“We’re Going To Race Off A Cliff” – Why A Former OpenAI Researcher Wants AI Regulation

Patrick Bet-David (0:00)

You brought up Leopold earlier. Leopold got the sequencing right.

Got fired, story goes out, hey, here's my manifesto, you know, when he wrote that, we talked about it earlier, and in it, he says, it's not really such and such stocks that we have to worry about. We have to put our money into this and this, and it's the infrastructure that's gonna make a lot of money in. For the most part, he did well. You know, people made a lot of money, and then stories came out about how much of it was on margin and how much risk he was taking, four to one, two to one, three to one. But his outcome was, I'm gonna quit, I'm gonna write this paper, it's gonna go viral, I'm gonna start a firm, I'm gonna raise money. I think GitHub guys got involved at the beginning. He got some big names that got involved. What's your financial next move? What's your financial benefit of doing this?

Jacob Coxon (0:49)

There is no financial benefit. So Leopold, I think...

Patrick Bet-David (0:51)

So you have nothing new to launch in the next three to six months?

Jacob Coxon (0:54)

I'm not gonna try and milk this. I'm not doing anything. I'm going to...

One way I will exploit the crazy temporary fame of the situation is through having conversations with lots of researchers I respect that previously would have made less time for me and now I can talk more about the situation. And there's work I intend to do. There's lots of work, but I'm not trying to make any more money from this.

Patrick Bet-David (1:16)

How much money did you leave on the table by doing this?

Jacob Coxon (1:18)

By leaving Anthropic.

Patrick Bet-David (1:19)

By leaving Anthropic.

Jacob Coxon (1:21)

I'm not gonna say the exact detail, but seven figures.

Patrick Bet-David (1:24)

Seven figures?

Jacob Coxon (1:24)

Yeah.

Patrick Bet-David (1:25)

Okay, but let's go a little bit deeper. If you would have stayed five years and you would have done your part, you would have moved up potentially 50 million, 100 million?

Jacob Coxon (1:32)

Five years. That's the problem. So I'm thinking about that, and it's like, it's not gonna be the same in five years. In five years, everything looks different.

Patrick Bet-David (1:39)

Okay.

Jacob Coxon (1:39)

This is, and I think the people that are talking about, they have these sums of money and these plans for the future, and they're just not thinking about how crazy it's gonna get.

Patrick Bet-David (1:45)

So to you, one, you're not a socialist leftist, that you belong to this NGO, that you're a pro Bernie Sanders, or one, a capitalist, free market, libertarian. You don't believe in the climate change is gonna end the tech, though. COVID handling wasn't right. You thought it was a little bit too much. Okay, check. Let's set that aside. Number two, there is not a, I'm about to announce a hedge fund, private equity firm, and this is why our private equity focuses on AI regulation and da-da-da-da. You're not gonna launch anything like that. So how are you gonna make money?

How are you making money, right?

Jacob Coxon (2:18)

Luckily, I have this money from OpenAI, right? And I think I will get a job. I mean, I'm going to get a job doing some form of...

Patrick Bet-David (2:23)

Within the space.

Jacob Coxon (2:24)

Within the space. And I think the job will most likely be around predicting where AI will go, trying to share that writing with other people. And also, I really, like I said, it sounds crazy, it sounds cultish. Things are gonna change so much in the next few years. Unemployment is gonna be a problem when we release, when we can automate a lot of white-collar jobs.

You know, I have enough money for a few years, and I really don't know what the world looks like. Like, if I'm wrong, I can get a job in a few years. That'll be great, but I don't think I'm wrong.

Patrick Bet-David (2:55)

Got it. So for you, if you're hedging of you being right or wrong, if you're right, you have money and you want to do something to make a difference the next 12, 24 months. It sounds like that's your timeline. You don't think five, you think five years is too late.

Jacob Coxon (3:09)

I don't think necessarily that the really bad thing happens, but I think that the critical decisions, the crucial decisions about whether we slow down or not, they will happen in the next couple of years.

Patrick Bet-David (3:17)

If we're gonna slow down or not.