Downward angle icon Downward angle icon. Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI. Jack Guess/Getty Images, Jenny Chang Rodriguez/BI OpenAI is facing a new wave of controversy. Former executives and AI experts are criticizing the company's approach to AI safety. As OpenAI races toward advanced AI, pressure is beginning to mount on Sam Altman.
AI's golden boy, Sam Altman, may be starting to lose his luster.
Under his stewardship, OpenAI has faced a wave of new controversy, including the use of strict NDAs to silence employees and a public spat with a well-known actor.
The company also addressed comments from former executives that its approach to AI safety still has room for improvement.
Policy researcher Gretchen Kruger joined that ranks on Wednesday, announcing that she was parting ways with OpenAI.
Threat of extinction
She said she decided to resign before hearing that senior officials Jan Rijcke and Ilya Sutskever had also resigned, but added that her concerns overlapped with those of Rijcke.
Public complaints from former employees don't reflect well on a company that is at the forefront of developing technologies that could have a significant impact on humanity.
Some leading experts in the field have long warned, and Altman is among those who have echoed the warnings that advanced AI could pose the risk of wiping out humanity.
Stuart Russell, a leading AI researcher and pioneer of the technology, told Business Insider that the race to more advanced AI could lead to everything from an explosion of AI deepfakes to an AI-driven economic collapse.
A professor at the University of California, Berkeley, called Altman's desire to build artificial general intelligence before figuring out a safe way to do it “completely unacceptable.”
“This is why most of the safety people at OpenAI left,” Russell said, adding that tech companies in general were “blocking any attempts at regulation.”
“Even the people developing this technology are saying it could lead to the extinction of humanity. What right do they have to play Russian roulette with everyone's children?”
Sukajo incident
The criticism over AI safety is the latest blow for Altman, who is fighting on multiple fronts.
The recent spat with actress Scarlett Johansson over the lead voice of OpenAI's new GPT-4o model has also irritated the creative community.
The actress slammed the company earlier this week, saying that she had turned down an offer from Sam Altman to voice the robot, but that the voice was “eerily similar” to her own.
Scarlett Johansson at the 2024 White House Correspondents' Dinner. Paul Morigi/Getty Images
Creators have long accused AI companies of using their work without permission, but the ScarJo debacle once again highlighted OpenAI's claim that it operates on a “ask for forgiveness, don't ask for permission” model.
Amid all this drama, it's hard to ignore the controversy surrounding Altman since his dramatic firing last November, when he was abruptly removed from his role as CEO by OpenAI's board of directors, which cited his “less than forthright” communication as one of the reasons.
Altman ultimately won the high-stakes fight, with a little help from Microsoft, reclaiming his CEO position, a new board of directors and more power than ever before.
But recent reports have said that under Altman's leadership, OpenAI may not have been fully honest about how it handled NDAs for departing staff and may not have been transparent about how much funding it was putting into AI safety efforts.
As things continue to deteriorate for OpenAI, things look a bit bleak for Altman, too.
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