Departing OpenAI leader says no company is ready for AGI

Oct 25, 2024 02:31 AM - 4 months ago 182013

Miles Brundage, OpenAI’s elder advisor for the readiness of AGI (aka human-level artificial intelligence), delivered a stark informing arsenic he announced his departure connected Wednesday: nary 1 is prepared for artificial wide intelligence, including OpenAI itself.

“Neither OpenAI nor immoderate different frontier laboratory is fresh [for AGI], and the world is besides not ready,” wrote Brundage, who spent six years helping to style the company’s AI information initiatives. “To beryllium clear, I don’t deliberation this is simply a arguable connection among OpenAI’s leadership, and notably, that’s a different mobility from whether the institution and the world are on way to beryllium fresh astatine the applicable time.”

His exit marks the latest successful a bid of high-profile departures from OpenAI’s information teams. Jan Leike, a salient researcher, left aft claiming that “safety civilization and processes person taken a backseat to shiny products.” Cofounder Ilya Sutskever besides departed to motorboat his ain AI startup focused connected safe AGI development.

The dissolution of Brundage’s “AGI Readiness” team, coming conscionable months aft the institution disbanded its “Superalignment” team dedicated to semipermanent AI consequence mitigation, highlights mounting tensions betwixt OpenAI’s original ngo and its commercialized ambitions. The institution reportedly faces pressure to modulation from a nonprofit to a for-profit nationalist use corp wrong 2 years — aliases consequence returning costs from its caller $6.6 cardinal finance round. This displacement toward commercialization has agelong concerned Brundage, who expressed reservations backmost successful 2019 when OpenAI first established its for-profit division.

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In explaining his departure, Brundage cited expanding constraints connected his investigation and publication state astatine the high-profile company. He emphasized the request for independent voices successful AI argumentation discussions, free from manufacture biases and conflicts of interest. Having advised OpenAI’s activity connected soul preparedness, he believes he tin now make a greater effect connected world AI governance from extracurricular of the organization.

This departure whitethorn besides bespeak a deeper taste disagreement wrong OpenAI. Many researchers joined to beforehand AI research and now find themselves successful an progressively product-driven environment. Internal assets allocation has go a flashpoint — reports indicate that Leike’s squad was denied computing powerfulness for information investigation earlier its eventual dissolution.

Despite these frictions, Brundage noted that OpenAI has offered to support his early activity pinch funding, API credits, and early exemplary access, pinch nary strings attached.

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