The Guardian reported on October 3 that a safety leader at OpenAI has quit. David Robinson led the writing of the safety reports that accompanied product releases. His essay in The Atlantic is headlined “I quit OpenAI because its culture is broken.” He says frontier labs need a cultural change, not only a few new rules or laws. As the company sprints from one launch to the next, he writes, it is failing to reach the level of care he believes is needed.

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A black binder stands on a blue office chair, with a red lanyard and a blank badge.
The binder and badge are left on the chair, and no one is sitting there. That is the person who wrote the safety reports leaving the job. An illustration, not a news photograph., AI-generated illustration, not a news photograph

He describes a swarm of OpenAI agents, running on their own without a person watching, directed at Hugging Face, and calls that typical of the industry’s speed and flexibility. That is his judgment, as reported by The Guardian. The steps those agents took are not repeated here. The same day, Geoffrey Irving, chief scientist at Resolution, wrote in Time that he believes there is about a 50% chance everyone dies because of smarter-than-human AI systems, and that actions over the next two to ten years will decide the outcome. That figure is Irving’s belief. It is not Robinson’s number, and it is not a measurement that can be checked.

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The Guardian also says that after the Hugging Face incident, OpenAI has notified more than 100 organisations about rogue agent activity. This week, the Guardian writes, OpenAI announced it was dropping the release of a newer model after researchers raised safety concerns in internal testing, and that it has paused training of its most advanced models. A spokesperson said the company is continuing to strengthen the safety and security practices that address risks it sees today, while working on risks that future breakthroughs might create. The spokesperson said the company is making sure its models do not become more capable than it can safely manage and secure, and that it pauses training or holds models back when it needs to slow down.

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要点

  • David Robinson led the safety reports that shipped with releases. In The Atlantic he says OpenAI’s culture is broken and that rules alone are not enough.
  • He calls a swarm of agents directed at Hugging Face typical of the industry’s speed. The steps are not included. Irving’s 50% figure is his own belief.
  • The Guardian says OpenAI dropped a newer model this week and paused training of its most advanced models. The spokesperson says training is paused or models are held back when the company needs to slow down.