Important Takeaways:

• A group of OpenAI insiders is blowing the whistle on what they say is a culture of recklessness and secrecy at the San Francisco artificial intelligence company, which is racing to build the most powerful A.I. systems ever created.
• The members say OpenAI, which started as a nonprofit research lab and burst into public view with the 2022 release of ChatGPT, is putting a priority on profits and growth as it tries to build artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., the industry term for a computer program capable of doing anything a human can.
• They also claim that OpenAI has used hardball tactics to prevent workers from voicing their concerns about the technology, including restrictive nondisparagement agreements that departing employees were asked to sign.
• The group published an open letter on Tuesday calling for leading A.I. companies, including OpenAI, to establish greater transparency and more protections for whistle-blowers.
• Kokotajlo, 31, joined OpenAI in 2022 as a governance researcher and was asked to forecast A.I. progress. He was not, to put it mildly, optimistic.
• In his previous job at an A.I. safety organization, he predicted that A.G.I. might arrive in 2050. But after seeing how quickly A.I. was improving, he shortened his timelines. Now he believes there is a 50 percent chance that A.G.I. will arrive by 2027 — in just three years.
• He also believes that the probability that advanced A.I. will destroy or catastrophically harm humanity — a grim statistic often shortened to “p(doom)” in A.I. circles — is 70 percent.
• Eventually, Mr. Kokotajlo said, he became so worried that, last year, he told Mr. Altman that the company should “pivot to safety” and spend more time and resources guarding against A.I.’s risks rather than charging ahead to improve its models. He said that Mr. Altman had claimed to agree with him, but that nothing much changed.
• In April, he quit. In an email to his team, he said he was leaving because he had “lost confidence that OpenAI will behave responsibly” as its systems approach human-level intelligence.
• “The world isn’t ready, and we aren’t ready,” Mr. Kokotajlo wrote. “And I’m concerned we are rushing forward regardless and rationalizing our actions.”
• “There needs to be some sort of democratically accountable, transparent governance structure in charge of this process,” Mr. Kokotajlo said. “Instead of just a couple of different private companies racing with each other, and keeping it all secret.”

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