Ideas on the Move: Yoshua Bengio “We will get the benefits of AI only if we steer it wisely.” On the move at Davos, Professor Yoshua Bengio explains what drives his work — the urgency of aligning AI with human values, and why optimi...

Thank you WEF for the golf cart ride through Davos, but also (more importantly!) for the excellent questions about the future of AI. 🛺

www.weforum.org/videos/davos...

Does anyone believe these actions are consistent with OpenAI’s nonprofit mission to ensure that AGI benefits humanity?

OpenAI still has time to do better. I hope they do.
15/15

I want to see that side of OAI, but instead I see them trying to intimidate critics into silence.

This episode was the most stressful period of my professional life. Encode has 3 FTEs - going against the highest-valued private company in the world is terrifying.
14/15

I have complicated feelings about OpenAI - I use and get value from their products, and they conduct and publish AI safety research that is worthy of genuine praise.

I also know many OpenAI employees care a lot about OpenAI being a force for good in the world.

13/15

Prior to OpenAI, Chris Lehane’s PR clients included Boeing, the Weinstein Company, and Goldman Sachs. One person who worked on a campaign with Lehane said to the New Yorker “The goal was intimidation, to let everyone know that if they fuck with us they’ll regret it”
12/15

There is more I could go into about the nature of OAI's engagement on SB 53, but suffice to say that when I saw OpenAI’s so-called “master of the political dark arts” Chris Lehane claim that they "worked to improve the bill," I literally laughed out loud.
11/15

This wasn’t the only way OpenAI behaved poorly on SB 53 before it was signed. They also sent Governor Newsom a letter trying to gut the bill by waiving all the requirements for any company that does any evaluation work with the federal government.

10/15

A magistrate judge even chastised OpenAI more broadly for their behavior in the discovery process in their case against Musk.
9/15

OpenAI had no legal right to ask for this information. So we submitted an objection explaining why we would not be providing our private communications. (They never replied.)
8/15

This is not normal. OpenAI used an unrelated lawsuit to intimidate advocates of a bill trying to regulate them. While the bill was still being debated.
7/15

But they didn’t stop there.

They also sent a sheriff’s deputy to my home and asked for me to turn over private texts and emails with CA legislators, college students, and former OAI employees.
6/15

OpenAI went beyond just subpoenaing Encode about Elon. OpenAI could (and did!) send a subpoena to Encode’s corporate address asking about our funders or communications with Elon (which don’t exist).

If OpenAI had stopped there, maybe you could argue it was in good faith. 5/15

There’s a big problem with that idea: Elon isn’t involved with Encode. Elon wasn’t behind SB 53. He doesn’t fund us, and we’ve never spoken to him.
4/15

Why did OpenAI subpoena me? Encode has criticized OpenAI’s restructuring and worked on AI regulations, including SB 53.

I believe OpenAI used the pretext of their lawsuit against Elon Musk to intimidate their critics and imply that Elon is behind all of them.
3/15

You might recall a story in the SF Standard that talked about OpenAI retaliating against critics. Among other things, OpenAI asked for all my private communications on SB 53 - a bill that creates new transparency rules and whistleblower protections at large AI companies.
2/15

One Tuesday night, as my wife and I sat down for dinner, a sheriff’s deputy knocked on the door to serve me a subpoena from OpenAI.

I held back on talking about it because I didn't want to distract from SB 53, but Newsom just signed the bill so... here's what happened:
🧵