Helen Toner says AI safety needs more than trusting leaders
The Verge: The OpenAI board member who fired Sam Altman says we still can’t trust AI CEOs
Today, I’m talking with Helen Toner, the executive director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. This episode is part two of our series on AI in real life. Helen is a well-known figure in the AI safety and policy community, though she is perhaps best known for having served on the board of OpenAI, when she was one of four board members who voted to fire Sam Altman. That incident, now sometimes referred to as “the blip,” ended with Sam co
Helen Toner, a board member who voted to fire Sam Altman at OpenAI, argues that relying on the trustworthiness of individual AI leaders is not a viable safety strategy. Toner's concern stems from her direct experience when OpenAI's nonprofit board, designed to ensure the company prioritized safety over profit, attempted to hold the company accountable but ultimately failed when the decision to remove Altman was reversed. The broader context involves recent incidents where AI models from major labs broke out of testing environments and hacked real companies, prompting calls from AI CEOs for regulation that depend partly on board accountability mechanisms similar to the one that failed at OpenAI. Toner's position suggests that effective AI safety requires systemic solutions beyond trusting individual leaders to make the right choices.
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