‘Pretty terrified by the pace of AI development’: OpenAI researcher quits, claims labs are taking ‘very risky gamble’
Former safety researcher at OpenAI Steven Adler says that the AGI race is not just risky but also comes with a “huge downside.”
OpenAI safety researcher Steven Adler announced on an X post that he left the company last year after four years of a “wild ride.” Adler criticised the race toward AGI, adding that the AI labs are taking a “very risky gamble” and that he is “terrified by the pace of AI development.”
“Some personal news: After four years working on safety across OpenAI, I left in mid-November. It was a wild ride with lots of chapters - dangerous capability evals, agent safety/control, AGI and online identity, etc. - and I'll miss many parts of it,” Adler wrote.
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“Honestly I'm pretty terrified by the pace of AI development these days. When I think about where I'll raise a future family, or how much to save for retirement, I can't help but wonder: Will humanity even make it to that point?” he added.
In the follow-up posts, he added that the “AGI race is a very risky gamble, with huge downside.” He posted that no labs in the world have a solution to AI alignment, adding that it seems like people are stuck in a “really bad equilibrium.”
“Even if a lab truly wants to develop AGI responsibly, others can still cut corners to catch up, maybe disastrously. And this pushes all to speed up. I hope labs can be candid about real safety regs needed to stop this,” he continued.
What’s next for Steven Adler?
“As for what's next, I'm enjoying a break for a bit, but I'm curious: what do you see as the most important & neglected ideas in AI safety/policy? I'm especially excited re: control methods, scheming detection, and safety cases,” he posted on X.
Currently, DeepSeek dominates the AI news cycle. The Chinese firm’s AI chatbot shocked the world, revealing that it was created at a fraction of the cost of its competitors.
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AI experts and the tech world were taken by surprise by this AI chatbot, which was supposedly designed without massive hardware and infrastructure resources used by companies like OpenAI.
