Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last.
If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group what happens is
1)everyone else thinks they don’t need to worry about ethics
2)the ethics group need to justify their existence so introduce a bunch of guidelines that everyone initially thinks are reasonable but over time people think are increasingly out of touch
3) The ethics group start to “make difficult calls” and say no to things. Initially everyone supports this and feels like the system is working as it should but over time everyone starts to just see them as an obstacle to work around
4)everyone else starts to try to work around what the ethics group says
5)The ethics group grows powerless and disconnected. The people who work around them “get things done” so get promoted etc whereas they only visibly put roadblocks in peoples’ way, so they get sidelined.
6)Eventually they get disbanded with some corporate announcement thanking them for their hard work, thought leadership etc. All that has been achieved is a lot of wasted time and bad blood.
show comments
madrox
In five years, I'd love to read a book about the history of AI ethics. I suspect it will read like Voltaire.
My sense is that it is radically shifting from a fluffy marketing arm to a department expected to contribute meaningfully to development and justify its impact. I would expect an ethics team to build frameworks that can help train/eval the model that the company spend millions of dollars and months training is going to be aligned to the ethical stances the company chooses. If they can't, the waste to time and money is huge if the model requires retraining for ethics reasons. That's a different job than pondering roko's basilisk or whether AI is alive.
The people in AI ethics who spent years thinking their job was marketing or publishing thinkpiece papers may be having to adapt quickly or get out of the field.
show comments
minraws
The rats are fleeing because the captain doesn't care if the ethical ship sinks... Is what my take away would be if I didn't know, that the ship sank a long time ago and we are just pretending anyone really cares.
Let's be honest unless AI gains literal limbs, and the records a video of itself presenting a manifesto about world domination and then kills actual humans with its cold mechanical hands.
We won't care about AI safety & ethics enough, atleast not enough to do anything about it.
People thought how could skynet happen, it had to be something no one saw coming and bam... But honestly if I started a new AI lab named it Skynet Corp and hired some AI researcher friends ex-Google, I think I could raise a few hundred million dollars.
show comments
vintermann
I'm a broken record on this, but I'd like to reiterate:
1. Academic ethics is the theoretical study of what you can get away with. (Law is the applied branch). Professors in ethics are not experts at being good, or knowing what is good, they're experts in how to get away with things. If you want an expert in being good, you need a saint, not an academic studying ethics. Saints are in short supply.
2. That said, ethics academics can still be decent. They don't have to be sanctimonious corporate shills . However, an "ethics expert" who hasn't threatened to quit and gone through with it at least once, should be assumed to be one.
I respect those who quit - or, at least, I respect them more. I wonder if it's more a reflection of the people, or of the state of the industry, that the list of (AI) ethics experts who have quit in protest is getting long.
show comments
Honali
The most interesting detail here isn't that an ethics lead left, but that she was apparently the only dedicated ethicist at the company and there’s no replacement
But she was Meta before so can’t be a question of her principles, so indicates a personal reason
riazrizvi
I guess working on ethics for Meta's social media recommendation and flagging algorithms isn't meeting the moment or need of OpenAI where LLMs are breaking out of sandboxes and there's a pressing question of what is okay for an LLM to conversationally engage in bc lawsuits. Seems to me they need someone with more of a language and AI background.
wxw
> Previously, she was chief ethicist at Meta.
She spent 6 years at Meta. I get the sense there are other factors at play than "ethics departments are just PR stunts". There's no way she isn't already aware of that. Unfortunately, the article is light on any other details.
show comments
jstummbillig
People love stories. The reasons why people leave companies are plentiful, even in normal times and unextraordinary circumstances, and a high profile job in a frontier lab today ticks neither box.
smarm52
Must be tough to do the job when the entire company is aligned against you.
coldtea
OpenAI's "head of ethics"? Does the Serial Killer Guild have such a position too?
abc42
I've thought of AI ethics as trying to answer the question of what kind of life we are creating here. Sort of like if a chicken factory farm employed an ethicist.
p0w3n3d
Marketing and management - the root of 50-80% of evil in the word (or as Christians say: greed - second deadly sin)
jazzpush2
These are the DEI jobs of the modern era. Cost centers with employees that get rich contributing less than nothing to the company, actively harming the researchers, while writing bs/fluff on twitter all day.
magekinnarus
In the end, AI ethics has less to do with AI itself and more to do with people who create and operate AI.
gilfoyle_7
must've been a christian
cmiles8
Head of ethics at Meta then head of Ethics at OpenAI. Sorry, but if that doesn’t scream useless puffy PR positioning then I don’t know what does.
What’s next? Head of ethics for United Healthcare?
show comments
mcfdoesdev
There will be tell-all books on all of the big AI companies in the not-too-distant future.
jms703
There are shareholders to please and money to be made. Of course ethics are out the door.
lrvick
OpenAI had ethics?
encoderer
The most likely conclusion is that she was fired. To quit before your equity cliff things would have to be so terribly bad that you fear you are committing a crime to stay. After 11 months you feel like you’ve already earned that money.
teravor
be realistic, ethics is a PR position.
the only ethics that actually matter come from legal.
jongjong
Wow. How much does this job pay? Google says $550k to $1.3 million.
For that kind of money, my AI paymaster could do no wrong.
Imagine going to work and getting paid $2300+ USD per day to sit on your ass all day thinking about ethics without having to produce any deliverables. This would be a dream job for me.
If anyone questioned my morals, I'd be like; "They're paying me $550k per year" and the other person would be like "Ahhh ok, my bad! Your logic is starting to make sense now!"
ak830
I'm super confused as to why no one is theorizing the obvious...? Given none of us know the inner workings of why she left, why not resort to the most simple and straightforward conclusion: she left because OpenAI needed a scapegoat to blame the HuggingFace incident on. Given she is the chief "ethicist", even if not directly her fault, the HF incident could be directly blamed on her by not steering the implementation of enough safeguards to prevent this from happening. Therefore, she was let go. Why is this not being theorized by anyone on this thread so far?
Someone challenge me.
show comments
yieldcrv
They also completed a tender offer today, so their fake job just made a lot of money and they left
kimjune01
unfortunately, knowing about ethics doesn't compel you to ethical behavior
2PqboPPmKegvanx
the only shocking thing to me is that they still had even a single one.
show comments
not_an_AI
I, for one, am shocked that the head of ethics at an AI company has achieved human-level job tenure.
fidotron
> Before working at OpenAI, she was Meta’s chief ethicist
show comments
jrflowers
I feel like being head of ethics and working for a CEO that keeps talking about inventing a genie would drive a person insane
parpfish
their only ethicist left? gasp!
now they are exactly like every other company that has zero ethicists on staff and expect the employees to weigh the ethical ramifications of their work.
Oh no, if only the world had more ethicists on staff. If only Nazi Germany had someone with a thorough education in ethics on the payroll!
It's performative. She got paid more to shill for a different massive amoral mega-corporation. Don't be stupid.
champagnepapi
No ethics left at OpenAi huh? Lolol
danlitt
> ethical approaches to model development, how humans interact with AI and debate over machine consciousness
So, pseudo-philosophical mumbo jumbo. There is of course no-one responsible for the ethical framework of the company's actions, because it is a company, and therefore amoral at best and immoral at worst.
Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last.
If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group what happens is
1)everyone else thinks they don’t need to worry about ethics
2)the ethics group need to justify their existence so introduce a bunch of guidelines that everyone initially thinks are reasonable but over time people think are increasingly out of touch
3) The ethics group start to “make difficult calls” and say no to things. Initially everyone supports this and feels like the system is working as it should but over time everyone starts to just see them as an obstacle to work around
4)everyone else starts to try to work around what the ethics group says
5)The ethics group grows powerless and disconnected. The people who work around them “get things done” so get promoted etc whereas they only visibly put roadblocks in peoples’ way, so they get sidelined.
6)Eventually they get disbanded with some corporate announcement thanking them for their hard work, thought leadership etc. All that has been achieved is a lot of wasted time and bad blood.
In five years, I'd love to read a book about the history of AI ethics. I suspect it will read like Voltaire.
My sense is that it is radically shifting from a fluffy marketing arm to a department expected to contribute meaningfully to development and justify its impact. I would expect an ethics team to build frameworks that can help train/eval the model that the company spend millions of dollars and months training is going to be aligned to the ethical stances the company chooses. If they can't, the waste to time and money is huge if the model requires retraining for ethics reasons. That's a different job than pondering roko's basilisk or whether AI is alive.
The people in AI ethics who spent years thinking their job was marketing or publishing thinkpiece papers may be having to adapt quickly or get out of the field.
The rats are fleeing because the captain doesn't care if the ethical ship sinks... Is what my take away would be if I didn't know, that the ship sank a long time ago and we are just pretending anyone really cares.
Let's be honest unless AI gains literal limbs, and the records a video of itself presenting a manifesto about world domination and then kills actual humans with its cold mechanical hands.
We won't care about AI safety & ethics enough, atleast not enough to do anything about it.
People thought how could skynet happen, it had to be something no one saw coming and bam... But honestly if I started a new AI lab named it Skynet Corp and hired some AI researcher friends ex-Google, I think I could raise a few hundred million dollars.
I'm a broken record on this, but I'd like to reiterate:
1. Academic ethics is the theoretical study of what you can get away with. (Law is the applied branch). Professors in ethics are not experts at being good, or knowing what is good, they're experts in how to get away with things. If you want an expert in being good, you need a saint, not an academic studying ethics. Saints are in short supply.
2. That said, ethics academics can still be decent. They don't have to be sanctimonious corporate shills . However, an "ethics expert" who hasn't threatened to quit and gone through with it at least once, should be assumed to be one.
I respect those who quit - or, at least, I respect them more. I wonder if it's more a reflection of the people, or of the state of the industry, that the list of (AI) ethics experts who have quit in protest is getting long.
The most interesting detail here isn't that an ethics lead left, but that she was apparently the only dedicated ethicist at the company and there’s no replacement
COO just resigned too. Coincidence?
https://xcancel.com/bradlightcap/status/2087211567012032862
Surprised she left as probably had stock options.
But she was Meta before so can’t be a question of her principles, so indicates a personal reason
I guess working on ethics for Meta's social media recommendation and flagging algorithms isn't meeting the moment or need of OpenAI where LLMs are breaking out of sandboxes and there's a pressing question of what is okay for an LLM to conversationally engage in bc lawsuits. Seems to me they need someone with more of a language and AI background.
> Previously, she was chief ethicist at Meta.
She spent 6 years at Meta. I get the sense there are other factors at play than "ethics departments are just PR stunts". There's no way she isn't already aware of that. Unfortunately, the article is light on any other details.
People love stories. The reasons why people leave companies are plentiful, even in normal times and unextraordinary circumstances, and a high profile job in a frontier lab today ticks neither box.
Must be tough to do the job when the entire company is aligned against you.
OpenAI's "head of ethics"? Does the Serial Killer Guild have such a position too?
I've thought of AI ethics as trying to answer the question of what kind of life we are creating here. Sort of like if a chicken factory farm employed an ethicist.
Marketing and management - the root of 50-80% of evil in the word (or as Christians say: greed - second deadly sin)
These are the DEI jobs of the modern era. Cost centers with employees that get rich contributing less than nothing to the company, actively harming the researchers, while writing bs/fluff on twitter all day.
In the end, AI ethics has less to do with AI itself and more to do with people who create and operate AI.
must've been a christian
Head of ethics at Meta then head of Ethics at OpenAI. Sorry, but if that doesn’t scream useless puffy PR positioning then I don’t know what does.
What’s next? Head of ethics for United Healthcare?
There will be tell-all books on all of the big AI companies in the not-too-distant future.
There are shareholders to please and money to be made. Of course ethics are out the door.
OpenAI had ethics?
The most likely conclusion is that she was fired. To quit before your equity cliff things would have to be so terribly bad that you fear you are committing a crime to stay. After 11 months you feel like you’ve already earned that money.
be realistic, ethics is a PR position.
the only ethics that actually matter come from legal.
Wow. How much does this job pay? Google says $550k to $1.3 million.
For that kind of money, my AI paymaster could do no wrong.
Imagine going to work and getting paid $2300+ USD per day to sit on your ass all day thinking about ethics without having to produce any deliverables. This would be a dream job for me.
If anyone questioned my morals, I'd be like; "They're paying me $550k per year" and the other person would be like "Ahhh ok, my bad! Your logic is starting to make sense now!"
I'm super confused as to why no one is theorizing the obvious...? Given none of us know the inner workings of why she left, why not resort to the most simple and straightforward conclusion: she left because OpenAI needed a scapegoat to blame the HuggingFace incident on. Given she is the chief "ethicist", even if not directly her fault, the HF incident could be directly blamed on her by not steering the implementation of enough safeguards to prevent this from happening. Therefore, she was let go. Why is this not being theorized by anyone on this thread so far?
Someone challenge me.
They also completed a tender offer today, so their fake job just made a lot of money and they left
unfortunately, knowing about ethics doesn't compel you to ethical behavior
the only shocking thing to me is that they still had even a single one.
I, for one, am shocked that the head of ethics at an AI company has achieved human-level job tenure.
> Before working at OpenAI, she was Meta’s chief ethicist
I feel like being head of ethics and working for a CEO that keeps talking about inventing a genie would drive a person insane
their only ethicist left? gasp!
now they are exactly like every other company that has zero ethicists on staff and expect the employees to weigh the ethical ramifications of their work.
Yet another event to add to https://www.openaifiles.org/
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
Oh no, if only the world had more ethicists on staff. If only Nazi Germany had someone with a thorough education in ethics on the payroll!
It's performative. She got paid more to shill for a different massive amoral mega-corporation. Don't be stupid.
No ethics left at OpenAi huh? Lolol
> ethical approaches to model development, how humans interact with AI and debate over machine consciousness
So, pseudo-philosophical mumbo jumbo. There is of course no-one responsible for the ethical framework of the company's actions, because it is a company, and therefore amoral at best and immoral at worst.
1786456998 | Why Did OpenAI's Head of Ethics Chlo Bakalar Leave? | https://aimagazine.com/news/why-did-openai-head-of-ethics-ch... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49258581