{"id":1939,"date":"2024-06-18T09:42:47","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T17:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/?p=1939"},"modified":"2024-06-18T09:42:47","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T17:42:47","slug":"boycott-openai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/06\/18\/boycott-openai\/","title":{"rendered":"Boycott OpenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I have canceled my OpenAI subscription in protest over OpenAI&#8217;s lack of ethics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In particular, I object to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>threats to confiscate departing employees&#8217; equity unless those employees signed a life-long non-disparagement contract<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sam Altman&#8217;s pattern of lying about important topics<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m trying to hold AI companies to higher standards than I use for typical companies, due to the risk that AI companies will exert unusual power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A boycott of OpenAI subscriptions seems unlikely to gain enough attention to meaningfully influence OpenAI. Where I hope to make a difference is by discouraging competent researchers from joining OpenAI unless they clearly reform (e.g. by firing Altman). A few good researchers choosing not to work at OpenAI could make the difference between OpenAI being the leader in AI 5 years from now versus being, say, a distant 3rd place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A year ago, I thought that OpenAI equity would be a great investment, but that I had no hope of buying any. But the value of equity is heavily dependent on trust that a company will treat equity holders fairly. The legal system helps somewhat with that, but it can be expensive to rely on the legal system. OpenAI&#8217;s equity is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lesswrong.com\/posts\/q3zs7E7rktHsESXaF\/openai-8-the-right-to-warn#Possession_is_Nine_Tenths_of_the_Law\">nonstandard<\/a> in ways that should create some unusual uncertainty. Potential employees ought to question whether there&#8217;s much connection between OpenAI&#8217;s future profits and what equity holders will get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How does OpenAI&#8217;s behavior compare to other leading AI companies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m unsure whether Elon Musk&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/x.ai\/\">xAI<\/a> deserves a boycott, partly because I&#8217;m unsure whether it&#8217;s a serious company. Musk has a history of <a href=\"https:\/\/corpgov.law.harvard.edu\/2022\/07\/14\/twitter-vs-musk-the-complaint\/\">breaking<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.courthousenews.com\/judge-rules-that-twitter-violated-contract-when-it-withheld-millions-of-dollars-in-bonuses\/\">contracts<\/a> that bears some similarity to OpenAI&#8217;s attitude. Musk also bears some responsibility for SpaceX <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/spacex-forced-workers-sign-illegal-severance-agreements-us-agency-claims-2024-03-21\/\">requiring non-disparagement agreements<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Google has shown <a href=\"https:\/\/www.natesilver.net\/p\/google-abandoned-dont-be-evil-and\">some signs of being evil<\/a>. As far as I can tell, DeepMind has been relatively ethical. I&#8217;ve heard clear praise of Demis Hassabis&#8217;s character from Aubrey de Grey, who knew Hassabis back in the 1990s. Probably parts of Google ought to be boycotted, but I encourage good researchers to work at DeepMind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anthropic seems to be a good deal more ethical than OpenAI. I feel comfortable paying them for a subscription to Claude Opus. My evidence concerning their ethics is too weak to say more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>P.S. Some of the better sources to start with for evidence against Sam Altman \/ OpenAI:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lesswrong.com\/posts\/YwhgHwjaBDmjgswqZ\/openai-fallout\">a lengthy Zvi post<\/a> about one week&#8217;s worth of evidence<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zdbVtZIn9IM&amp;t=9084s\">Leopold Aschenbrenner<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/geoffreyirving\/status\/1726754277618491416\">Geoffrey Irving<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>But if you&#8217;re thinking of working at OpenAI, please look at more than just those sources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have canceled my OpenAI subscription in protest over OpenAI&#8217;s lack of ethics. In particular, I object to: I&#8217;m trying to hold AI companies to higher standards than I use for typical companies, due to the risk that AI companies will exert unusual power. A boycott of OpenAI subscriptions seems unlikely to gain enough attention [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[26,3],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-1939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-politics","tag-risks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p80O1l-vh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1941,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions\/1941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}