TECH NEWS – The man didn’t get the computing power he needed for his research, but because OpenAI focuses on “shiny” products, he says the company isn’t focusing on what it should be.

In three days, two senior people have left OpenAI, which is worrying because it is one of the most important companies for the development of artificial intelligence. This time it was Jan Leike, OpenAI’s head of alignment, who quit his job at the company known for ChatGPT. Alignment is a critical process in which human values are encoded into a large language model (LLM), allowing the LLM to follow defined policies and guidelines. The entire alignment team has reportedly been disbanded.

To all OpenAI employees, I want to say:

Learn to feel the AGI.

Act with the gravitas appropriate for what you're building.

I believe you can "ship" the cultural change that's needed.

I am counting on you.

The world is counting on you.

:openai-heart:

— Jan Leike (@janleike) May 17, 2024

Leike said of his time at the nonprofit that OpenAI is not properly allocating its resources to ensure the security of the LLMs and its somewhat adversarial robustness. He believes the company is not addressing the broader societal implications of building smarter-than-human machines, and also sees it as a problem that security culture and processes have become secondary to the “fancy-schmancy” products: “For the past few months, my team has been sailing against the wind. At times, we have struggled for computing resources, and it has become increasingly difficult to do this important research,” Leike said.

Before Leike, OpenAI’s chief scientist Ilya Sutskever left the company. He announced his departure on May 14 to pursue a “personally meaningful” project. He was instrumental in the November revolt against company CEO Sam Altman. He was fired by the board for pushing AI development without proper safeguards, prompting mass resignations, but was reinstated when he successfully forced the resignation of the board members who supported the coup.

So OpenAI is in the news twice in six months for negative events, and who knows if there will be more departures from the company…

Source: WCCFTech