The Difficult Path to AI’s Promise
Pertinent to this week’s focus, I just came across the following article in the MIT Technology Review: The Messy Reality of OpenAI From an ETEC522 perspective it is a very worthwhile read. It is simultaneously an analysis of a single well-funded venture and of the entire frontier of AI: is it possible for AI’s general […]
13 Mar
1) Hummm… OpenAI’s “primary fiduciary duty is to humanity.” The company wants humans continue to live meaningful live and it plans on “distributing the benefits” of AGI to “all of humanity,” Who is saying that? Who wrote OpenAI’s charter? Greg Brockman, who had run technology for the payments company Stripe. What strikes me is that the leadership of the organization does not match my expectation of who should be leading a social enterprise with such a noble vision. I just know that Brockman grew up on a hobby farm, went to Harvard and MIT. But were are the artefacts from his life showing a deep commitment to social justice? I remember reading the biography of Leila Jana, CEO of Samasource, another social enterprise. She explained that she grew up poor, saw her parents constantly struggle, had a transformative experience while teaching blind students in Uganda, she studied African development etc…overall there was a clear sense that this person was genuinely committed to work for social justice. But with OpenAi, I think some kind of credible leadership might be missing. 2) From my perspective, their mission is flawed from the outset: “Researchers will be strongly encouraged to publish their work, whether as papers, blog posts, or code, and our patents (if any) will be shared with the world.” The thing is, if they share everything, the “bad guys” (those with somber motives) can build upon OpenAi work to accelerate their own dark agenda.
