The Nonlinear Library EA - 80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from the Job Board (and similar EA orgs should do similarly) by Raemon
Jul 3, 2024
11:03
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: 80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from the Job Board (and similar EA orgs should do similarly), published by Raemon on July 3, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
I haven't shared this post with other relevant parties - my experience has been that private discussion of this sort of thing is more paralyzing than helpful. I might change my mind in the resulting discussion, but, I prefer that discussion to be public.
I think 80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from its job board, and similar EA job placement services should do the same.
(I personally believe 80k shouldn't advertise Anthropic jobs either, but I think the case for that is somewhat less clear)
I think OpenAI has demonstrated a level of manipulativeness, recklessness, and failure to prioritize meaningful existential safety work, that makes me think EA orgs should not be going out of their way to give them free resources. (It might make sense for some individuals to work there, but this shouldn't be a thing 80k or other orgs are systematically funneling talent into)
There plausibly should be some kind of path to get back into good standing with the AI Risk community, although it feels difficult to imagine how to navigate that, given how adversarial OpenAI's use of NDAs was, and how difficult that makes it to trust future commitments.
The things that seem most significant to me:
They promised the superalignment team 20% of their compute-at-the-time (which AFAICT wasn't even a large fraction of their compute over the coming years), but didn't provide anywhere close to that, and then disbanded the team when Leike left.
Their widespread use of non-disparagement agreements, with non-disclosure clauses, which generally makes it hard to form accurate impressions about what's going on at the organization.
Helen Toner's description of how Sam Altman wasn't forthright with the board. (i.e. "The board was not informed about ChatGPT in advance and learned about ChatGPT on Twitter. Altman failed to inform the board that he owned the OpenAI startup fund despite claiming to be an independent board member, giving false information about the company's formal safety processes on multiple occasions.
And relating to her research paper, that Altman in the paper's wake started lying to other board members in order to push Toner off the board.")
Hearing from multiple ex-OpenAI employees that OpenAI safety culture did not seem on track to handle AGI. Some of these are public (Leike, Kokotajlo), others were in private.
This is before getting into more openended arguments like "it sure looks to me like OpenAI substantially contributed to the world's current AI racing" and "we should generally have a quite high bar for believing that the people running a for-profit entity building transformative AI are doing good, instead of cause vast harm, or at best, being a successful for-profit company that doesn't especially warrant help from EAs.
I am generally wary of AI labs (i.e. Anthropic and Deepmind), and think EAs should be less optimistic about working at large AI orgs, even in safety roles. But, I think OpenAI has demonstrably messed up, badly enough, publicly enough, in enough ways that it feels particularly wrong to me for EA orgs to continue to give them free marketing and resources.
I'm mentioning 80k specifically because I think their job board seemed like the largest funnel of EA talent, and because it seemed better to pick a specific org than a vague "EA should collectively do something." (see: EA should taboo "EA should"). I do think other orgs that advise people on jobs or give platforms to organizations (i.e. the organization fair at EA Global) should also delist OpenAI.
My overall take is something like: it is probably good to maintain some kind of intellectual/diplomatic/trade relationships with OpenAI, but bad to continue ...
I haven't shared this post with other relevant parties - my experience has been that private discussion of this sort of thing is more paralyzing than helpful. I might change my mind in the resulting discussion, but, I prefer that discussion to be public.
I think 80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from its job board, and similar EA job placement services should do the same.
(I personally believe 80k shouldn't advertise Anthropic jobs either, but I think the case for that is somewhat less clear)
I think OpenAI has demonstrated a level of manipulativeness, recklessness, and failure to prioritize meaningful existential safety work, that makes me think EA orgs should not be going out of their way to give them free resources. (It might make sense for some individuals to work there, but this shouldn't be a thing 80k or other orgs are systematically funneling talent into)
There plausibly should be some kind of path to get back into good standing with the AI Risk community, although it feels difficult to imagine how to navigate that, given how adversarial OpenAI's use of NDAs was, and how difficult that makes it to trust future commitments.
The things that seem most significant to me:
They promised the superalignment team 20% of their compute-at-the-time (which AFAICT wasn't even a large fraction of their compute over the coming years), but didn't provide anywhere close to that, and then disbanded the team when Leike left.
Their widespread use of non-disparagement agreements, with non-disclosure clauses, which generally makes it hard to form accurate impressions about what's going on at the organization.
Helen Toner's description of how Sam Altman wasn't forthright with the board. (i.e. "The board was not informed about ChatGPT in advance and learned about ChatGPT on Twitter. Altman failed to inform the board that he owned the OpenAI startup fund despite claiming to be an independent board member, giving false information about the company's formal safety processes on multiple occasions.
And relating to her research paper, that Altman in the paper's wake started lying to other board members in order to push Toner off the board.")
Hearing from multiple ex-OpenAI employees that OpenAI safety culture did not seem on track to handle AGI. Some of these are public (Leike, Kokotajlo), others were in private.
This is before getting into more openended arguments like "it sure looks to me like OpenAI substantially contributed to the world's current AI racing" and "we should generally have a quite high bar for believing that the people running a for-profit entity building transformative AI are doing good, instead of cause vast harm, or at best, being a successful for-profit company that doesn't especially warrant help from EAs.
I am generally wary of AI labs (i.e. Anthropic and Deepmind), and think EAs should be less optimistic about working at large AI orgs, even in safety roles. But, I think OpenAI has demonstrably messed up, badly enough, publicly enough, in enough ways that it feels particularly wrong to me for EA orgs to continue to give them free marketing and resources.
I'm mentioning 80k specifically because I think their job board seemed like the largest funnel of EA talent, and because it seemed better to pick a specific org than a vague "EA should collectively do something." (see: EA should taboo "EA should"). I do think other orgs that advise people on jobs or give platforms to organizations (i.e. the organization fair at EA Global) should also delist OpenAI.
My overall take is something like: it is probably good to maintain some kind of intellectual/diplomatic/trade relationships with OpenAI, but bad to continue ...