The Nonlinear Library EA - Helen Toner (ex-OpenAI board member): "We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter." by defun
May 29, 2024
02:08
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Helen Toner (ex-OpenAI board member): "We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter.", published by defun on May 29, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Helen Toner: "For years, Sam had made it really difficult for the board to actually do that job by withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company, in some cases, outright lying to the board.
At this point, everyone always says, What? Give me some examples. I can't share all the examples, but to give a sense of the thing that I'm talking about, it's things like when ChatGPT came out, November 2022, the board was not informed in advance about that. We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter.
Sam didn't inform the board that he owned the OpenAI Startup Fund, even though he constantly was claiming to be an independent board member with no financial interest in the company.
On multiple occasions, he gave us inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes that the company did have in place, meaning that it was basically impossible for the board to know how well those safety processes were working or what might need to change.
Then a last example that I can share because it's been very widely reported relates to this paper that I wrote, which has been, I think, way overplayed in the press. The problem was that after the paper came out, Sam started lying to other board members in order to try and push me off the board.
It was another example that just really damaged our ability to trust him, and actually only happened in late October last year when we were already talking pretty seriously about whether we needed to fire him.
There's more individual individual examples. For any individual case, Sam could always come up with some innocuous sounding explanation of why it wasn't a big deal or it was interpreted or whatever.
But the end effect was that after years of this thing, all four of us who fired him came to the conclusion that we just couldn't believe things that Sam was telling us. That's a completely unworkable place to be in as a board, especially a board that is supposed to be providing independent oversight over the company, not just just helping the CEO to raise more money."
Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org
Helen Toner: "For years, Sam had made it really difficult for the board to actually do that job by withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company, in some cases, outright lying to the board.
At this point, everyone always says, What? Give me some examples. I can't share all the examples, but to give a sense of the thing that I'm talking about, it's things like when ChatGPT came out, November 2022, the board was not informed in advance about that. We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter.
Sam didn't inform the board that he owned the OpenAI Startup Fund, even though he constantly was claiming to be an independent board member with no financial interest in the company.
On multiple occasions, he gave us inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes that the company did have in place, meaning that it was basically impossible for the board to know how well those safety processes were working or what might need to change.
Then a last example that I can share because it's been very widely reported relates to this paper that I wrote, which has been, I think, way overplayed in the press. The problem was that after the paper came out, Sam started lying to other board members in order to try and push me off the board.
It was another example that just really damaged our ability to trust him, and actually only happened in late October last year when we were already talking pretty seriously about whether we needed to fire him.
There's more individual individual examples. For any individual case, Sam could always come up with some innocuous sounding explanation of why it wasn't a big deal or it was interpreted or whatever.
But the end effect was that after years of this thing, all four of us who fired him came to the conclusion that we just couldn't believe things that Sam was telling us. That's a completely unworkable place to be in as a board, especially a board that is supposed to be providing independent oversight over the company, not just just helping the CEO to raise more money."
Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org