OpenAI is a leader in the race to develop AI as intelligent as a human. Yet, employees continue to show up in the press and on podcasts<\/a> to voice their grave concerns about safety at the $80 billion nonprofit research lab. The latest comes from The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, where an anonymous source claimed OpenAI rushed through safety tests and celebrated their product before ensuring its safety.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThey planned the launch after-party prior to knowing if it was safe to launch,\u201d an anonymous employee told The Washington Post<\/em>. \u201cWe basically failed at the process.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Safety issues loom large at OpenAI \u2014 and seem to just keep coming. Current and former employees at OpenAI recently signed an open letter<\/a> demanding better safety and transparency practices from the startup, not long after its safety team was dissolved following the departure of cofounder Ilya Sutskever. Jan Leike, a key OpenAI researcher,\u00a0resigned shortly after<\/a>,\u00a0claiming in a post that \u201csafety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products\u201d at the company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Safety is core to OpenAI\u2019s charter<\/a>, with a clause that claims OpenAI will assist other organizations to advance safety if AGI is reached at a competitor, instead of continuing to compete. It claims to be dedicated to solving the safety problems inherent to such a large, complex system. OpenAI even keeps its proprietary models private, rather than open (causing jabs<\/a> and lawsuits<\/a>), for the sake of safety. The warnings make it sound as though safety has been deprioritized despite being so paramount to the culture and structure of the company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s clear that OpenAI is in the hot seat \u2014 but public relations efforts alone won\u2019t suffice to safeguard society<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe\u2019re proud of our track record providing the most capable and safest AI systems and believe in our scientific approach to addressing risk,\u201d OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson said in a statement to The Verge<\/em>. \u201cRigorous debate is critical given the significance of this technology, and we will continue to engage with governments, civil society and other communities around the world in service of our mission.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The stakes around safety, according to OpenAI and others studying the emergent technology, are immense. \u201cCurrent frontier AI development poses urgent and growing risks to national security,\u201d a report commissioned by the US State Department in March<\/a> said. \u201cThe rise of advanced AI and AGI [artificial general intelligence] has the potential to destabilize global security in ways reminiscent of the introduction of nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The alarm bells at OpenAI also follow the boardroom coup last year<\/a> that briefly ousted CEO Sam Altman. The board said he was removed due to a failure to be \u201cconsistently candid in his communications,\u201d leading to an investigation<\/a> that did little to reassure the staff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n OpenAI spokesperson Lindsey Held told the Post<\/em> the GPT-4o launch \u201cdidn\u2019t cut corners\u201d on safety, but another unnamed company representative acknowledged that the safety review timeline was compressed to a single week. We \u201care rethinking our whole way of doing it,\u201d the anonymous representative told the Post<\/em>. \u201cThis [was] just not the best way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n