It's interesting because one of the points Sam emphatically stresses over and over on most podcasts he's gone on in the past 4 years is how crucial it is that a single person or a single company or a collection of companies controlling ASI would be absolutely disastrous and that there needs to be public, democratic control of ASI and the policies surrounding it.
Personally I still believe he thinks that way (in contrast to what ~99% of HN believes) and that he does care deeply about potential existential (and other) risks of ASI. I would bet money/Manifoldbux that if he thought powerful AGI/ASI were anywhere near, he'd hit the brakes and initiate a massive safety overhaul.
I don't know why the promises to the safety team weren't kept (thus triggering their mass resignations), but I don't think it's something as silly as him becoming extremely power hungry or no longer believing there were risks or thinking the risks are acceptable. Perhaps he thought it wasn't the most rational and efficient use of capital at that time given current capabilities.
It's possible that both things could be true. He may be a greedy liar while still being very concerned about ASI safety and wanting it to be controlled by humanity collectively (or at least the population of each country, via democratic means).
Maybe he is only a greedy liar. I don't know. I'm just stating my personal belief/speculation.
>I would bet money/Manifoldbux that if he thought powerful AGI/ASI were anywhere near, he'd hit the brakes and initiate a massive safety overhaul.
Not sure how you can believe this given all of his recent actions and the ever growing list of whistleblowers dropping out of OpenAI explicitly saying Safety is not taken seriously.
I mean just generally the ability to actually stop and reorient around working on safety seems incredibly non trivial. To say nothing of the race dynamic he has perpetuated, the other frontier companies are unlikely to do the same.
Personally I still believe he thinks that way (in contrast to what ~99% of HN believes) and that he does care deeply about potential existential (and other) risks of ASI. I would bet money/Manifoldbux that if he thought powerful AGI/ASI were anywhere near, he'd hit the brakes and initiate a massive safety overhaul.
I don't know why the promises to the safety team weren't kept (thus triggering their mass resignations), but I don't think it's something as silly as him becoming extremely power hungry or no longer believing there were risks or thinking the risks are acceptable. Perhaps he thought it wasn't the most rational and efficient use of capital at that time given current capabilities.