This Most Replayed Moment from The Diary of a CEO features journalist Karen Hao, author of a book on OpenAI, arguing that AI leaders' statements track their incentives. She cites Dario Amodei's 2017 estimate of a 10-25% chance of civilization-scale catastrophe, and says Ilya Sutskever left OpenAI feeling Sam Altman manipulated him. She also recounts her own history with the company.
Hao says the push toward AGI rests on an unproven hypothesis, shared by Sutskever and Geoffrey Hinton, that brains are statistical models and bigger ones will surpass humans. She argues it drives data hoovering, data centers and labor exploitation. She calls the companies "Empires of AI": they claim others' resources, monopolize research by funding most researchers, and cast themselves as the good empire. Examples include Timnit Gebru's and Margaret Mitchell's firings at Google and OpenAI's subpoenas of a watchdog nonprofit. OpenAI cut her access after her 2020 profile and ignored 40 pages of comment requests. Being shut out let her do 300+ interviews.