What's This "Safe AI" of Which You Speak?
Two Suggestions for Journalists
EARL BOEBERT
DEC 17, 2023
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Now that the OpenAI organizational spasm seems to be in the lull between activity and
recriminations, I thought it worthwhile to review my last essay to see if any of that required
me to rethink what I had said, particularly in the assessments.
Upon further review (as the saying goes) I think the various decisions stand. In the U.S.,
there still is no indication that any external control is going to be imposed on AI vendors or
services. The still incomplete organizational transformation strongly signals that big
money will remain in charge, and the once and future CEO’s side hustles will still exist. It is
still my assessment that the juggernaut is unlikely to be forced oJ course by any
governmental action, and anybody who thinks they may be in its path will be forced to
decide whether to get out of the way or climb on board. 1
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I say this in spite of the also incomplete European Union move to impose some kind of
control on AI. I base my assessment on the actions of Meta and Mistral, two operations
that are releasing open-source generative AI packages, along with chip manufacturers
moving to produce cheap “AI optimized” processors. These actions will lead to a
proliferation of generative AI facilities across the open and dark webs which will be
essentially immune to any form of external control 2.
One thing that caught my eye in the media coverage of the OpenAI convulsion was the
repeated mentions of “safety.” There’s a lot of work that’s been done on that general topic,
usually aQer one kind of disaster or another. Foundational documents in the Seld include
books by Prof. Charles Perrow (“normal accidents”), Prof. Diane Vaughan (“normalization
of deviance”) and Prof. Nancy Leveson (“STAMP/STPA/CAST safety analysis”).
I know this because James Blossom and I studied the Seld for several years while we
produced our systems analysis of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and Sre. I’m not going to
self-plagiarize that material; if you are interested, you can go to the Harvard University
Press for our book 3.
But I do want to pass on the observation that safety measures are visible: outSts that are
truly serious about safety show that concern in their spending, organization and processes.
You’ll see safety managers, independent organizational paths to report concerns,
deSnitions of adverse events to be avoided, discussions of leading and lagging indicators
and investigations when things go wrong 4.
So I went looking for the OpenAI safety apparatus and I am embarrassed to say I was
unable to Snd anything. Nothing for their competitors either. The people pushing AI upon
us appear very protective of their organizational structures and responsibilities. How they
intend to prevent near-term adverse events may be described somewhere, but I couldn’t
Snd it. So here’s my Srst suggestion to journalists:
When a member of the AI community uses the words “safe” or “safety,” ask them “How do you
de;ne it, what organizational and process steps do you take to achieve it, and how large is the
budget devoted to them?”
An obvious way to deSne safety is to enumerate the adverse events you are trying to
prevent. In my previous essay I focused on deepfakes as the principal risk posed by
generative AI. I did that for two reasons: the high probability of them becoming a problem,
and my assessment that they had even fewer redeeming qualities than cryptocurrency 5.
It’s pretty obvious that the adverse eJects of deepfakes upon individuals, institutions, and
systems of government are well past the hypothetical stage 6. Those eJects are succiently
damaging to justify the assertion I will make now: deepfakes represent a major failure on
the part of the AI vendors to achieve safety. To continue with the Deepwater Horizon
analogy, we are now in the position the country was in during the middle of 2010, when an
out of control well was spewing hydrocarbons into the environment and and various
governmental and nongovernmental activities were scrambling to Snd some way to deal
with it. Instead of hydrocarbons eooding from a damaged well, we now have sophisticated
forgeries eooding from multiple facilities into an insecure internet and beyond.
When the comfort of safety transitions to the pain of catastrophe, I believe the proper
societal response is to ask how such a thing could happen, if for no other reason than to try
and prevent a recurrence. And I think one of the Srst questions that any forensic eJort
should ask is: “Was this event foreseeable?” Once you answer that, then you can proceed to
investigate when, where, and how the safety structure failed.
In the case of deepfakes, I Snd the evidence compelling that the answer to the above
question is “Yes, anybody working in the Seld should have seen this coming.” The term
“deepfake” was coined in a reddit forum in 2017 7. A comprehensive warning of the current
situation was published in a major journal in 2020 8. That’s a long time in internet years
before the unleashing of generative AI on the world by the OpenAI CEO in 2022.
And so I’ll give a second suggestion to journalists out there:
ABer you’ve asked the AI developer what their safety structure was, ask them why it failed, and
what they intend to do by way of remediation.
The answers should be of interest to us all.
1
Brian Merchant, “This was the year of AI. Next year is when you should worry about your job,”
Los Angeles Times, 14 December 2023.
2
Kolina Koltai, “AnyDream: Secretive AI Platform Broke Stripe Rules to Rake in Money from
Nonconsensual Pornographic Deepfakes,” bellingcat.com, 27 November 2023.
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Link
4
General Motors, which has a functioning safety structure, evidently applied it to their Cruise selfdriving subsidiary and Sred its entire management. Greg Bensinger, “Exclusive: GM's Cruise
robotaxi unit dismisses nine execs aQer safety probe,” Reuters, 13 December 2023.
5
The adverse eJects of cryptocurrency are severe enough to unite banker Jamie Dimon and his
long-term adversary Senator Elizabeth Warren: “Banking adversaries Elizabeth Warren and
Jamie Dimon have found common ground on crypto,” Quartz, 7 December 2023. Deepfakes strike
at the heart of civilization: “The rise of AI fake news is creating a ‘misinformation
superspreader’,” Pranshu Verma, Washington Post, 17 December 2023.
6
An aid to keeping up with the eood AI incidents is the summary page maintained by the
Organisation for EconomicCo-operation and Development: oecd.ai/e/incidents
7
Sally Adee, “What Are Deepfakes and How Are They Created?,” IEEE Spectrum, 29 April 2020.
8
ibid.
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Bob Mullen Writes Bob’s Substack Dec 19, 2023
On March 13, 2023 it was reported that Microsoft laid off their entire "ethical AI team."
If I take that at face value, it sounds troubling. On the other hand it was awfully close to
April Fool's Day or a sick oxymoronic joke. What do you think? (Bob Mullen)
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1 reply by Earl Boebert
David Beierl Dec 19, 2023
Bravo.
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