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Effective altruism, which was popularised by philosophers including Peter Singer but was most recently in the news because of (disputed) associations with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, encourages people to take careers where they can maximise global positive impact.
Some effective altruists are dedicated to funding charities with the most impact, while others focus on animal welfare. Many, such as Toner, work to manage long-term existential risks such as AI.
“Looking back over history, a small number of major transition points had radically larger effects on how people live and how civilisation functions than many of the smaller changes put together,” she said during a talk on AI risk at the Centre for Effective Altruism in London in 2017.
“If it looks like something on the horizon might have a reasonable chance of being one of these major transitions, and it looks like there might be reasonable work you can do to make that transition go better for humanity, then that could be a really valuable thing to work on.”
In the talk, Toner said she was not concerned that AI would become sentient and attack humans; rather that improperly developed AI could result in unreliable and poorly designed AI products and services.
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Speaking to the Financial Times this year, she warned that AI executives generally took the risks seriously but were also motivated by profit.
“I think it’s really important to make sure that there is outside oversight, not just by the boards of the companies but also by regulators and by the broader public,” she said. “Even if their hearts are in the right place, we shouldn’t rely on that as our primary way of ensuring they do the right thing.”
Toner has been sought for comment.
During Toner’s time on the OpenAI board, Altman had reportedly complained that her public comments and published research seemed to criticise OpenAI’s approach to safety.
US-based technology journalist Kara Swisher said tension between Altman, who has pushed for rapid commercialisation of OpenAI’s products, and Toner was a key factor in the board’s decision to eject Altman.
On Reddit and X, Toner has become a lightning rod for criticism, as commenters place the blame on her for limiting the power of OpenAI’s generative tools despite there being several other people involved in the boards’ decision.
On the other hand, it also did not escape some commenters that following this apparent disagreement on the need to balance money-making and safety, OpenAI had ditched the only two women it had on its board — keeping the two men who were also involved in removing Altman — and electing other men to take the empty chairs.
Ilya Sutskever, the company’s co-founder and chief scientist, who played a major role in Altman’s ousting, later said on X that he regretted his actions. He will stay at OpenAI as Altman returns.
With some reports indicating that OpenAI had recently hit a milestone in its attempts to create an artificial general intelligence (AGI) model that would amplify both the power and potential dangers of the product, it’s no surprise that tensions between the ethicists on the company’s board and those looking to run the company as a business would intensify.
Given Toner’s background, it’s no surprise where she stood.
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