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Journalism of Courage
Several former employees who worked for OpenAI, the company that brought us ChatGPT have written an open letter according to which AI companies are critical of oversight and criticism. Signed by 13 former employees, six of which chose to remain anonymous, the letter talks about risks associated with AI systems like manipulation, misinformation and losing control of autonomous AI systems.
It goes to say that since there is currently no effective government oversight on what these companies do, they should be open to criticism by current and former employees and accountable to the public. The letter says AI companies currently have “strong financial incentives” to ignore safety and that existing “corporate governance” structures are not enough.
It also suggests that AI companies are yet to publicly share the capabilities and limitations of these systems and “the risk levels of different kinds of harm” they can do. These former OpenAI employees also suggest that normal “whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks we are concerned about are not yet regulated.”
In the last few months, several AI companies including OpenAI have been repeatedly criticized when it comes to safety oversight. Last month, Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist at OpenAI left the company, following which the Superalignment team head – Jan Leike also resigned claiming that the safety has “taken a backseat to shiny products.” Since then, OpenAI has reportedly dissolved the Superalignment team and formed a new Safety and Security Committee led by Sam Altman.
