A group of current and former OpenAI employees published an open letter Tuesday describing concerns about the artificial intelligence industry’s rapid advancement despite a lack of oversight and an absence of whistleblower protections for those who wish to speak up.
“AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and we do not believe bespoke structures of corporate governance are sufficient to change this,” the employees wrote in the open letter.
The current and former employees wrote AI companies have “substantial non-public information” about what their technology can do, the extent of the safety measures they’ve put in place and the risk levels that technology has for different types of harm.
“We also understand the serious risks posed by these technologies,” they wrote, adding that the companies “currently have only weak obligations to share some of this information with governments, and none with civil society. We do not think they can all be relied upon to share it voluntarily.”
The letter also details the current and former employees’ concerns about insufficient whistleblower protections for the AI industry, stating that without effective government oversight, employees are in a relatively unique position to hold companies accountable.
“Broad confidentiality agreements block us from voicing our concerns, except to the very companies that may be failing to address these issues,” the signatories wrote. “Ordinary whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks we are concerned about are not yet regulated.”
The letter asks AI companies to commit to not entering or enforcing non-disparagement agreements; to create anonymous processes for current and former employees to voice concerns to a company’s board, regulators and others; to support a culture of open criticism; and to not retaliate against public whistleblowing if internal reporting processes fail.
Four anonymous OpenAI employees and seven former ones, including Daniel Kokotajlo, Jacob Hilton, William Saunders, Carroll Wainwright and Daniel Ziegler, signed the letter. Signatories also included Ramana Kumar, who formerly worked at Google DeepMind, and Neel Nanda, who currently works at Google DeepMind and formerly worked at Anthropic. Three famed computer scientists known for advancing the artificial intelligence field also endorsed the letter: Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell.
“We agree that rigorous debate is crucial given the significance of this technology and we’ll continue to engage with governments, civil society and other communities around the world,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC, adding that the company has an anonymous integrity hotline, as well as a Safety and Security Committee led by members of the board and OpenAI leaders.
Microsoft declined to comment.
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