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Posted by ilamont 1 day ago

OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining(www.ft.com)
https://archive.ph/W48UV

https://aimagazine.com/news/why-did-openai-head-of-ethics-ch...

461 points | 438 commentspage 4
gilfoyle_7 3 hours ago|
must've been a christian
andai 19 hours ago||
Is ethics the same thing as alignment in this case?
salawat 17 hours ago|
Yes. Ethics in the context of a societal construct like a corporation is directly analogous to alignment AI-wise. The fact specialists on societal alignment are leaving ship is a strong signal the corporate machine has crossed the line into unaligned conduct.
KptMarchewa 22 hours ago||
[flagged]
ackbar03 21 hours ago||
How do I get on this gravy train
embedding-shape 20 hours ago|||
First, you need to want to make A LOT OF MONEY. Secondly, you need to throw anything you know about morals and ethics, and if you have compassion/empathy for others, you need to leave that somewhere too.

Once these things are taken care of, there are so many opportunities to make so much money. If you're in the US, look at what the current US politicians and the administration is doing, and basically copy them. Right now in the US is the era for shameless greedy people, and it is extremely easy to make money from the gullible population. But again, requires the whole "shameless" part.

hdhdhsjsbdh 20 hours ago||||
“Careless People” lays it out pretty well – you either need to make the right friends in college at an Ivy League or you need to be friends with someone else who did. If you made the mistake of not being born into a family that groomed you since birth for the ivy leagues then sorry, that ship has sailed already.
throwitaway222 20 hours ago||
And then if you didn't make that mistake, you end up as either:

a) champaign socialist

b) head of ethics at OpenAI and not really listened to because you're really probably (a)

RajT88 17 hours ago||
> champaign socialist

I feel like this is a complaint heard mostly in Decatur, IL.

aprilthird2021 20 hours ago|||
You need to actually do some NGO / oversight / ethics work that matters for a while, then you're the perfect candidate for these kinds of roles where you'll be able to do a lot but ultimately not be able to change anyone's already made up opinions within the company. These big companies have other roles than just head of ethics, even sometimes Civil Rights officers, etc. They make a lot but don't get to do anything and a lot of times they just use these jobs to make some money then jump back to non-profits, etc.
baggachipz 21 hours ago||
Imagine how bad it must be when you go from Meta to OpenAI and nope out of the latter.
encoderer 16 hours ago||
The most likely conclusion is that she was fired. To quit before your equity cliff things would have to be so terribly bad that you fear you are committing a crime to stay. After 11 months you feel like you’ve already earned that money.
teravor 17 hours ago||
be realistic, ethics is a PR position.

the only ethics that actually matter come from legal.

thataccount 22 hours ago||
Just a guess, but probably the idea that AI and ethics don't mix might have crystallized into action?
insanitybit 21 hours ago||
I've never worked at a company with an "ethics" employee. It seems odd. Can someone explain what the point is?

> She has held a variety of academic positions at Temple University, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania – where she completed her PhD in Political Science and Government. Her Dissertation was titled “Small Talk: The Socialities of Speech in Liberal Democratic Life.”

This doesn't even feel relevant to ethics. It's adjacent, but like... I guess I'd expect a moral philosophy degree? Maybe even mathematics in there?

I find the position odd. Curious to hear what these people do and how you choose who to hire.

tollenda 13 hours ago||
Bakalar got in on the ground floor of AI ethics by starting to talk and think about it in academic settings as a side-interest in the late 2010s. When the sector took off like a rocket in early 2023 after ChatGPT, it was these already-engaged people (regardless of degree field or technical skill) who had the personal and professional connections to get hired and promoted rapidly into lucrative "ethicist" positions at AI companies. A lot of them were poli-sci/public policy types, rather than philosophers or computer scientists.
georgemcbay 20 hours ago|||
> I've never worked at a company with an "ethics" employee. It seems odd. Can someone explain what the point is?

An ethics department is like a human resources department, but for broader ethics related matters.

HR: Ostensibly exists to support the employees, but really exists to shield the company from both a PR and legal liability standpoint when the company has a rift with one or more employees.

Ethics Department: Ostensibly exists to make sure the company acts ethically, but really exists to shield the company from both a PR and legal liability standpoint when the company acts unethically.

It is a good personal signal that you have never worked for a company with an ethics department or an ethics employee. The less ethical your company the more likely it is to have an ethics department.

dickiedyce 15 hours ago||
I’ve always thought of both as the departmental equivalent of “cleanup crew to aisle nine“
tonetheman 21 hours ago||
[dead]
cco 19 hours ago||
Probably because they are now, after the most recent tender, post-economic.
ak830 17 hours ago||
I'm super confused as to why no one is theorizing the obvious...? Given none of us know the inner workings of why she left, why not resort to the most simple and straightforward conclusion: she left because OpenAI needed a scapegoat to blame the HuggingFace incident on. Given she is the chief "ethicist", even if not directly her fault, the HF incident could be directly blamed on her by not steering the implementation of enough safeguards to prevent this from happening. Therefore, she was let go. Why is this not being theorized by anyone on this thread so far?

Someone challenge me.

datakan 17 hours ago||
You don't fire an ethicist for that. You fire an engineer or your CISO. Firing an ethicist is like firing a marketing person. It signals nothing to anyone.
ak830 17 hours ago|||
CISO is a fair pushback. But I would challenge you on "firing an ethicist is like firing a marketing person". This HF issue clearly brings to light possible ethical issues with how these models are being trained ...
lrvick 16 hours ago|||
It signals they no longer feel the need to pretend to have ethics.
smcg 17 hours ago|||
I still think that the whole HuggingFace thing was deliberate to signal to investors that their technology is powerful. Maybe she didn't want to be the face of that, or disagreed with their handling of it.
MaxikCZ 17 hours ago|||
My bet is that all those companies suddenly seeing their AI going rouge is groundworks for classifying them as dangerous/weapons and using that stick to attack opensource from state side of things.
reducesuffering 16 hours ago|||
Or maybe, just maybe, there's another reason that CIA Director John Ratcliffe describes AGI as "akin to digital nuclear weapons." Unless of course you think the CIA is a branch of OpenAI's marketing department
sgustard 16 hours ago|||
What's "obvious" is she was chief ethicist at the most unethical companies on the planet - it's like being a lawyer for the mafia - doesn't inspire longevity, either via scapegoating or preservation of one's own sanity.
throwaway324098 16 hours ago|||
"The most unethical companies on the planet" - if you believe this maybe its time to log off for a bit.
financetechbro 15 hours ago||
You made an account just to post this comment. And then you provided no evidence to back your counterclaim that OAI is in fact ethical (or more ethical than the most unethical companies in the planet)
throwaway324098 15 hours ago||
The myriad of companies that supported the nazi government - Volkswagen, duetsche bank, Siemens, Hugo boss, UBS. Phillip Morris, Purdue Pharma, Exxon, Nestle, Chiquita (formerly united fruit)
salawat 10 hours ago||
We all know. The fact AI companies are finding themselves in such infamous company in so short a time should be a signal.
nick__m 15 hours ago||||
I am pretty certain that Nestlé ranks well above openai on the most unethical companies on the planet rankings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_of_Nestl%C3%A9

ak830 16 hours ago|||
lmao i completely agree
keeda 16 hours ago|||
In the wake of a security incident, the executive that is typically scapegoated is the CISO.

However, with all things AI, this is a very weird situation because CISOs are let go when an organization is breached by external attackers; in this case internal attackers -- which were not human, let alone employees -- inadvertently breached other organizations. I don't think the normal conventions apply anymore.

volleygman180 17 hours ago|||
Theorizing the obvious? Wouldn’t that simply be that she job-hopped to a better job?

It’s easy to theorize ad infinitum otherwise

ak830 17 hours ago||
What do you mean? She didn't job hop to a better job, that's the whole point. She very well could have gotten "let go".
stronglikedan 16 hours ago||
eh, 50/50 chance of either, really
rurban 15 hours ago|||
You cannot blame ethics on the HF escape, because this model had no safeguards. It was just trained on unethical (and stolen) sources. So this cannot be the reason to blame missing ethics. The models needed to solve a problem, and they did. By cheating.
freehorse 16 hours ago|||
Scapegoat for what? They did not even apologize for that incident. They treated it purely as a chance for publicity. It cannot be a scapegoat if nobody even mentions it.
ak830 17 hours ago|||
Furthermore, this theory is not mutually exclusive with the incident being a publicity stunt to signal model strength to existing and prospective investors (especially in light of all attention being given to Anthropic Claude Mythos). It could STILL have been a publicity stunt unbeknownst to Chloe (Chief Ethicist), positioned to the public as a serious security breach, and she took the fall.
Melatonic 15 hours ago||
Or something to do with the very large Apple lawsuit they are weirdly posting conversations about on their public website
jongjong 5 hours ago|
Wow. How much does this job pay? Google says $550k to $1.3 million.

For that kind of money, my AI paymaster could do no wrong.

Imagine going to work and getting paid $2300+ USD per day to sit on your ass all day thinking about ethics without having to produce any deliverables. This would be a dream job for me.

If anyone questioned my morals, I'd be like; "They're paying me $550k per year" and the other person would be like "Ahhh ok, my bad! Your logic is starting to make sense now!"

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