Former OpenAI Engineer William Saunders on Silence, Safety, and the Right to Warn

This week, a group of current and former employees from OpenAI
and Google DeepMind penned an open letter accusing the industry’s
leading companies of prioritizing profits over safety. This comes
after a spate of high profile departures from OpenAI, including
co-founder Ilya Sutskever and senior researcher Jan Leike, as
well as reports that OpenAI has gone to great lengths to silence
would-be whistleblowers. 


The writers of the open letter argue that researchers have a
“right to warn” the public about AI risks and laid out a series
of principles that would protect that right. In this episode, we
sit down with one of those writers: William Saunders, who left
his job as a research engineer at OpenAI in February. William is
now breaking the silence on what he saw at OpenAI that compelled
him to leave the company and to put his name to this
letter. 


RECOMMENDED MEDIA 


The Right to Warn Open Letter


My Perspective On "A Right to Warn about Advanced Artificial
Intelligence": A follow-up from William about the letter


Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former
employees: An investigation by Vox into OpenAI’s policy of
non-disparagement.


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