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

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,

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.

> Easy to suddenly find a moral compass when you, your kids and their kids never have to worry about working for money again.

It is even easier to just quietly retire and spend the spend of your life on interesting expensive hobbies.

If they are wrong about the things they are claiming then they have decided to publicly antagonize a lot of powerful people who are betting heavily on going full steam ahead on AI and have no compunction whatsoever against retaliating against anyone who tries to get in their way.

Does that really seem a likely scenario to you?

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.

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

I see what you're saying but how does that actually matter besides being a personal attack?

Insane take. Imagine a Boeing engineer resigning whistleblowing about aircraft safety, and the top comment on HN saying “ignore this if he doesn’t donate all his wealth, he just wants to be an aircraft safety influencer”

You are clearly accusing these people of something. Be clear.

Yes, it is easier to have a moral compass when you don’t have to worry about you and your children starving. But that doesn’t imply that moral compass is wrong or broken.

'government whistleblowers should be required to quit their government jobs to be taken seriously'

> 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.

I mean you can be truly concerned and also think donating to AI safety doesnt work, or maybe just be a bit selfish. That doesnt make the concern less real. Its easy to read these articles as the author taking the moral high ground and writing it as some sort of way of proving to themselves theyre a good person, but isnt it just as likely that they think providing an inside perspective can do good by convincing people openAI is a bad actor? I think most of these AI insider accounts largely agree with you that theyre not the most upstanding citizens, does that mean we should write them off?

I'm in full agreement. So many cases of this, and many other others such as falling out with management and peers, new more lucrative offer, and so fourth. Its obvious that these people who come forward are not going to suffer for their new found moral compass.