It seems like this situation is serious enough that we cannot let this kind of work be privatized.
Not interested in entertaining all the "this is the norm" arguments, that's just an attempt at getting people to normalize this behavior.
Does anyone know if the Center of AI Safety acting for the public good and is this on their radar?
OpenAI is making people rich and America look good, all while not doing anything obviously harmful to the public interest. They’re not a juicy target for anyone in the public sphere. If any one of those changes, OpenAI and possibly its leadership are in extremely hot water with the authorities.
Yeah, gonna have to challenge that:
1. We don't really if what they are doing is harming public interest, because we dont have access to much information about whats happening behind the scenes.
2. And there is enough information about this tech that leads to the possibility of it causing systemic damage to society if its not correctly controlled.
As for "too important to privatize"... practically all the important work in the world is done by private companies. It wasn't the government who just created vaccines for Covid. It isn't the government producing weapons for defense. It's not Joe B producing houses or electricity or cars or planes. That's not to say the government doesn't do anything but the idea that the dividing line for government work is "super important work" is wildly wrong and it's much closer to the inverse.
Isn't there entire processes about "We suspect they doing something illegal behind the scenes so lets go and check"? Isn't that what search warrants for example is all about? Or senate/congress inquiry or whatever they're called?
With respect to inquries - if congressman X asks Sam Altman for the details of an algorithm at a congressional hearing, he is not obliged to answer. He can get his lawyer and argue the case - this happens and cases go to the supreme court to decide whether the question is in scope of the powers granted to congress under the consitution. The question has to be directly applicable to one of the responsibilities of congress, which are enumerated in the constitution. In practice redacted documents, limiting of question scope etc are discussed and worked around. Also in practice it's a bit of a political circus where most questions are for show rather than substance and you'll not really see them ask questions that would result in confidential information been given.