Thirteen former OpenAI employees released an open letter stating that advanced AI companies, including Open AI, do not have enough government oversight of potential artificial intelligence safety risks and that employees are the few who can keep the companies accountable. However, the group wrote, “ordinary whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks we are concerned about are not yet regulated.”
The letter was endorsed by former Google employee Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI.” It went on to say that the former OpenAI employees—six of who chose to remain anonymous—believe that AI has the potential to benefit humanity, there are also potential threats such as the entrenchment of inequalities, manipulation and misinformation, as well as the possibility of human extinction. More realistic problems, they wrote, include copyright violations, inadvertent sharing of illegal images and the potential to mislead the public by mimicking peoples’ likenesses.
Several OpenAI employees recently resigned after the disbanding of its “Superalignment” team that focused on AI’s potential long-term risks, as well as co-founder and safety champion Ilya Sutskever’s departure. The company recently formed a new safety team led by CEO Sam Altman.
