Whistleblowers have made accusations against OpenAI, claiming that the company is preventing employees from alerting regulators about potential risks associated with artificial intelligence (AI). As reported by the Washington Post on Sunday (July 14), the whistleblowers have alleged that OpenAI enforced overly restrictive employment, nondisclosure, and severance agreements according to a letter sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The letter, obtained by the Post, states that these agreements could have resulted in penalties against employees who raised concerns about OpenAI to federal regulators. Furthermore, the agreements required employees to waive their rights to federal whistleblower compensation, which is in violation of federal law. According to one of the whistleblowers, "These contracts sent a message that 'we don't want. . . employees talking to federal regulators. ' I don't think that AI companies can build technology that is safe and in the public interest if they shield themselves from scrutiny and dissent. " PYMNTS has reached out to OpenAI for a comment, but has not yet received a response. OpenAI's spokesperson provided the following statement to the Post: "Our whistleblower policy protects employees' rights to make protected disclosures.

Additionally, we believe rigorous debate about this technology is essential and have already made important changes to our departure process to remove nondisparagement terms. " OpenAI's approach to safety has been a topic of debate this year, with notable employees, such as AI researcher Jan Leike and policy researcher Gretchen Krueger, announcing their resignations and claiming that the company prioritizes product development over safety considerations. Another former executive, Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former chief scientist of OpenAI, has started a new AI company called Safe Superintelligence, which aims to develop a safe and powerful AI system without commercial interests. This has sparked discussions over the feasibility of achieving such a goal. Some critics argue that the current limitations of AI systems, despite their impressive capabilities, hinder their ability to perform tasks requiring common sense reasoning and contextual understanding. They claim that achieving a general intelligence that surpasses human capabilities across all domains is not simply a matter of increased computational power or data. Even those who believe in the potential of AI superintelligence have concerns about ensuring its safety. Developing a superintelligent AI would require advanced technical capabilities and a comprehensive understanding of ethics, values, and the potential consequences of its actions.