• mozz@mbin.grits.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    If they closed down, and the people still aligned with safety had to take up the mantle, that would be fine.

    If they got desperate for money and started looking for people they could sell their soul to (more than they have already) in exchange for keeping the doors open, that could potentially be pretty fuckin bad.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 months ago

      Well, my point is that it’s already largely irrelevant what they do. Many of their talented engineers have moved on to other companies, some new startups and some already-established ones. The interesting new models and products are not being produced by OpenAI so much any more.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if “safety alignment” is one of the reasons, too. There are a lot of folks in tech who really just want to build neat things and it feels oppressive to be in a company that’s likely to lock away the things they build if they turn out to be too neat.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        Many of their talented engineers have moved on to other companies, some new startups and some already-established ones.

        When did this happen? I know some of the leadership departed but I hadn’t heard of it from the rank and file.

        I’m not saying necessarily that you’re wrong; definitely it seems like something has changed between the days of GPT-3 and GPT-4 up until the present day. I just hadn’t heard of it.

        There are a lot of folks in tech who really just want to build neat things and it feels oppressive to be in a company that’s likely to lock away the things they build if they turn out to be too neat.

        I’m not sure this is true for AI. Some of the people who are most worried about AI safety are the AI engineers. I have some impression that OpenAI’s safety focus was why so many people liked working for them, back when they were doing groundbreaking work.

        • FaceDeer@fedia.io
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          AI engineers are not a unitary group with opinions all aligned. Some of them really like money too. Or just want to build something that changes the world.

          I don’t know of a specific “when” where a bunch of engineers left OpenAI all at once. I’ve just seen a lot of articles over the past year with some variation of “<company> is a startup founded by former OpenAI engineers.” There might have been a surge when Altman was briefly ousted, but that was brief enough that I wouldn’t expect a visible spike on the graph.