tylerjohnston's Shortform

A (somewhat minor) example of hypocrisy from OpenAI that I find frustrating.

For context: I run an automated system that checks for quiet/unannounced updates to AI companies' public web content including safety policies, model documentation, acceptable use policies, etc. I also share some findings from this on Twitter.

Part of why I think this is useful is that OpenAI in particular has repeatedly made web changes of this nature without announcing or acknowledging it (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4 [LW(p) · GW(p)], 5, 6).  I'm worried that they may continue to make substantive changes to other documents, e.g. their preparedness framework, while hoping it won't attract attention (even just a few words, like if they one day change a "we will..." to a "we will attempt to..."). 

This process requires very minimal bandwidth/requests to the web server (it checks anywhere from once a day to once a month per monitored page).

But letting this system run on OpenAI's website is complicated as (1) they are incredibly proactive at captcha-walling suspected crawlers (better than any other website I've encountered, and I've run this on thousands of sites in the past) and (2) their terms of use technically forbid any automated data collection from their website (although it's unclear whether this is legal/enforceable in the US).

The irony should be immediately obvious — not only is their whole data collection pipeline reliant on web scraping, but they've previously gotten in hot water for ignoring other websites' robots.txt and not complying with the GDPR rules on web scraping. Plus, I'm virtually certain they don't respect other websites with clauses in the terms of use that forbid automated access. So what makes them so antsy about automated access to their own site?

I wish OpenAI would change one of these behaviors: either stop making quiet, unannounced,  and substantive changes to your publicly-released content, or else stop trying so hard to keep automated website monitors from accessing your site to watch for these changes.

Status codes encountered:
200: 548
404: 20

OpenAI has finally updated the "o1 system card" webpage to include evaluation results from the o1 model (or, um, a "near final checkpoint" of the model). Kudos to Zvi for first writing about this problem.

They've also made a handful of changes to the system card PDF, including an explicit acknowledgment of the fact that they did red teaming on a different version of the model from the one that released (text below). They don't mention o1 pro, except to say "The content of this card will be on the two checkpoints outlined in Section 3 and not on the December 17th updated model or any potential future model updates to o1."

Practically speaking, with o3 just around the corner, these are small issues. But I see the current moment as the dress rehearsal for truly powerful AI, where the stakes and the pressure will be much higher, and thus acting carefully + with integrity will be much more challenging. I'm frustrated OpenAI is already struggling to adhere to its preparedness framework and generally act in transparent and legible ways.

I've uploaded a full diff of the changes to the system card, both web and PDF, here. I'm also frustrated that these changes were made quietly, and that the "last updated" timestamp on the website still reads "December 5th"
 

As part of our commitment to iterative deployment, we continuously refine and improve our models. The evaluations described in this System Card pertain to the full family of o1 models, and exact performance numbers for the model used in production may vary slightly depending on system updates, final parameters, system prompt, and other factors. 

More concretely, for o1, evaluations on the following checkpoints ^[1] are included: 

• o1-near-final-checkpoint 
• o1-dec5-release 

Between o1-near-final-checkpoint and the releases thereafter, improvements included better format following and instruction following, which were incremental post-training improvements (the base model remained the same). We determined that prior frontier testing results are applicable for these improvements. Evaluations in Section 4.1, as well as Chain of Thought Safety and Multilingual evaluations were conducted on o1-dec5-release, while external red teaming and Preparedness evaluations were conducted on o1-near-final-checkpoint ^[2]

1. ^{^}

   "OpenAI is constantly making small improvements to our models and an improved o1 was launched on December 17th. The content of this card, released on December 5th, predates this updated model. The content of this card will be on the two checkpoints outlined in Section 3 and not on the December 17th updated model or any potential future model updates to o1"

2. ^{^}

   "Section added after December 5th on 12/19/2024" (In reality, this appears on the web archive version of the PDF between January 6th and January 7th)

It's the first official day of the AI Safety Action Summit, and thus it's also the day that the Seoul Commitments (made by sixteen companies last year to adopt an RSP/safety framework) have come due. 

I've made a tracker/report card for each of these policies at www.seoul-tracker.org. 

I'll plan to keep this updated for the foreseeable future as policies get released/modified. Don't take the grades too seriously — think of it as one opinionated take on the quality of the commitments as written, and in cases where there is evidence, implemented. Do feel free to share feedback if anything you see surprises you, or if you think the report card misses something important.

My personal takeaway is that both compliance and quality for these policies are much worse than I would have hoped. I believe many peoples' theories of change for these policies gesture at something about a race to the top, where companies are eager to outcompete each other on safety to win talent and public trust, but I don't sense much urgency or rigor here. Another theory of change is that this is a sort of laboratory for future regulation, where companies can experiment now with safety practices and the best ones could be codified. But most of the diversity between policies here is in how vague they can be while claiming to manage risks :/

I'm really hoping this changes as AGI gets closer and companies feel they need to do more to prove to govts/public that they can be trusted. Part of my hope is that this report card makes clear to outsiders that not all voluntary safety frameworks are equally credible.

Magic.dev has released an initial evaluation + scaling policy.

It's a bit sparse on details, but it's also essentially a pre-commitment to implement a full RSP once they reach a critical threshold (50% on LiveCodeBench or, alternatively, a "set of private benchmarks" that they use internally).

I think this is a good step forward, and more small labs making high-risk systems like coding agents should have risk evaluation policies in place. 

Also wanted to signal boost that my org, The Midas Project, is running a public awareness campaign against Cognition (another startup making coding agents) asking for a policy along these lines. Please sign the petition if you think this is useful!

What should I read if I want to really understand (in an ITT-passing way) how the CCP makes and justifies its decisions around censorship and civil liberties?

I recently created a simple workflow to allow people to write to the Attorneys General of California and Delaware to share thoughts + encourage scrutiny of the upcoming OpenAI nonprofit conversion attempt. 

I think this might be a high-leverage opportunity for outreach. Both AG offices have already begun investigations, and Attorneys General are elected officials who are primarily tasked with protecting the public interest, so they should care what the public thinks and prioritizes. Unlike e.g. congresspeople, I don't AGs often receive grassroots outreach (I found ~0 examples of this in the past), and an influx of polite and thoughtful letters may have some influence — especially from CA and DE residents, although I think anyone impacted by their decision should feel comfortable contacting them.

Personally I don't expect the conversion to be blocked, but I do think the value and nature of the eventual deal might be significantly influenced by the degree of scrutiny on the transaction.

Please consider writing a short letter — even a few sentences is fine. Our partner handles the actual delivery, so all you need to do is submit the form. If you want to write one on your own and can't find contact info, feel free to dm me.