AI Whistleblower: We Are Being Gaslit By AI Companies, They’re Hiding The Truth! - Karen Hao

So much of what's happening today in the

AI industry is extremely inhumane.

>> But this is me playing devil's advocate.

And logically, it could be the case that

the civilization that accelerate their

research with AI is going to be the

superior civilization.

>> No, it's not. This is a prediction that

you're making, right?

>> Making Zuckerberg's making.

>> And do you know what the common feature

of all of them is? They profit

enormously off of this myth. You know, I

have all these internal documents

showing that they're purposely trying to

create that feeling within the public so

that they can extract and exploit and

extract and exploit. So, what do we do

about it?

>> We need to break up the empires of AI.

>> You know, I've been covering the tech

industry for over 8 years, interviewed

over 250 people, including former or

current OpenAI employees and executives.

And I can tell you that there are many

parallels between the empires of AI and

the empires of old, right? like Lelay

claimed the intellectual property of

artists, writers, and creators in the

pursuit of training these models.

Second, they exploit an extraordinary

amount of labor, which breaks the career

ladder because someone gets laid off and

then they work to train the models on

the very job that they were just laid

off in, which will then perpetuate more

layoffs if that model then develops that

skill. And when they talk about that

there's going to be some new jobs

created that we can't even imagine, a

lot of the jobs that are created are way

worse than the jobs that were there. And

then there's the environmental and

public health crisis that these

companies have created and how they're

able to also spend hundreds of millions

to try and kill every possible piece of

legislation that gets in their way and

will censor researchers that are

inconvenient to the empire's agenda. But

what I'm saying is not that these

technologies don't have utility. It's

that the production of these

technologies right now is exacting a lot

of harm on people. But we have research

that shows that the very same

capabilities could be developed in a

different way that doesn't have all of

these unintended consequences. So let's

talk about all of that.

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Let's get on with the show.

Karen, how you've written this book in

front of me here called Empire of AI:

Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Alman's

Open AI. I guess my first question is

what is the research and the journey you

went on in order to write this book

we're going to talk about and the

subjects within it today

>> I took a strange route into journalism I

studied mechanical engineering at MIT

and so when I graduated I moved to San

Francisco I joined a tech startup I

became part of Silicon Valley and I

basically received an education in what

Silicon Valley is about because a few

months into joining a very missiondriven

startup that was focused on building

technologies that would help facilitate

the fight against climate change. The

board fired the CEO because the company

was not profitable. And this was in

hindsight a very pivotal moment for me

because I thought if this hub is

ultimately geared towards building

profitable technologies and many of the

problems in the world that I think need

solved are not profitable problems like

climate change. Then what are we

actually doing here? like what how did

we get to a point where innovation is

not actually necessarily working in the

public benefit and sometimes even

undermining the public benefit in

pursuit of profit. In that moment, I had

a bit of a crisis where I thought, well,

I just spent 4 years trying to set

myself up for this career that I now

don't think I am cut out for. And I

thought, well, I might as well just try

something totally different. I've always

liked writing and that's how after 2

years I landed at a role at MIT

technology review covering AI full-time

and that gave me a space to then explore

all of these questions of who gets to

decide what technologies we build how

does money and ideology also drive the

production of those technologies and how

do we ultimately make sure that we

actually reimagine the innovation

ecosystem to work for a broad base of

people all around the world. And so that

is kind of how I then set off on this

journey of ultimately writing a book. I

didn't realize that I was working

towards writing a book, but starting in

2018 when I took that job was

essentially the moment in which I began

researching the story that I I document

in it.

>> A very timely time to start working in

artificial intelligence. For anyone that

doesn't know, this is pre OpenAI chat

GPT launch moment that shook the world.

But in writing this book, you

interviewed a lot of people and went to

a lot of places. Can you give me a

flavor of how many people you've

interviewed, where it's taken you around

the world, etc.

>> I interviewed over 250 people. So over

300 interviews, over 90 of those people

were former or current OpenAI employees

and executives. So the book covers the

inside story of opening eyes's first

decade and how it ultimately got to

where it is today. But I didn't want to

write a corporate book. I felt very

strongly that in order to help people

understand the impact of the AI

industry, we would also have to travel

well beyond Silicon Valley. These

companies tell us that AI is going to

benefit everyone and that's their

mission. But you really start to see

that rhetoric break down when you go to

the places that look nothing like

Silicon Valley, that speak nothing like

Silicon Valley, and that have a history

and culture that are fundamentally

different as well. And that's where you

start to really understand the true

reality of how this industry is

unfolding around us.

>> Karen, I often try and steer

conversations, but in this situation, I

feel like it's probably my

responsibility to follow. So with that

in mind, I'm going to ask you where does

this journey begin and where should we

be starting if we're talking about the

subjects of empire of AI, AI generally

artificial intelligence and also I'd say

one thing I'm really keen to do in this

conversation which is I often see in

conversations is left out is let's

assume that our viewers know nothing

about AI.

>> Yeah. So they don't know what scaling

laws are or GPUs or comput or whatever