My tendency is to believe that the individuals do not what matter as much, when it comes to the biggest risks. I'm not sure if this is a bias or a theory... but I lean to some sort of "medium is the message" determinism.

>"He acknowledged that the alignment problem remained unsolved, but he redefined it—rather than being a deadly threat, it was an inconvenience, like the algorithms that tempt us to waste time scrolling on Instagram."

Before "don't be evil" was a cliche, I think it was a real guiding principle at Google and they built a world class business that way.

Facebook's rival ad platform didn't have search queries to target ads at. Aggressive utilization of user data was the only way they could build an Adwords-scale business. As they pushed this norm, Google followed.

Doomscroll addiction gets a lot of attention because engineers and journalists have children and parents. There are other risks though. Political stability, for example.

By early 2010s, smartphones were reaching places that had almost no modern media previously. Often powered by FB-exclusive data plans. The Arab spring happened, then ISIS. FB-centric propaganda seemingly played a major role in a major conflict/atrocity in Burma. Coups in Africa powered by social media based propaganda. Worrying political implications in the west. Unhinged uncle syndrome. Etc. Social media risks/implications were more than just "inconvenience."

At no point did we really see tech companies go into mitigation mode. Even CYA was relatively limited. There was no moment of truth. It was business as usual.

So... I think OpenAI's initial charter was naive. Science fiction almost. It was never going to withstand commercial reality, politics, competition and suchlike. I think these are greater than the individuals involved.

That doesn't mean we should ignore, excuse or otherwise tolerate lack of integrity. But, I don't think it is a way of reducing risk.

Whether the risk is skynet, economic turmoil, politics, psych epidemics or whatever... I don't think the personal integrity of executives is a major factor.