I think this is a good policy and broadly agree with your position.
It’s a bit awkward to mention, but as you’ve said that you’ve delisted other roles at OpenAI and that OpenAI has acted badly before—I think you should consider explicitly saying that you don’t necessarily endorse other roles at OpenAI and suspect that some other role may be harmful on the OpenAI jobs board cards.
I’m a little worried about people seeing OpenAI listed on the board and inferring that the 80k recommendation somewhat transfers to other roles at OpenAI (which, imo is a reasonable heuristic for most companies listed on the board—but fails in this specific case).
Fwiw, I don’t think that being on the 80k podcast is much of an endorsement of the work that people are doing. I think the signal is much more like “we think this person is impressive and interesting”, which is consistent with other “interview podcasts” (and I suspect that it’s especially true of podcasts that are popular amongst 80k listeners).
I also think having OpenAI employees discuss their views publicly with smart and altruistic people like Rob is generally pretty great, and I would personally be excited for 80k to have more OpenAI employees (particularly if they are willing to talk about why they do/don’t think AIS is important and talk about their AI worldview).
Having a line at the start of the podcast making it clear that they don’t necessarily endorse the org the guest works for would mitigate most concerns—though I don’t think it’s particularly necessary.
I would agree with this if 80k didn’t make it so easy for the podcast episodes to become PR vehicles for the companies: some time back 80k changed their policy and now they send all questions to interviewees in advance, and let them remove any answers they didn’t like upon reflection. Both of these make it very straightforward for the companies’ PR teams to influence what gets said in an 80k podcast episode, and remove any confidence that you’re getting an accurate representation of the researcher’s views, rather than what the PR team has approved them to say.
I think this is a good policy and broadly agree with your position.
It’s a bit awkward to mention, but as you’ve said that you’ve delisted other roles at OpenAI and that OpenAI has acted badly before—I think you should consider explicitly saying that you don’t necessarily endorse other roles at OpenAI and suspect that some other role may be harmful on the OpenAI jobs board cards.
I’m a little worried about people seeing OpenAI listed on the board and inferring that the 80k recommendation somewhat transfers to other roles at OpenAI (which, imo is a reasonable heuristic for most companies listed on the board—but fails in this specific case).
I think this halo effect could be reduced by making small UI changes:
Removing the OpenAI logo
Replacing the “OpenAI” name in the search results by “Harmful frontier AI Lab” or similar
Starting with a disclaimer on why this specific job might be good despite the overall org being bad
I would be all for a cleanup of 80k material to remove mentions of OpenAI as a place to improve the world.
The first two bullets don’t seem like small UI changes to me; the second, in particular, seems too adversarial imo.
fwiw I don’t think replacing the OpenAI logo or name makes much sense.
I do think it’s pretty important to actively communicate that even the safety roles shouldn’t be taken at face value.
I agree with your second point Caleb, which is also why I think 80k need to stop having OpenAI (or similar) employees on their podcast.
Why? Because employer brand Halo Effects are real and significant.
Fwiw, I don’t think that being on the 80k podcast is much of an endorsement of the work that people are doing. I think the signal is much more like “we think this person is impressive and interesting”, which is consistent with other “interview podcasts” (and I suspect that it’s especially true of podcasts that are popular amongst 80k listeners).
I also think having OpenAI employees discuss their views publicly with smart and altruistic people like Rob is generally pretty great, and I would personally be excited for 80k to have more OpenAI employees (particularly if they are willing to talk about why they do/don’t think AIS is important and talk about their AI worldview).
Having a line at the start of the podcast making it clear that they don’t necessarily endorse the org the guest works for would mitigate most concerns—though I don’t think it’s particularly necessary.
I would agree with this if 80k didn’t make it so easy for the podcast episodes to become PR vehicles for the companies: some time back 80k changed their policy and now they send all questions to interviewees in advance, and let them remove any answers they didn’t like upon reflection. Both of these make it very straightforward for the companies’ PR teams to influence what gets said in an 80k podcast episode, and remove any confidence that you’re getting an accurate representation of the researcher’s views, rather than what the PR team has approved them to say.