Suppose you’re an engineer at SpaceX. You’ve always loved rockets, and Elon Musk seems like the guy who’s getting them built. You go to work on Saturdays, you sometimes spend ten hours at the office, you watch the rockets take off and you watch the rockets land intact and that makes everything worth it.
Now imagine that Musk gets in trouble with the government. Let’s say the Securities and Exchange Commission charges him with fraud again, and this time they’re *really* going after him, not just letting him go with a slap on the wrist like the first time. SpaceX’s board of directors negotiates with SEC prosecutors. When they emerge they fire Musk from SpaceX, and remove Elon and Kimbal Musk from the board. They appoint Gwynne Shotwell as the new CEO.
You’re pretty worried! You like Shotwell, sure, but Musk’s charisma and his intangible magic have been very important to the company’s success so far. You’re not sure what will happen to the company without him. Will you still be making revolutionary new rockets in five years, or will the company regress to the mean like Boeing? You talk to some colleagues, and they’re afraid and angry. No one knows what’s happening. Alice says that the company would be nothing without Musk and rails at the board for betraying him. Bob says the government has been going after Musk on trumped-up charges for a while, and now they finally got him. Rumor has it that Musk is planning to start a new rocket company.
Then Shotwell resigns in protest. She signs an open letter calling for Musk’s reinstatement and the resignation of the board. Board member Luke Nosek signs it too, and says his earlier vote to fire Musk was a huge mistake.
You get a Slack message from Alice saying that she’s signed the letter because she has faith in Musk and wants to work at his company, whichever company that is, in order to make humanity a multiplanetary species. She asks if you want to sign.
Thank you for this comment, this was basically my view as well. I think the employees of OpenAI are simply excited about AGI, have committed their lives working long hours to make it a reality and believe AGI would be good for humanity and also good for them personally. My view is that they are very emotionally invested in building AGI and stopping all that progress for reasons that feel speculative, theoretical and not very tangible feels painful.
Not that I would agree with that, assuming this is correct.
>Now imagine that Musk gets in trouble with the government
Now image the same scenario but Elon has not gotten in trouble with the government and multiple people (including those who fired him) have affirmed he did nothing wrong.
Suppose you’re an engineer at SpaceX. You’ve always loved rockets, and Elon Musk seems like the guy who’s getting them built. You go to work on Saturdays, you sometimes spend ten hours at the office, you watch the rockets take off and you watch the rockets land intact and that makes everything worth it.
Now imagine that Musk gets in trouble with the government. Let’s say the Securities and Exchange Commission charges him with fraud again, and this time they’re *really* going after him, not just letting him go with a slap on the wrist like the first time. SpaceX’s board of directors negotiates with SEC prosecutors. When they emerge they fire Musk from SpaceX, and remove Elon and Kimbal Musk from the board. They appoint Gwynne Shotwell as the new CEO.
You’re pretty worried! You like Shotwell, sure, but Musk’s charisma and his intangible magic have been very important to the company’s success so far. You’re not sure what will happen to the company without him. Will you still be making revolutionary new rockets in five years, or will the company regress to the mean like Boeing? You talk to some colleagues, and they’re afraid and angry. No one knows what’s happening. Alice says that the company would be nothing without Musk and rails at the board for betraying him. Bob says the government has been going after Musk on trumped-up charges for a while, and now they finally got him. Rumor has it that Musk is planning to start a new rocket company.
Then Shotwell resigns in protest. She signs an open letter calling for Musk’s reinstatement and the resignation of the board. Board member Luke Nosek signs it too, and says his earlier vote to fire Musk was a huge mistake.
You get a Slack message from Alice saying that she’s signed the letter because she has faith in Musk and wants to work at his company, whichever company that is, in order to make humanity a multiplanetary species. She asks if you want to sign.
How do you feel?
Replying to David Hornbein.
Thank you for this comment, this was basically my view as well. I think the employees of OpenAI are simply excited about AGI, have committed their lives working long hours to make it a reality and believe AGI would be good for humanity and also good for them personally. My view is that they are very emotionally invested in building AGI and stopping all that progress for reasons that feel speculative, theoretical and not very tangible feels painful.
Not that I would agree with that, assuming this is correct.
>Now imagine that Musk gets in trouble with the government
Now image the same scenario but Elon has not gotten in trouble with the government and multiple people (including those who fired him) have affirmed he did nothing wrong.