OpenAI's problem is not that it is unable to predict failure modes or security risks for AIs. OpenAI's problem is that it is not taking the many failure modes and security risks that it already knows about seriously, and it's not putting in adequate effort to address the specific concerns that people repeatedly talk about publicly.
It's not a failure of imagination, it's a failure of action. Their problem isn't that they don't know what to care about, their problem is that they don't care.
So when OpenAI puts out these offers or press releases about trying to be prepared or finding new failure modes, it just doesn't read as sincere. I want to know what they're doing about the very specific flaws that exist today that they already know about; both the ones that would be trivial to address (ie, UX-flows, data-exfiltration vulnerabilities, and user consent flows for plugins) that OpenAI refuses to acknowledge, and the ones that are wildly challenging but that demand actual Open research and mitigation (ie prompt injection and mass spam) rather than toothless "we're letting researchers explore this area" PR.
OpenAI has unlocked doors in its product -- and instead of locking them, it is hiring researchers to theorize about the nature of doors and asking the public to try messing with the windows. I'm not giving them credit for that, fix your doors.
OpenAI's problem is not that it is unable to predict failure modes or security risks for AIs. OpenAI's problem is that it is not taking the many failure modes and security risks that it already knows about seriously, and it's not putting in adequate effort to address the specific concerns that people repeatedly talk about publicly.
It's not a failure of imagination, it's a failure of action. Their problem isn't that they don't know what to care about, their problem is that they don't care.
So when OpenAI puts out these offers or press releases about trying to be prepared or finding new failure modes, it just doesn't read as sincere. I want to know what they're doing about the very specific flaws that exist today that they already know about; both the ones that would be trivial to address (ie, UX-flows, data-exfiltration vulnerabilities, and user consent flows for plugins) that OpenAI refuses to acknowledge, and the ones that are wildly challenging but that demand actual Open research and mitigation (ie prompt injection and mass spam) rather than toothless "we're letting researchers explore this area" PR.
OpenAI has unlocked doors in its product -- and instead of locking them, it is hiring researchers to theorize about the nature of doors and asking the public to try messing with the windows. I'm not giving them credit for that, fix your doors.