This is a special post for quick takes by Stephanie Zolayvar. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Stephanie Zolayvar's Shortform
15Stephanie Zolayvar
101a3orn
2Amalthea
Recent OpenAI events have broken my sense of hope, and it's not that I would have said board seats mattered. It's something about how the company seems collectively effective while also being collectively sociopathic. Like I would have expected spiritual reflectivity of individuals to prevent such a large company from being as collectively competent as it seems to be at doing something so harmful.
3Many people in OpenAI truly believe they're doing the right thing, and did so two weeks ago.
According to almost all accounts, the board did not give the people working at OpenAI any new evidence that they were doing something bad! They just tried to dictate to them without any explanation, and employees responded as humans are apt to do when someone tries to dictate to them without explanation, whether they were right or wrong.
Which is to say -- I don't think we've really gotten any evidence about the people are being collectively sociopathic there.
I completely understand that sentiment and am myself concerned about the social dynamics we could witness there.
Nevertheless, I think it is unclear how much these events matter in the end. Personally, I updated a bit towards people at OpenAI not really knowing what they're doing, which is good to know if true.