Technology

OpenAI’s ex-policy lead criticizes the company for ‘rewriting’ its AI safety history

A high-profile ex-OpenAI policy researcher, Miles Brundage, took to social media on Wednesday to criticize OpenAI for “rewriting the history” of its deployment approach to potentially risky AI systems.

Earlier this week, OpenAI published a document outlining its current philosophy on AI safety and alignment, the process of designing AI systems that behave in desirable and explainable ways. In the document, OpenAI said that it sees the development of AGI, broadly defined as AI systems that can perform any task a human can, as a “continuous path” that requires “iteratively deploying and learning” from AI technologies.

“In a discontinuous world […] safety lessons come from treating the systems of today with outsized caution relative to their apparent power, [which] is the approach we took for [our AI model] GPT‑2,” OpenAI wrote. “We now view the first AGI as just one point along a series of systems of increasing usefulness […] In the continuous world, the way to make the next system safe and beneficial is to learn from the current system.”

But Brundage claims that GPT-2 did, in fact, warrant abundant caution at the time of its release, and that this was “100% consistent” with OpenAI’s iterative deployment strategy today.

“OpenAI’s release of GPT-2, which I was involved in, was 100% consistent [with and] foreshadowed OpenAI’s current philosophy of iterative deployment,” Brundage wrote in a post on X. “The model was released incrementally, with lessons shared at each step. Many security experts at the time thanked us for this caution.”

Brundage, who joined OpenAI as a research scientist in 2018, was the company’s head of policy research for several years. On OpenAI’s “AGI readiness” team, he had a particular focus on the responsible deployment of language generation systems such as OpenAI’s AI chatbot platform ChatGPT.

GPT-2, which OpenAI announced in 2019, was a progenitor of the AI systems powering ChatGPT. GPT-2 could answer questions about a topic, summarize articles, and generate text on a level sometimes indistinguishable from that of humans.

While GPT-2 and its outputs may look basic today, they were cutting-edge at the time. Citing the risk of malicious use, OpenAI initially refused to release GPT-2’s source code, opting instead of give selected news outlets limited access to a demo.

The decision was met with mixed reviews from the AI industry. Many experts argued that the threat posed by GPT-2 had been exaggerated, and that there wasn’t any evidence the model could be abused in the ways OpenAI described. AI-focused publication The Gradient went so far as to publish an open letter requesting that OpenAI release the model, arguing it was too technologically important to hold back.

OpenAI eventually did release a partial version of GPT-2 six months after the model’s unveiling, followed by the full system several months after that. Brundage thinks this was the right approach.

“What part of [the GPT-2 release] was motivated by or premised on thinking of AGI as discontinuous? None of it,” he said in a post on X. “What’s the evidence this caution was ‘disproportionate’ ex ante? Ex post, it prob. would have been OK, but that doesn’t mean it was responsible to YOLO it [sic] given info at the time.”

Brundage fears that OpenAI’s aim with the document is to set up a burden of proof where “concerns are alarmist” and “you need overwhelming evidence of imminent dangers to act on them.” This, he argues, is a “very dangerous” mentality for advanced AI systems.

“If I were still working at OpenAI, I would be asking why this [document] was written the way it was, and what exactly OpenAI hopes to achieve by poo-pooing caution in such a lop-sided way,” Brundage added.

OpenAI has historically been accused of prioritizing “shiny products” at the expense of safety, and of rushing product releases to beat rival companies to market. Last year, OpenAI dissolved its AGI readiness team, and a string of AI safety and policy researchers departed the company for rivals.

Competitive pressures have only ramped up. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek captured the world’s attention with its openly available R1 model, which matched OpenAI’s o1 “reasoning” model on a number of key benchmarks. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has admitted that DeepSeek has lessened OpenAI’s technological lead, and said that OpenAI would “pull up some releases” to better compete.

There’s a lot of money on the line. OpenAI loses billions annually, and the company has reportedly projected that its annual losses could triple to $14 billion by 2026. A faster product release cycle could benefit OpenAI’s bottom line near-term, but possibly at the expense of safety long-term. Experts like Brundage question whether the trade-off is worth it.

Technology

Pintarnya raises $16.7M to power jobs and financial services in Indonesia

Pintarnya, an Indonesian employment platform that goes beyond job matching by offering financial services along with full-time and side-gig opportunities, said it has raised a $16.7 million Series A round.

The funding was led by Square Peg with participation from existing investors Vertex Venture Southeast Asia & India and East Ventures.

Ghirish Pokardas, Nelly Nurmalasari, and Henry Hendrawan founded Pintarnya in 2022 to tackle two of the biggest challenges Indonesians face daily: earning enough and borrowing responsibly.

“Traditionally, mass workers in Indonesia find jobs offline through job fairs or word of mouth, with employers buried in paper applications and candidates rarely hearing back. For borrowing, their options are often limited to family/friend or predatory lenders with harsh collection practices,” Henry Hendrawan, co-founder of Pintarnya, told TechCrunch. “We digitize job matching with AI to make hiring faster and we provide workers with safer, healthier lending options — designed around what they can reasonably afford, rather than pushing them deeper into debt.”

Around 59% of Indonesia’s 150 million workforce is employed in the informal sector, highlighting the difficulties these workers encounter in accessing formal financial services because they lack verifiable income and official employment documentation.

Pintarnya tackles this challenge by partnering with asset-backed lenders to offer secured loans, using collateral such as gold, electronics, or vehicles, Hendrawan added.

Since its seed funding in 2022, the platform currently serves over 10 million job seeker users and 40,000 employers nationwide. Its revenue has increased almost fivefold year-over-year and expects to reach break-even by the end of the year, Hendrawn noted. Pintarnya primarily serves users aged 21 to 40, most of whom have a high school education or a diploma below university level. The startup aims to focus on this underserved segment, given the large population of blue-collar and informal workers in Indonesia.

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“Through the journey of building employment services, we discovered that our users needed more than just jobs — they needed access to financial services that traditional banks couldn’t provide,” said Hendrawan. “We digitize job matching with AI to make hiring faster and we provide workers with safer, healthier lending options — designed around what they can reasonably afford, rather than pushing them deeper into debt.”

image credits: Pintarnya (Founders of Pintarnya Ghirish Pokardas, Nelly Nurmalasari, and Henry Hendrawan)

While Indonesia already has job platforms like JobStreet, Kalibrr, and Glints, these primarily cater to white-collar roles, which represent only a small portion of the workforce, according to Hendrawan. Pintarnya’s platform is designed specifically for blue-collar workers, offering tailored experiences such as quick-apply options for walk-in interviews, affordable e-learning on relevant skills, in-app opportunities for supplemental income, and seamless connections to financial services like loans.

The same trend is evident in Indonesia’s fintech sector, which similarly caters to white-collar or upper-middle-class consumers. Conventional credit scoring models for loans, which rely on steady monthly income and bank account activity, often leave blue-collar workers overlooked by existing fintech providers, Hendrawan explained.

When asked about which fintech services are most in demand, Hendrawan mentioned, “Given their employment status, lending is the most in-demand financial service for Pintarnya’s users today. We are planning to ‘graduate’ them to micro-savings and investments down the road through innovative products with our partners.”

The new funding will enable Pintarnya to strengthen its platform technology and broaden its financial service offerings through strategic partnerships. With most Indonesian workers employed in blue-collar and informal sectors, the co-founders see substantial growth opportunities in the local market. Leveraging their extensive experience in managing businesses across Southeast Asia, they are also open to exploring regional expansion when the timing is right.

“Our vision is for Pintarnya to be the everyday companion that empowers Indonesians to not only make ends meet today, but also plan, grow, and upgrade their lives tomorrow … In five years, we see Pintarnya as the go-to super app for Indonesia’s workers, not just for earning income, but as a trusted partner throughout their life journey,” Hendrawan said. “We want to be the first stop when someone is looking for work, a place that helps them upgrade their skills, and a reliable guide as they make financial decisions.”

Technology

OpenAI warns against SPVs and other ‘unauthorized’ investments

In a new blog post, OpenAI warns against “unauthorized opportunities to gain exposure to OpenAI through a variety of means,” including special purpose vehicles, known as SPVs.

“We urge you to be careful if you are contacted by a firm that purports to have access to OpenAI, including through the sale of an SPV interest with exposure to OpenAI equity,” the company writes. The blog post acknowledges that “not every offer of OpenAI equity […] is problematic” but says firms may be “attempting to circumvent our transfer restrictions.”

“If so, the sale will not be recognized and carry no economic value to you,” OpenAI says.

Investors have increasingly used SPVs (which pool money for one-off investments) as a way to buy into hot AI startups, prompting other VCs to criticize them as a vehicle for “tourist chumps.”

Business Insider reports that OpenAI isn’t the only major AI company looking to crack down on SPVs, with Anthropic reportedly telling Menlo Ventures it must use its own capital, not an SPV, to invest in an upcoming round.

Technology

Meta partners with Midjourney on AI image and video models

Meta is partnering with Midjourney to license the startup’s AI image and video generation technology, Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang announced Friday in a post on Threads. Wang says Meta’s research teams will collaborate with Midjourney to bring its technology into future AI models and products.

“To ensure Meta is able to deliver the best possible products for people it will require taking an all-of-the-above approach,” Wang said. “This means world-class talent, ambitious compute roadmap, and working with the best players across the industry.”

The Midjourney partnership could help Meta develop products that compete with industry-leading AI image and video models, such as OpenAI’s Sora, Black Forest Lab’s Flux, and Google’s Veo. Last year, Meta rolled out its own AI image generation tool, Imagine, into several of its products, including Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Meta also has an AI video generation tool, Movie Gen, that allows users to create videos from prompts.

The licensing agreement with Midjourney marks Meta’s latest deal to get ahead in the AI race. Earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on a hiring spree for AI talent, offering some researchers compensation packages worth upwards of $100 million. The social media giant also invested $14 billion in Scale AI, and acquired the AI voice startup Play AI.

Meta has held talks with several other leading AI labs about other acquisitions, and Zuckerberg even spoke with Elon Musk about joining his $97 billion takeover bid of OpenAI (Meta ultimately did not join the offer, and OpenAI denied Musk’s bid).

While the terms of Meta’s deal with Midjourney remain unknown, the startup’s CEO, David Holz, said in a post on X that his company remains independent with no investors; Midjourney is one of the few leading AI model developers that has never taken on outside funding. At one point, Meta talked with Midjourney about acquiring the startup, according to Upstarts Media.

Midjourney was founded in 2022 and quickly became a leader in the AI image generation space for its realistic, unique style. By 2023, the startup was reportedly on pace to generate $200 million in revenue. The startup sells subscriptions starting at $10 per month. It offers pricier tiers, which offer more AI image generations, that cost as much as $120 per month. In June, the startup released its first AI video model, V1.

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Meta’s partnership with Midjourney comes just two months after the startup was sued by Disney and Universal, alleging that it trained AI image models on copyrighted works. Several AI model developers — including Meta — face similar allegations from copyright holders, however, recent court cases pertaining to AI training data have sided with tech companies.

Got a sensitive tip or confidential documents? We’re reporting on the inner workings of the AI industry — from the companies shaping its future to the people impacted by their decisions. Reach out to Rebecca Bellan at [email protected] and Maxwell Zeff at [email protected]. For secure communication, you can contact us via Signal at @rebeccabellan.491 and @mzeff.88.

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