'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
