Comments
It's a disappointing outcome - it currently seems that OpenAI is no more tied to its nonprofit goals than before. A wedge has been driven between the AI safety community and OpenAI staff, and to an extent, Silicon Valley generally.
But in this fiasco, we at least were the good guys! The OpenAI CEO shouldn't control its nonprofit board, or compromise the independence of its members, who were doing broadly the right thing by trying to do research and perform oversight. We have much to learn.
Let's please try to avoid phrasing things in ways as tribal as this. We have no idea what happened. Putting an identity of the board members this central feels like it frames the discussion in a bad way.
I mean it is literally accurate, the two EAs previously on the board are gone.[1] It's part of the story, though not all of it. Honestly @Fermi–Dirac Distribution if I were you I'd consider changing it back, but obviously your call.
These individuals in question are also on the boards of important EA organisations too. And that feels clearly germane to the Forum. Their board performance on this issue surely has implications for their stewardship of these organisations and by proxy their influence on EA as a whole
We don't have the full picture of what happened. But some things are becoming clearer. And it's very difficult to separate 'waiting for information' from 'pleading no-contest in the court of public opinion' which is what the board seem to have done
In principal, given this story who knows if that'll last
I think the general point is that this makes sense from a charitable perspective, but is open to a fair degree of uncharitable impressions as well. When you say "EAs are out" it seems like we want some of our own on the inside, as opposed to just sensible, saftey concerned people.
It kind of implies EAs are uniquely able to conduct the sort of saftey conscious work we want, when really (I think) as a community what we care about is having anyone on there who can serve as a ready tonic to for-profit pressures.
What succinct way to put this is better? "Saftey is out" feels slightly better but like it's still making some sort of claim that we have unique providence here. So idk, maybe we just need slightly longer expressions here like "Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley have done really great work and without their concern for saftey we're worried about future directions of the board" or something like that.
(the other two paragraphs of yours focus somewhat confusingly on the idea of labeling EAs as being necessary for considering the impact of this on EA (and on their ability to govern in EA) which I think is best discussed as its own separate point?)
I'm find myself pretty confused at this reply Tristan. I'm not trying to be rude, but like in some cases I don't really see how it follows
I disagree. I think it's a statement of fact. The EAs who were on the board will no longer be on the board. They're both senior EAs, so I don't think it's an irrelevant detail for the Forum to consider. I also think it's a pretty big stretch to go from 'EAs are out' to 'only EAs can be trusted with AI Safety', like I just don't see that link being strong at all, and I disagree with it anyway
Perhaps an alternative could have been "Sam Altman returning as OpenAI CEO, major changes to board structure agreed?" or something like that?
As for your expression. I guess I just disagree with it, or think it's lacking evidence? I definitely wouldn't want to cosign it or state that's an EA-wide position?
to avoid uncertainty about what I mean here:
But see below, I think these issue are best discussed somewhere else
I agree that the implications of this for EA governance are best discussed in another place/post entirely, but it's an issue I think does need to be brought up, perhaps when the dust has settled a bit and tempers on all sides have cooled.
I don't know where I claim that labelling EAs is necessary for discussing the impacts of this at all. Like I really just don't get it - I don't think that's true about what I said and I don't think I said it or implied it 🤷♂
including most of the AI-safety identifying people at OpenAI as far as I can tell
I tried to explain why you may not want to put it that way, i.e. that there's perhaps an issue of framing here, and you first reply "but the statement is true" and essentially miss the point.
I'll briefly respond to one other point, but then want to reframe this because the confusion here seems unproductive to me (I'm not sure where our views differ and I don't think our responses are helping to clarify that for one another). The original comment was expressing a view like "using the phrase 'EAs are out' is probably a bad way to frame this". You responded "but it's literally true" and then went on to talk about how disusing this seems important for EA. But no one's implying it's not important for us to discuss? The argument is not "let's not talk about their relations to EA" it's a framing thing, so I think you're either mistaken on what the claim is here, or you just wrote this in a somewhat confusing manner where you started talking about something new and unrelated to the original point in your second paragraph.
To reframe: I'd perhaps want you to think on a question: what does it mean for us to be concerned that EAs are no longer on the board? Untangling why we care, and how we can best represent that, was the goal of my comment. To this end, I found the bits where you expand on your opinions on Toner and the board generally to be helpful.
You could just say ‘Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley are out’.
Larry Summers has said he agrees with at least some EA arguments. So the accuracy of ‘EAs are out’ is ambiguous, except in the sense of ‘people who have an explicit identification with the EA community’. Which seems tribal.
I changed the title for that reason, but it seems that people disagreed with my decision/reasoning
Oh interesting haha
Current reporting is that 'EAs out of the board' (starting with expelling Toner for 'criticizing' OA) was the explicit description/goal told to Sutskever shortly before, with reasons like being to avoid 'being painted in the press as “a bunch of effective altruists,” as one of them put it'.
Unclear whether this makes it better or worse to be endorsing that framing
How does it frame the discussion in a bad way? I thought this was a succinct way to describe an aspect of OpenAI's announcement that is very relevant to the EA Forum.
I changed the title because I learned that Summers likes EA