Why Is There So Much Drama at OpenAI?

Leopold Aschenbrenner says the drama at OpenAI comes from a real belief that OpenAI is building AGI, then a failure to take the implications seriously or keep the commitments that belief produced.

There would be a lot less drama if OpenAI claimed only to be building ChatGPT or business software. The AGI claim is not for marketing. A report about raising $7 trillion for chips only makes sense if OpenAI really believes in AGI. Aschenbrenner says the technology will be incredibly powerful for good and for bad. National security follows from that power: protecting secrets from the CCP, and whether America or a Middle Eastern dictator controls the core AGI infrastructure. OpenAI committed 20% of compute to super alignment, a long-term safety research effort. The commitment was public and was used to recruit people, because a new product would always feel more urgent than long-term safety research. OpenAI did not keep the commitment, and something more urgent than long-term safety research always won. When Aschenbrenner raised security issues, he was told security was the number one priority. When serious resources, trade-offs, or basic measures were required, security was not prioritized.

Aschenbrenner says cognitive dissonance and unreliability cause the drama.