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William Saunders

Alignment Science Researcher, Anthropic · 1 appearance on the record.

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scientistengineerotherwilliamrsaunders.substack.com ↗

Saunders conducted research on OpenAI’s Alignment and Superalignment teams from 2021 to 2024 focusing on scalable oversight, but resigned over safety concerns. He subsequently co-authored the "Right to Warn" open letter and testified before the U.S. Senate on AI oversight and whistleblower protections.

9statements → 5claims → 1claims resolved → 3.56/5average certainty → 2.89/5average debate potential → 1said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 4 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 4 assertions · 3 opinions · 1 insight · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how William argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Saunders: AI-assisted critique helps humans detect model errors
“What some of the research that I did at OpenAI was, you know, trying to develop techniques for this, and the simple technique that we tried and showed that worked was just ask a different AI system, or even the same AI system, is there a problem with this answ…”
William Saunders Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 8:13 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of William Saunders on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything William Saunders said on Big Technology that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Saunders: Many at OpenAI discuss a three-year timeline to AGI
“And you know, what people were talking about at the company in terms of timelines to something dangerous were like, there were people talking, a lot of people talking about similar things to like the predictions of like, Leopold Aschenbrenner, where it's like …”
William Saunders Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 37:53 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About
Opinion
Saunders: OpenAI prioritizes shiny products over safety like the Titanic
“OpenAI claimed that their mission was to build safe and beneficial AGI, and I thought that this would mean that they would prioritize, you know, putting safety first. But over time, it started to really feel like the decisions being made by leadership were mor…”
William Saunders Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 2:36 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Saunders: Departure from OpenAI was not caused by witnessing immediate harm
“If there were, if there was a group of people that I knew were being seriously harmed by this technology first, I still really hope that open AI would like do the right thing and address this. If this was like a very clear cut case. I also personally would you…”
William Saunders Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 11:47 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About
Opinion
Saunders: GPT-4 is safe, but GPT-5 or later might be the Titanic
“I don't think that I was working on the Titanic. I don't think that GPT four was the Titanic. I'm more, I'm afraid that like GPT five or GPT six or GPT seven might be the Titanic in, in, in this analogy.”
William Saunders Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 12:16 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About
Insight
Saunders: Small model oversight of large models clearly misses violations
“Some systems that the company has talked about involve using a very like small and dumb language model to like monitor what a larger language model is doing. And this will like clearly miss a bunch of things.”
William Saunders Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 16:42 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About
Opinion
Saunders: California SB 1047 creates a superior model for AI whistleblowing
“I think that like a model that I think might work, you know, I think I personally think would work better would be like, The model more proposed in California Senate bill, 1047, where there would be like a, you know, the, where the law would create like, you k…”
William Saunders Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 30:53 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Saunders gives 10% probability of human-level remote AI within three years
“And I'm, you know, not as convinced about Leopold that this is necessarily going to come soon, but I think, you know, there's maybe like a 10% probability that this happens within three years.”
William Saunders Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 50:49 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Saunders: Most OpenAI employees and alignment efforts are English-focused
“Most of the people at opening I speak English. Most of the alignment work is done in English.”
William Saunders Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 15:32 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About
Assertion Supported
Saunders: AI-assisted critique helps humans detect model errors
“What some of the research that I did at OpenAI was, you know, trying to develop techniques for this, and the simple technique that we tried and showed that worked was just ask a different AI system, or even the same AI system, is there a problem with this answ…”
William Saunders Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 8:13 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About

The other half of the tape: William Saunders's own voice is left out of every number here. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Statements about William Saunders, by other people (1)

Opinion
Lessig: Federal AI whistleblower framework requires new legislation, not just FTC authority
“I mean, you know, agencies like the FTC believe they have lots of inherent jurisdiction that they could set up something that would be close to this, but the kind of thing that would convince people like William would require legislation the way California has…”
Lawrence "Larry" Lessig Jul 3, 2024 ▶ 32:48 What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
What The Ex-OpenAI Safety Employees Are Worried About Jul 3, 2024 20m
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