before major projects can advance. Sometimes they’re the longest-lead item on a new project and if you don’t get them involved early, your project can sink at a late stage after great expen…

> The only difference is AI isn’t regulated

Seems extremely obvious that this is exactly why the food industry doesn’t dissolve its regulatory team?

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

#464

Post by plaidfuji »

mrits wrote: post #461
plaidfuji wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were true, food companies wouldn’t have a Regulatory team. Except every single one of them does, and they function similarly to how you describe, but without dissolving. They’re treated as a constraint that must be checked before major projects can advance. Sometimes they’re the longest-lead item on a new project and if you don’t get them involved early, your project can sink at a late stage after great expen…

Food companies produce literal poison. Not a great example

Poison can act on more than just your stomach

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

#465

Post by K0balt »

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…

In a situation where it doesn’t happen this way, the ethics team grows in power and staffing over time until it destroys the company, because ultimately all commercial activity can be construed as less than perfectly ethical at some level, or it morphs into an elaborate legalese department that masks unethical practices in a cloak of justification.

Either way, you need third party regulation and then a department dedicated to ethical compliance, or you end up with corporate cancer.

I say this as a person with a knee-jerk anti-regulation reflex.

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

#466

Post by HPsquared »

mrits wrote: post #461
plaidfuji wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were true, food companies wouldn’t have a Regulatory team. Except every single one of them does, and they function similarly to how you describe, but without dissolving. They’re treated as a constraint that must be checked before major projects can advance. Sometimes they’re the longest-lead item on a new project and if you don’t get them involved early, your project can sink at a late stage after great expen…

Food companies produce literal poison. Not a great example

Just think what they'd produce without regulations.

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

#467

Post by phoghed »

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…

Operations was like this so we added Ops to the Dev. DevOps.

Security was like this so we added Sec to the DevOps. DevSecOps.

Ethics is now the problem, so we’re going to add Eth to the chain. DevEthSecOps.

Legal and compliance is now the final hurdle to shipping fast. AI tools will allow us to implement DevEthSecLawOps at scale no doubt.

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

#468

Post by estearum »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #376
estearum wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what's happening here is you misunderstood the quoted text, silly. The claim is not that rents are always at their optimal or most efficient level - they're not! The claim is that you cannot (at meaningful scale) charge people who earn $1,000/month in income $2,000/month in rent to live in a place. They will have to move. Did you take any arithmetic classes? And any case, you should stop mind-reading. You're bad…

Lets say I own 50 properties and I want to charge $2000 a month, and right now I can't because the people willing to rent my properties only make $1000 a month. I can bribe politicians to not allow any new construction of properties which rent between $2000 and $4000 per month. Then I wait 10 years. Now I can charge $2000 a month because I'm not renting to the people that made $1000 a month 10 years ago, I'm renting…

> Then I wait 10 years [for local productivity to increase, and then I can charge higher prices]

This is the only feature that's relevant. If productivity goes up, you can charge more. If it does not, you cannot.

You may do some corruption or some zoning or some whatever else you want, but at the end of the day, if productivity goes up you can charge more and if it does not you cannot charge more.

Hope that clarifies!

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

#469

Post by HSO »

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…

yup, like risk managers in investment banks with their own trading desks.

just ngmi

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

#470

Post by xcf_seetan »

expedition32 wrote: post #459
chii wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why ethics doesnt work, and it is why laws work. If ethics worked, we'd have no need for laws.

Slavery ended with gunfire not hugs.

Actually, in my country, we made the revolution with flowers not gunfire.
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