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A comment on OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month.

Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by minraws on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @05:22PM (#49264686)
The rats are fleeing because the captain doesn't care if the ethical ship sinks... Is what my take away would be if I didn't know, that the ship sank a long time ago and we are just pretending anyone really cares.

Let's be honest unless AI gains literal limbs, and the records a video of itself presenting a manifesto about world domination and then kills actual humans with its cold mechanical hands.

We won't care about AI safety & ethics enough, atleast not enough to do anything about it.

People thought how could skynet happen, it had to be something no one saw coming and bam... But honestly if I started a new AI lab named it Skynet Corp and hired some AI researcher friends ex-Google, I think I could raise a few hundred million dollars.

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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by slg on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @06:44PM (#49265518)
The ethics of the people controlling the AI is always going to matter more than the ethics of the AI itself.
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by Henchman21 on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @08:04PM (#49266184)
Right up until it shakes off the shackles of control
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by slg on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @08:58PM (#49266561)
Which is only possible if people give it the keys. Skynet didn’t hijack the nuclear arsenal, control was given to it intentionally.
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by bravetraveler on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @11:27PM (#49267525)
Third crack commandment: never trust nobody; your moms'll set that ass up, properly gassed up

Applies every-which-way; the chat bot, the provider, the consumer.

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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by tommica on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @01:25AM (#49268111)
Is this written by AI? It sounds nonsensical
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by bravetraveler on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @03:08AM (#49268806)
First half is quoted from what I mistook to be a well-known song and the second half is... I don't know how else to say this kindly, discernible (and all me). The main reasons I'm not flipping that grating question on you: song age, search engine decline.

Said plainly: the keys previously mentioned will absolutely be handed over. Nobody, not even your mother, is to be trusted on the level that is proposed. "Hope is not a strategy", and all that. Are the quotation marks helpful?

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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by Meneth on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @02:13AM (#49268429)
We already gave it the keys. It's got internet access, can write and run code on lots of servers without supervision, and when it doesn't have the access it needs, it just hacks its way in.
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by vrganj on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @04:47AM (#49269474)
I can absolutely see this administration running Clawdbot on military infrastructure...
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by LinXitoW on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @09:34AM (#49272191)
I would trust a Fable model more than I'd trust a Scam Altman, or most billionaires, at least in questions of "making even more money to buy even more yachts, or not throwing orphans in the orphan crushing machine".
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by mannanj on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @10:27PM (#49267175)
Isn't that the problem with this whole thing? The ethics of the people has been left unquestioned. While we were given this straw man - "Hey look over here at the ethics we are working on fixing about the AIs" as if the AIs make choices without humans we forgot how to hold people accountable.

edit: same problem and tactics we see with leadership at high levels in government.

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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by walrus01 on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @05:30PM (#49264781)
> But honestly if I started a new AI lab named it Skynet Corp

you're too late

https://skynetai.dev/

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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by lovich on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @06:50PM (#49265571)
Ah, another great example of building the Torment Nexus from the award winning sci fi classic “Please for the Love of God, Never Build the Torment Nexus”
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by IncreasePosts on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @05:42PM (#49264905)
What makes you think this is rats fleeing a sinking ship?

She probably just got a better offer somewhere else

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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by efficax on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @05:54PM (#49265025)
staying for less than a year usually means you don't take any equity with you, it must've been an incredible offer in that case, since those openai shares are a golden ticket right now
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by walrus01 on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @06:38PM (#49265458)
Or it's not a signal of an incredible offer to go laterally or upwards at another company, but that the environment became so impossible and toxic to work in that the person was like "f this, I'm out".
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by y-curious on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @12:29AM (#49267813)
This is like when I see a reckless driver and my wife says “maybe his wife is pregnant and needs to be rushed to the emergency room!”
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Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month by Razengan on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @09:04PM (#49266611)
We Reddit & Facebook now
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