Accordingly, I think there’s a tendency to give OpenAI an unfair amount of flak compared to say, Google Brain or FAIR or any of the startups like Adept or Cohere.
I’m not sure I agree that this is unfair.
OpenAI is clearly on the cutting edge of AI research.
This is obviously a good reason to focus on them more.
OpenAI has a lot of visibility in this community, due to its physical proximity and a heavy overlap between OpenAI employees and the EA/Rationalist social scene.
Perhaps we have responsibility to scrutinize/criticize them more because of this, due to comparative advantage (who else can do it easier/better than we can), and because they’re arguably deriving some warm fuzzy glow from this association? (Consider FTX as an analogy.)
OpenAI is publicly talking about alignment; other orgs don’t even acknowledge it, this makes it a heretic rather than an infidel.
Yes, but they don’t seem keen on talking about the risks/downsides/shortcomings of their alignment efforts (e.g., they make their employees sign non-disparagement agreements and as a result the former alignment team members who left in a big exodus can’t say exactly why they left). If you only talk about how great your alignment effort is, maybe that’s worse than not talking about it at all, as it’s liable to give people a false sense of security?
I’m not sure I agree that this is unfair.
This is obviously a good reason to focus on them more.
Perhaps we have responsibility to scrutinize/criticize them more because of this, due to comparative advantage (who else can do it easier/better than we can), and because they’re arguably deriving some warm fuzzy glow from this association? (Consider FTX as an analogy.)
Yes, but they don’t seem keen on talking about the risks/downsides/shortcomings of their alignment efforts (e.g., they make their employees sign non-disparagement agreements and as a result the former alignment team members who left in a big exodus can’t say exactly why they left). If you only talk about how great your alignment effort is, maybe that’s worse than not talking about it at all, as it’s liable to give people a false sense of security?