How incredibly unsurprising. This is why it is pointless to make moral stands as employees when you do not ultimately have power over the companies decisions. The only power you have is to quit.
I wonder how many will do so, and how many will simply accept Sam’s AI written rationalization as this own and keep collecting their obscene pay packages…
Psychopaths tend to be dumb (but not always), and the smartest researchers that actually care about getting humanity to AGI tend to be safety conscious.
This has been a huge talent advertisement for Anthropic. Their recruiting just got easier for the next 6 months.
And behind the quitting decision is very little safety net and usually substantial financial obligations keeping people handcuffed. Something has to give. The power employees had during covid was the way it should be, or something more closely approximating that.
Employees often have the power to oust the owner and take over the company; and more often than that have the power to have business grind to a halt. It does take a strong union and a culture of solidarity and sticking together of course, which I doubt we would find in a place like OpenAI.
It's perhaps too late in this case, but this is what unions are for. Sam Altman + a handful of scabs can't keep the lights on at OpenAI if a critical mass of engineers refuse to work until this decision is reversed (or, even better, not made at all, since the union would be part of that process).
I wonder how many will do so, and how many will simply accept Sam’s AI written rationalization as this own and keep collecting their obscene pay packages…