Artificial intelligence

'This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.

The Guardian  - Donald Trump is a “corrupt, senile felon” whose fixation on the term superintelligence proves he knows nothing about AI, said Geoffrey Hinton, “godfather” of the technology, in a wide-ranging interview where he doubled down on recent warnings that AI models pose an existential threat to humanity and scoffed at claims the industry could regulate itself.

The pioneering computer scientist, whose work helped lay the foundations of modern AI, has since become one of the technology’s most vocal critics. His latest remarks come after a tumultuous month during which a growing list of senior AI scientists and researchers have joined Hinton in ringing the alarm about how the technology he helped create could ultimately escape human control, sparking an industry crisis, the hasty assembly of congressional meetings and a rare global consensus that something must be done.

NY Times  -  Below is an edited transcript of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts. Last week, news broke that David Robinson, who had been leading safety transparency efforts at OpenAI, had quit his job at the company because he believes its technology is not safe.

Robinson is an interesting figure. He didn’t come out of the Silicon Valley Bay Area hothouse — he’s more of a recognizable Washington, D.C., figure. He’s a Rhodes scholar. He formed a civil rights nonprofit. He got a law degree at Yale. He worked in policy. He advised the Biden White House. He was interested in the intersection of technology and justice.

When he joined OpenAI, he thought this whole set of worries about safety risk and extinction was kind of nuts. But three years later, he’s not so sure. What he is sure about is that OpenAI does not have the culture of safety necessary to protect the world from what it is building. And it’s not just OpenAI — he thinks this is a problem endemic to the A.I. industry. The interview