A Former OpenAI Leader Says Safety Has ‘Taken A Backseat To Shiny Products’ At The AI Company

A former OpenAI executive who quit earlier this week warned Friday that safety has “taken a backseat to shiny products” at the influential artificial intelligence firm.

Jan Leike, who led OpenAI’s “Superalignment” team with a business co-founder who also left this week, stated in a series of posts on the social media platform X that he joined the San Francisco-based startup because he believed it was the ideal place to conduct AI research.

“However, I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company’s core priorities for quite some time, until we finally reached a breaking point,” wrote Leike, who resigned on Thursday.

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A Former OpenAI Leader Says Safety Has ‘Taken A Backseat To Shiny Products’ At The AI Company

By training, Leike, an AI researcher, feels there should be a greater emphasis on preparing for the next generation of AI models, including safety and studying the societal consequences of such technology. He stated that developing “smarter-than-human machines is an inherently dangerous endeavor” and that the company “is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity.”

“OpenAI must become a safety-first AGI company,” stated Leike, using the shortened term of artificial general intelligence, a futuristic concept of robots that are as generally intelligent as humans or can do many things as well as people.

Open AI CEO Sam Altman responded to Leike’s postings, saying he was “super appreciative” of his efforts to the firm and was “very sad to see him leave.”

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A Former OpenAI Leader Says Safety Has ‘Taken A Backseat To Shiny Products’ At The AI Company

Leike is “right, we have a lot more to do; we are committed to doing it,” Altman added, promising to publish a lengthy post in the coming days

The company also stated on Friday that it has disbanded Leike’s Superalignment team, which was formed last year to focus on AI threats, and will integrate the team’s personnel into its research operations.

Leike resigned after OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever announced his departure on Tuesday after nearly a decade with the company. Sutskever was one of four board members who voted to remove Altman last October, only to quickly reinstall him. Sutskever informed Altman that he was fired last November, although he later admitted he regretted doing so.

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A Former OpenAI Leader Says Safety Has ‘Taken A Backseat To Shiny Products’ At The AI Company

Sutskever stated that he is working on a new project that is meaningful to him but did not provide further specifics. He will be succeeded by Jakub Pachocki as head scientist. Altman described Pachocki as “also easily one of the greatest minds of our generation” and stated that he is “very confident he will lead us to make rapid and safe progress towards our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits everyone.”

On Monday, OpenAI demonstrated the most recent version of its artificial intelligence model, which can emulate human cadences in vocal responses and even attempt to discern people’s moods.

SOURCE – (AP)