People

David Robinson

Former OpenAI safety lead

Capability 5Outlook 2

Tracked since Week 40, last spoke Oct 7.

Where they stand

Against all 23 people scored in Week 41. Bars count people at each score; black is Robinson, the dashed line is the average.

What they've said

• Wednesday, Oct 7Week 41

  In his first interview since leaving, Robinson told Ezra Klein The A.I. industry has an unsafe culture and that we're shipping new capability and risk every Tuesday.

  He said OpenAI and its peers are making technology that poses more risk than what was being made even six months ago, and described lots of cognitive dissonance in publishing warnings while still training and deploying the models being warned about. He called for operational rigor and safety controls matching the most dangerous other industries.

  Details and sources

  Asked how it ends, he said I think we are going to survive. Quotes come from a republished copy of the New York Times transcript.

  The Ezra Klein Show (New York Times) via DNYUZ
• Saturday, Oct 3Week 40

  Robinson resigned from OpenAI and wrote in The Atlantic that the company's trial-and-error approach by its very nature, guarantees periodic failures.

  He spent three and a half years at OpenAI and led the writing of the safety reports released with its major launches. In the essay he said he had never encountered a colleague who had experience making airplanes fly safely or nuclear reactors run without melting down, and argued labs should be run like nuclear-power plants or busy airports, with layers of redundancy and careful, time-consuming planning.

  Details and sources

  He also wrote An environment where things like this can happen is no place to grow artificial minds and Perhaps I should have stayed and fought for fundamental shifts in our staffing and culture. OpenAI told reporters it pauses training or holds back models when needed. The Atlantic page could not be opened; quotes come from TechCrunch's report on the essay.

  TechCrunch