I think people are too quick to side with the whistleblower in the “whistleblower in the AI lab” situation.
If 100 employees of a frontier lab (e.g. OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic) think that something should be secret, and 1 employee thinks it should be leaked to a journalist or government agency, and these are the only facts I know, I think I’d side with the majority.
I think in most cases that match this description, this majority would be correct.
I broadly agree on this. I think, for example, that whistleblowing for AI copyright stuff, especially given the lack of clear legal guidance here, unless we are really talking about quite straightforward lies, is bad.
I think when it comes to matters like AI catastrophic risks, latest capabilities, and other things of enormous importance from the perspective of basically any moral framework, whistleblowing becomes quite important.
I also think of whistleblowing as a stage in an iterative game. OpenAI pressured employees to sign secret non-disparagement agreements using illegal forms of pressure and quite deceptive social tactics. It would have been better for there to be trustworthy channels of information out of the AI labs that the AI labs have buy-in for, but now that we now that OpenAI (and other labs as well) have tried pretty hard to suppress information that other people did have a right to know, I think more whistleblowing is a natural next step.
if one is whistleblowing, maybe there are others who also think the thing should be known, but don’t whistleblow (e.g. because of psychological and social pressures against this, speaking up being hard for many people)
most/all of the 100 could have been selected to have a certain belief (e.g. “contributing to AGI is good”)
I think people are too quick to side with the whistleblower in the “whistleblower in the AI lab” situation.
If 100 employees of a frontier lab (e.g. OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic) think that something should be secret, and 1 employee thinks it should be leaked to a journalist or government agency, and these are the only facts I know, I think I’d side with the majority.
I think in most cases that match this description, this majority would be correct.
Am I wrong about this?
I broadly agree on this. I think, for example, that whistleblowing for AI copyright stuff, especially given the lack of clear legal guidance here, unless we are really talking about quite straightforward lies, is bad.
I think when it comes to matters like AI catastrophic risks, latest capabilities, and other things of enormous importance from the perspective of basically any moral framework, whistleblowing becomes quite important.
I also think of whistleblowing as a stage in an iterative game. OpenAI pressured employees to sign secret non-disparagement agreements using illegal forms of pressure and quite deceptive social tactics. It would have been better for there to be trustworthy channels of information out of the AI labs that the AI labs have buy-in for, but now that we now that OpenAI (and other labs as well) have tried pretty hard to suppress information that other people did have a right to know, I think more whistleblowing is a natural next step.
some considerations which come to mind:
if one is whistleblowing, maybe there are others who also think the thing should be known, but don’t whistleblow (e.g. because of psychological and social pressures against this, speaking up being hard for many people)
most/all of the 100 could have been selected to have a certain belief (e.g. “contributing to AGI is good”)