On Tuesday, 13 former OpenAI employees disclosed in an open letter that AI firms have reportedly retaliated against people who raised safety concerns.
The ex-workers have warned that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) companies like OpenAI have suppressed criticism and control, and concerns about technology safety have surged in the past few months.
Furthermore, the open letter penned by these former employees and endorsed by Geoffrey Hinton, also known as the Godfather of AI, noted that with the lack of government supervision, tech firms should uphold constructive criticism laws.
These principles include avoiding and enforcing contempt clauses, facilitating evident anonymous proceedings to report issues, authorizing current and former employees to disclose discrepancies to the public, and not retaliating against them.
Although the whistleblowers understand AI’s potential, they also perceive its threats, such as entrenchment of inequalities, manipulation and disinformation, and possible human extinction.
While there are crucial problems with a machine takeover, current gen-AI has sensible concerns, like copyright infringement, recklessly sharing problematic and illegal photos, and worries about imitating people’s likenesses and deceiving the general public.
Whistleblower Protections Lack Says Ex-OpenAI Employees
According to the letter, the signees claimed whistleblower protections were lacking because regulators focused on illegal acts instead of mostly unsupervised concerns.
The US Department of Labor said that whistleblower protection laws safeguard employees who report violations of wages, prejudice, safety, deception, and withholding of time off. This means that employers are not able to fire, dismiss, reduce hours, or demote whistleblowers.
Additionally, they said that some are reasonably alarmed by several forms of retaliation, given the history of such lawsuits across the industry. They added that they were not the first to stand up for these problems.
Meanwhile, AI firms, especially OpenAI, have been condemned for inadequate safety unsupervised. While Google has defended its utilization of AI Overviews in Search, other users claimed it gave people dangerous, though hilarious, results.
