OpenAI employees are claiming that the firm’s chief scientist established himself as a ‘spiritual leader' in a bizarre twist.
Ilya Sutskever co-founded and was the chief scientist at OpenAI until 2023.
During that year, he was one of the members of the board that ousted Sam Altman as the CEO.
However, Altman was reinstated just a week later and Sutskever stepped down from his position.
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According to a report by The Atlantic, Sutskever would ‘burn effigies and lead ritualistic chants’ while at the company.
The article went on to say that the chief scientist had established himself as a ‘spiritual leader’ at OpenAI in his efforts to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Led by Sutskever, employees reportedly chanted: “Feel the AGI! Feel the AGI!”
There was also a wooden effigy which Sutskever allegedly had to represent the ‘unaligned’ AI that would work against humans, which he set on fire.
Many people have taken to social media to react to the bizarre claims, with one user writing on Reddit: “The chief scientist even commissioned a wooden effigy to represent an ‘unaligned’ AI that works against the interest of humanity, only to set it on fire. In short, instead of focusing on meaningfully advancing AI tech in a scientifically sound way, some board members sound like they're engaging in weird spiritual claims.”
Another said: “This seems similar to the behaviors the early rocket pioneers also engaged in.”
A third person commented: “It is a crazy company and being part of creating machine consciousness is would be a weirdly spiritual experience. Give people room to process ai is heavy s***. As long as they aren’t trying to enslave humanity with agi for its own good.”
And a fourth added: “AI is quickly learning the patterns that make up meaningful language to a sophisticated degree — something none of us saw coming this year, or possibly ever. The patterns we use to communicate and model our world and minds are of course finite. We knew this. But to us, they are virtually infinite and stretch beyond the horizon, keeping us safe from feeling small and primitive and limited. To AI, our muttering and clicks and pops are very finite and easy to adopt and utilize almost instantly.
“This all merely signifies the beginning of an unfurling realization that we are not what we thought. Life is not what we think. Reality is not what we think.”
The user went on to say: “It will soon have the ability to make Hell and Heaven real. Sorry but it’s actually not nuts to opine that these machines mark the end of a 6,000 year period within which a messianic age would be ushered in.”