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Leopold Aschenbrenner

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Leopold Aschenbrenner is an Artificial intelligence (AI) researcher who was fired by OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, and subsequently published a popular essay about the eventual security risks from future AI technologies.

Biography

Aschenbrenner was born in Germany. He did research for the Global Priorities Initiative at Oxford University and co-authored a 2024 paper with Philip Trammell. As of 2024, he lived in the Bay area. He worked on a team at OpenAI that handled AI alignment with future human objectives.

In 2023, Aschenbrenner wrote to the OpenAI board of directors about the possibility of industrial espionage by Chinese and other non-U.S. entities. He provided confidential company information to outsiders and was dismissed by the company. He alleged that he was fired for political reasons. OpenAI stated that he was not fired because of the security issues he had emphasized and disputed his opinions about security risks.

Aschenbrenner said that he started an investment firm with investors Patrick and John Collison, Daniel Gross, and Nat Friedman.

Situational Awareness essay

He wrote a 165-page essay that has been seen as a manifesto about the risks of Artificial general intelligence, "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead." His approach has been described as optimistic determinism. "Situational Awareness" has sections that predict the emergence of AGI, imagine a path from AGI to "superintelligence," describe four risks to humanity, outline a way for humans to deal with superintelligent machines, and articulate the principles of an "AGI realism."

  1. Metz, Cade (2024-07-04). "A Hacker Stole OpenAI Secrets, Raising Fears That China Could, Too". Archived from the original on 2024-12-26. Retrieved 2024-12-27.
  2. Naughton, John (2024-06-15). "How's this for a bombshell – the US must make AI its next Manhattan Project". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2024-12-27.