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

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

#471

Post by embedding-shape »

boredumb wrote: post #219
embedding-shape wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have literally no clue, hence I won't try to claim I know exactly what's going on there. For all we know, the ethics team at Raytheon could have stopped multiple international nuclear wars already.

They make sure that they are executing contracts in a way that doesn't break the ethics of the jurisdictions they are operating in, they aren't a bunch of naive people pleading for less war.

> they aren't a bunch of naive people pleading for less war

Where is this coming from? Who claimed this?

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

#472

Post by embedding-shape »

twister2920 wrote: post #206
embedding-shape wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> paying attention the existence of Raytheon is inherently unethical Lets do assume this is true, then again, wouldn't Raytheon be the best place to actually have a ethics department, if anyone?

only if you assume that the ethics department at Raytheon has absolute power over which contracts Raytheon takes and what kinds of products it produces. which is plainly absurd.

Why would you assume that? Say they only have 10% influence, 10% influence in "maybe we don't make this sort of weapon" is better than 0%. Of course, that's not even their job description, but that's besides the point.

Y'all a bunch of doomers and gloomers.

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

#473

Post by shafyy »

vlovich123 wrote: post #47
shafyy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> High rents are created by high local productivity. Wrong. High rents have many reasons and also good policies to get them down and have affordable housing for more people, also in otherwise expensive and popular cities.

OP has the demand part of the equation if supply remains fixed. The reason supply remains fixed is the US as a whole made policy changes in the 1970s that slowed down construction, specifically zoning laws and environmental laws swept the country. The 2008 recession also cancelled what little construction remained ongoing for a long time. When you combine that with spiking wealth in Silicon Valley, you’ve got the per…

Fundamentally, housing should not be a free market area that is profit-driven. Housing, like energy, food, healthcare and public transport is a basic need.

Therefore, government policies making sure people with lower income can still get housing in a city they grew up in, where they work, live and have family, is important.

Yes, one part of this is also building new housing and making sure that housing is built efficiently in terms of cost (but not throwing them on the free market, but making sure a certain % of it is desginated as social housing).

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

#474

Post by estearum »

shafyy wrote: post #473
vlovich123 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP has the demand part of the equation if supply remains fixed. The reason supply remains fixed is the US as a whole made policy changes in the 1970s that slowed down construction, specifically zoning laws and environmental laws swept the country. The 2008 recession also cancelled what little construction remained ongoing for a long time. When you combine that with spiking wealth in Silicon Valley, you’ve got the per…

Fundamentally, housing should not be a free market area that is profit-driven. Housing, like energy, food, healthcare and public transport is a basic need. Therefore, government policies making sure people with lower income can still get housing in a city they grew up in, where they work, live and have family, is important. Yes, one part of this is also building new housing and making sure that housing is built effic…

Ah, so your prior comment about productivity not driving high rents is similar to how government paying for healthcare just makes it not-expensive!

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

#475

Post by mrweasel »

bandrami wrote: post #453
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…

Hard disagree, as someone whose main job is telling developers "no". If it's everybody's responsibility it is in fact nobody's responsibility.

You risk that it becomes like legal, where the lawyers are concerned with "what you can legally get away with", not what's right.

If this person previously worked at Meta, then their experience in guiding company ethics isn't great and I suspect that they are more in the camp of explaining away ethical problems.

Anecdotally I think the engineers and people doing the actual work have a better grasp of moral, ethics and the spirit of the law, than people dedicated to those areas, but not enough to walk away.

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

#476

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#477

Post by k2xl »

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…

I don't think that's a fair comparison. Regulatory teams exist to make sure companies comply with actual laws and regulations. There's a relatively objective standard they're enforcing.

Big tech has the same thing in its legal and compliance teams, and those teams absolutely can kill projects. That's pretty different from an amorphous "ethics" committee deciding what is or isn't ethical based on much more subjective criteria.

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

#478

Post by staticman2 »

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

You seem to believe that regulation is "ethics backed by law".

As this is not true, your counter example is not even on point.

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

#480

Post by red-iron-pine »

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…

ethics isn't regulation. regulation is external, forced upon them, and has direct usually 1-to-1 consequences if you don't comply.

ethics may feed into regulation, hopefully, but the regs may just as easily give the orgs they regulate a pass on things they shouldn't; e.g. "regulatory capture".

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