Sam Altman May Control Our Future – Can He Be Trusted?

The New Yorker [no paywall]  – New interviews and closely guarded documents shed light on the persistent doubts about the head of OpenAI. “…Many technology companies issue vague proclamations about improving the world, then go about maximizing revenue. But the founding premise of OpenAI was that it would have to be different. The founders, who included Altman, Sutskever, Brockman, and Elon Musk, asserted that artificial intelligence could be the most powerful, and potentially dangerous, invention in human history, and that perhaps, given the existential risk, an unusual corporate structure would be required. The firm was established as a nonprofit, whose board had a duty to prioritize the safety of humanity over the company’s success, or even its survival. The C.E.O. had to be a person of uncommon integrity. According to Sutskever, “any person working to build this civilization-altering technology bears a heavy burden and is taking on unprecedented responsibility.” But “the people who end up in these kinds of positions are often a certain kind of person, someone who is interested in power, a politician, someone who likes it.” In one of the memos, he seemed concerned with entrusting the technology to someone who “just tells people what they want to hear.” If OpenAI’s C.E.O. turned out not to be reliable, the board, which had six members, was empowered to fire him. Some members, including Helen Toner, an A.I.-policy expert, and Tasha McCauley, an entrepreneur, received the memos as a confirmation of what they had already come to believe: Altman’s role entrusted him with the future of humanity, but he could not be trusted..”