Miles Brundage just quit what was once his dream job. Six years into his role at industry leader OpenAI, Brundage decided to leave, and not just his job, but the industry.
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, was founded by such names as Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and current CEO, Greg Brockman.
Brundage's role--that of AGI readiness lead researcher (AGI stands for artificial general intelligence, or, the pursuit of a theoretically human level of cognition)--is to determine whether the AGI platforms developed for real-world applications are sufficient, and safe enough, to perform the tasks assigned to them.
His warning is blunt:
"In short, neither OpenAI nor any other frontier lab is ready," Brundage wrote on his Substack, "and the world is also not ready."
He then goes on to temper that eye-grabbing statement by lavishing praise on the OpenAI company. He then spells out in broad strokes how he envisions his future: running a start-up that focuses on AGI policy and research:
I plan to start a new nonprofit (and/or join an existing nonprofit) and will work on AI policy research and advocacy. I will probably do some mix of research and advocacy but the details and ratios are TBD, and this will be informed by conversations with potential cofounders and collaborators in the coming months. My interests are global but I may focus on countries I’m more familiar with like the US...
So, in some ways, we can interpret Brundage's words as a warning. At the same time, he's promoting himself and announcing to the AI world that his services are back on the open market.
OpenAI has lost several key executives since May, including co-founders Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike. While Brundage's warning is chilling, and his praise for OpenAI profuse, as Sigal Samuel writes, there may be another explanation for both: Sam Altman, who the board tried to fire in 2023 (he managed to fight his way back into power).
According to sources familiar with the company, safety-minded employees have lost faith in [Altman].
“It’s a process of trust collapsing bit by bit, like dominoes falling one by one,” a person with inside knowledge of the company told me, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Not many employees are willing to speak about this publicly. That’s partly because OpenAI is known for getting its workers to sign offboarding agreements with non-disparagement provisions upon leaving. If you refuse to sign one, you give up your equity in the company, which means you potentially lose out on millions of dollars.
