The Ezra Klein Show
‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.
Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation on something that matters. How do we address climate change if the political system fails to act? Has the logic of markets infiltrated too many aspects of our lives? What is the future of the Republican Party? What do psychedelics teach us about consciousness? What does sci-fi understand about our present that we miss? Can our food system be just to humans and animals alike?
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Show Notes
Last week, David Robinson resigned from OpenAI. He’d been in charge of writing the safety reports for new models and came to believe that OpenAI and the broader artificial intelligence industry lack the safety culture necessary to protect the world from what they’re building.
Robinson has an unusual background for an A.I. frontier lab staffer. He’s a Rhodes scholar and Yale Law graduate, he founded a civil rights nonprofit and he advised the Biden White House. He did not come up in the hothouse of Silicon Valley. And when he joined OpenAI in 2023, he says, he saw A.I. as a useful tool, not as a technology that could pose catastrophic risks.
That’s changed. In Robinson’s first interview since leaving OpenAI, he tells me why.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft claiming copyright infringement. The companies have denied those claims.)
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
“On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots” by Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major and Shmargaret Shmitchell
“An OpenAI Engineer and His Friends Debate the Future”
“Jensen Huang Thinks A.I. Alarmism Has Gone Too Far” by The Ezra Klein Show
“The Merge” by Sam Altman
Sam Altman on Decoded
Book Recommendations:
“The Challenger Launch Decision” by Diane Vaughan
“Little Witch Hazel” by Phoebe Wahl
“The Sabbath” by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Julie Beer. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our recording engineer is Aman Sahota. Cinematography by Kyle Kelley and Marina King. Video editing by Brandon Belk-Yee, Dani Dillon and Kristen Williamson. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
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