OpenAI Engineer: AI Labs Are “Racing Each Other Kind of Blindfolded”

Cerón Uribe, a research engineer at OpenAI since 2022 who now works on stopping ChatGPT from helping people make bioweapons, says frontier labs are “racing each other kind of blindfolded”. He describes pressure to ship flowing down from leadership, and says talk of existential risk at OpenAI has given way to product and revenue as the company grew, with what he calls a loss of academic freedom. He argues that only internationally coordinated pacing counts, and that pacing “gives you time to do homework, but it doesn’t do your homework”. He stays because his work still reduces large-scale risk, but cannot say that will hold next year.