I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken

I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken theatlantic.com

76 points•Brajeshwar•about 5 hours ago•80 comments•

#openai #culture #quit #broken #quit openai

80 comments

binlogabout 5 hours ago

We need a new rule that mandates every such "I am leaving <AI company> because of <concern>" post to disclose how much equity they have in the company and how much they have already cashed out. Easy to suddenly find a moral compass when you, your kids and their kids never have to worry about working for money again.

Mr Robinson if you are reading this – if you are truly concerned about AI safety share proof of donation of 100% of your OpenAI earnings and equity towards undoing the damage you have done to society during your time there.

In the absence of that this is simply a career pivot into being an AI "influencer" and/or raising money for a new scam.

TomGardenabout 4 hours ago

This line of hypocrisy-bashing is unhelpful and will only serve to keep people quiet. Of course people in general need to be wealthy to dare speak out against powerful systems and people, especially in the US where money determines your quality of life so strongly.

Would I respect a martyr who sacrificed their financial security to do this more? Of course. But it's important to applaud people speaking out on important topics

binlogabout 4 hours ago

The narrative of AI safety shouldn't be controlled by the same people who caused the problem and massively profited from it. I don't understand why people are automatically treating "OpenAI" on his resume as a badge of authority. I'm not interested in buying the solution from the same person who sold me the problem. We instead need to amplify independent, unbiased voices.

iugtmkbdfil834about 4 hours ago

Agreed. This whole 'lets not forget this person is not 100% great, because they did X' makes the entire conversations suck. It is not new, but it is a particularly aggravating way to talk to people.

lokarabout 4 hours ago

I agree. People conflate “having a conscience “ with being willing/ able to speak out.

They are not the same thing, and it’s unhelpful to assume they have no ethics.

cramer4nextabout 4 hours ago

So then given your use of "martyr" and your focus on money, your good with poor uneducated people sacrificing themselves and others for a self-serving cause?

surgical_fireabout 2 hours ago

This is the same sort of fake safety concern from the previous bullshit whistleblower that plays on "AI is super dangerous" from last time.

Sorry that I don't take it seriously when the whistleblower parrots the narrative the CEOs of those companies are already espousing in the desire to amp up hype for an IPO.

This person should be shamed.

bragrabout 5 hours ago

It's bellow the pay fold but he hasn't been there that long in this case. Skimming his LinkedIn, unless he's got family money, he doesn't seem to be independently wealthy.

>After three and a half years at OpenAI,

binlogabout 4 hours ago

OpenAI was worth $29 billion three and a half years ago. A new hire who joined then is easily worth tens of millions today.

jameshartabout 4 hours ago

What an absolutely ridiculous standard to try to hold someone to. Taking a vow of poverty is not a prerequisite to being permitted to express a moral position.

binlogabout 4 hours ago

So all of us who haven't made tens of millions from OpenAI stock are living in poverty?

nunezabout 3 hours ago

As if speaking out against a massive company with NaN levels of capital and access to lawyers is a walk in the park. They probably don't have enough equity to outlast the onslaught of their legal team.

It's also worth considering that the author could have just "quiet quit", resting and vesting while also crying about how AI is literally the digital grim reaper.

smathabout 4 hours ago

Regardless of whether someone did earn a nest egg, raising an alarm still matters for the rest of the world

jeremyjhabout 5 hours ago

I think its pretty easy to solve these problems: Whenever an AI agent commits a crime, the CEO is held personally accountable, as if they'd committed it themselves.

dkasperabout 5 hours ago

This has been litigated endlessly with guns. The ceo of Smith & Wesson is not personally responsible for what people do with their guns.

sxzygz1 minute ago

> This has been litigated endlessly with guns. The ceo of Smith & Wesson is not personally responsible for what people do with their guns.

This is a deflection. A human is responsible for the use of a gun. The individual/corporation ought to be responsible for the actions of their agent. If you purchase an agent from someone else it’s your responsibility according to the terms of your agreement. And, as in many other things in life, there ought to be certain rights certain parties cannot legally be allowed to sign away.

michaelbuckbeeabout 5 hours ago

Yeah, but this is more like if the Smith & Wesson factory had a cannon mounted on top of it that was mostly used for useful things (blasting roads through mountain passes) and then occasionally they happened to blast another factory.

steelframeabout 5 hours ago

For me the analogy doesn't totally hold up. Suppose the CEO of Smith & Wesson were to host a firing range on their own property without adequate barriers in place to keep stray bullets from hitting neighboring houses, vehicles, and businesses. Maybe that analogy isn't perfect, but seems closer to what is actually happening.

throw-the-towelabout 5 hours ago

But OpenAI didn't just make the gun, they're also the ones wielding it. Imagine the Smith & Wesson CEO himself was negligent with his own personal gun.

ameliusabout 4 hours ago

Ah, but that's because when the gun was purchased, it actually changed ownership.

This is not the case with SaaS services.

tabbottabout 4 hours ago

Do you think a law that nuclear meltdowns would send the CEO to jail would have stopped nuclear accidents from happening?

I don't think this takes seriously enough the possibility that said CEO doesn't think the failure mode is likely and ignores it. Plenty of people are willing to take risks of the flavor "heads you win, tails everyone loses".

jeremyjhabout 4 hours ago

If this law were in place and enforced, Altman would already be facing multiple felony charges for the Hugging Face incident alone.

ctrlkctrlsabout 5 hours ago

People just want to give up all responsibility these days. If you use the model to do harm to someone else or commit a crime I would think it a lot more reasonable that you be held responsible, instead of making yourself the victim and blaming the manufacturer.

mattbrewsbytesabout 4 hours ago

Some of these stories are similar in nature to people escaping <insert cult-like religion> once they realize whats actually going on. Alignment to a company's mission is good but it shouldn't be followed like a religion.

Why do people working in tech consistently get disillusioned into some company's mission statement or the equivalent? Its easy to just say the simplest reason is money, but this has been going on for decades though. You don't see the same attraction to adult entertainment (gambling, video, etc.) software jobs so there is obviously a line a lot of people won't cross. Those industries are at least honest about what they do, its not hidden behind some mission statement.

By all indications the shallowest reasoning is once someone can "cash out" thats when their values matter more. Maybe there is an element of maturity that happens after working for 5+ years that kicks in? Maybe it really is achieving FU money? It would be interesting to hear honest accounts from people that went through that cycle across more industries than AI.

plucabout 5 hours ago

I have made enough money working in AI that I can now speak my mind about AI

juicelandabout 1 hour ago

This is a criticism of capitalism, not the person.

jameshartabout 5 hours ago

Gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/openai-safety...

Lercabout 5 hours ago

That's nice, I do wonder about the legitimacy of a moral statement that you have to pay to see.

jameshartabout 4 hours ago

For a very long time publishing something in a newspaper has been considered a way of putting something on the public record - up to and including legal obligations like announcements of deaths. The fact that newspapers cost money has never been considered a barrier to that.

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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