SNOWBALLING CONVERSATIONS AT A.I. COMPANIES ABOUT A DOOMSDAY

Researchers at Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Google are increasingly trying to raise awareness about the risks of artificial intelligence.

When Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher, publicly quit the artificial intelligence start-up this week, citing his concerns over the powerful technology, the internal messages began flying.

“It’s what we’ve all been saying,” one Anthropic employee wrote about Mr. Coxon’s comments, in a group chat among workers that was viewed by The New York Times. “It’s just public-facing now.”

“Jacob took the group chat public,” another employee wrote. “That’s a good thing.”

The reactions inside Anthropic were echoed by A.I. researchers at OpenAI, Meta and Google, who parsed Mr. Coxon’s social media posts that described how OpenAI and Anthropic were “gambling with our lives” with the technology. Many convened in office messaging channels, encrypted chats and private dinners, with the goal of organizing to raise awareness about the risks of A.I., according to a dozen employees across the companies.

For those who have made A.I. their life’s work, Mr. Coxon’s message was not new. But his comments snowballed into such a global conversation that many saw it as a moment to call for increased caution. Some A.I. workers are now speaking up to top executives to urge a pause in developing the fast-evolving technology until it has the proper safeguards, six of the people said.

Anthropic and OpenAI are juggling priorities.

Both are planning blockbuster initial public offerings within the next year. The companies are also fearful they could face antitrust concerns if they agreed among themselves to take a breather in A.I. development, two people with knowledge of the matter said. And Chinese start-ups have produced competitive A.I. models, raising the possibility that U.S. companies would fall behind if they slowed down.

In an employee meeting this week, Mr. Altman said OpenAI was willing to decelerate development alongside rival labs, according to two people who attended. He added that he hoped that voluntary slowdowns would become normal until there were widely recognized safety standards.

And on Saturday, Mr. Amodei published a 3,800-word essay calling for prudence in A.I. development. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models,” he wrote. Mr. Altman and Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rocket company has been ramping up spending on A.I., quickly agreed. And Demis Hassabis, the chair of Google DeepMind, also signed on to the effort.

Some A.I. researchers created groups with the goal of establishing lasting safeguards. One effort, the Coalition of Concerned AI Staff, began as a skunk works project to create “stronger safeguards” and help workers collectively “hold a company to its safety commitments.”

- Authors: Mike Isaac and Kate Conger, The New York Times

Read more...