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. 

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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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Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

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