For OpenAI to scale more toward “AGI”, the corporation needs more data, more automatable work, more profitable uses for working machines, and more hardware to run those machines.
If you look at how OpenAI has been increasing those four variables, you can notice that there are harms associated with each. This tends to result in increasing harms.
One obvious example: if they increase hardware, this also increases pollution (from mining, producing, installing, and running the hardware).
Note that the above is not a claim that the harms outweigh the benefits. But if OpenAI & co continue down their current trajectory, I expect that most communities would look back and say that the harms to what they care about in their lives were not worth it.
I wrote a guide to broader AI harms meant to emotionally resonate for laypeople here.
Appreciating your inquisitive question!
One way to think about it:
For OpenAI to scale more toward “AGI”, the corporation needs more data, more automatable work, more profitable uses for working machines, and more hardware to run those machines.
If you look at how OpenAI has been increasing those four variables, you can notice that there are harms associated with each. This tends to result in increasing harms.
One obvious example: if they increase hardware, this also increases pollution (from mining, producing, installing, and running the hardware).
Note that the above is not a claim that the harms outweigh the benefits. But if OpenAI & co continue down their current trajectory, I expect that most communities would look back and say that the harms to what they care about in their lives were not worth it.
I wrote a guide to broader AI harms meant to emotionally resonate for laypeople here.