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TechCrunch AI 23일 전

머스크 소송, 오픈AI 안전 기록 현미경 분석

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일론 머스크의 소송으로 오픈AI의 이익 추구가 창립 미션을 훼손하고 안전을 경시했다는 논란이 수면 위로 올랐습니다. 전 임직원들은 제품 출시에 급급해 안전팀을 해산하고 모델 평가를 우회했다고 증언하며 샘 알트만 CEO의 투명성 결여를 지적했습니다. 이 재판은 오픈AI의 비영리 이사회가 영리 자회사를 제대로 감독했는지를 판가름하는 중요한 기로가 되고 있습니다.

번역된 본문

일론 머스크가 오픈AI를 해체하려는 법적 시도는 영리 자회사가 인류가 범용 인공지능(AGI)의 혜택을 누리게 한다는 최고 수준의 연구소 창립 미션을 강화했는지, 아니면 훼손했는지에 달려 있을 수 있다.

지난 목요일, 오클랜드 연방 법원은 회사가 AI 제품을 시장에 출시하려는 노력이 AI 안전에 대한 약속을 타협했다고 말하는 전 직원이자 이사회 멤버의 증언을 들었다. 로지 캠벨(Rosie Campbell)은 2021년 회사의 'AGI 준비(AGI readiness)' 팀에 합류했고, 자신의 팀이 해산된 후 2024년 오픈AI를 떠났다. 안전에 초점을 맞춘 또 다른 팀인 '슈퍼 얼라인먼트(Super Alignment)' 팀도 같은 시기에 폐쇄되었다.

"제가 합류했을 때만 해도 연구에 매우 집중했고 AGI 및 안전 문제에 대해 이야기하는 것이 흔했습니다."라고 그녀는 증언했다. "시간이 지나면서 점점 더 제품 중심적인 조직이 되었습니다."

교차 심문에서 캠벨은 AGI 구축이라는 연구소의 목표를 달성하려면 상당한 자금이 필요할 것이라는 점을 인정하면서도, 적절한 안전 조치 없이 초지능 컴퓨터 모델을 만드는 것은 자신이 처음에 합류했던 조직의 미션과 맞지 않다고 말했다.

캠벨은 마이크로소프트가 회사의 '배포 안전 위원회(Deployment Safety Board, DSB)'의 평가를 받기도 전에 인도의 빙(Bing) 검색 엔진을 통해 회사의 GPT-4 모델 버전을 배포한 사건을 지적했다. 모델 자체는 큰 위험을 초래하지는 않았지만, 기술이 더욱 강력해짐에 따라 강력한 선례를 세울 필요가 있었다고 그녀는 말했다. 그녀는 "우리는 제대로 지켜지고 있다는 것을 알 수 있는 좋은 안전 프로세스를 갖추고 싶어 한다"고 덧붙였다.

오픈AI 측 변호사들은 캠벨이 자신의 '추측적 의견'으로 오픈AI의 안전 접근 방식이 머스크가 설립하고 올해 초 스페이스X에 인수된 AI 기업 xAI보다 우수하다는 점을 인정하게 하기도 했다.

오픈AI는 자체 모델에 대한 평가 결과를 공개하고 안전 프레임워크를 공유하고 있지만, AGI 정렬(alignment)에 대한 현재의 접근 방식에 대한 논평은 거부했다. 오픈AI의 현재 '준비(Preparedness)' 책임자인 딜런 스캔디나로(Dylan Scandinaro)는 올해 2월 앤스로픽(Anthropic)에서 영입되었다. 알트만은 이 영입으로 인해 "오늘 밤 더 잘 잘 수 있을 것"이라고 말한 바 있다.

그러나 인도에서의 GPT-4 배포는 오픈AI의 비영리 이사회가 2023년 샘 알트만 CEO를 일시적으로 해임하게 된 위험 신호 중 하나였다. 이 사건은 당시 최고 과학책임자였던 일리야 수츠케버(Ilya Sutskever)와 최고 기술책임자(CTO) 미라 무라티(Mira Murati)를 포함한 직원들이 알트만의 갈등을 회피하는 관리 방식에 불만을 제기한 후 발생했다.

당시 이사회 멤버였던 타샤 맥콜리(Tasha McCauley)는 알트만이 이사회에 충분히 솔직하지 않아 비영리 이사회의 특이한 구조가 제 기능을 하지 못한다는 우려에 대해 증언했다. 맥콜리는 알트만이 이사회를 오도한 널리 보도된 패턴에 대해서도 논의했다.

특히 알트만은 오픈AI의 안전 정책에 대한 암시적인 비판이 포함된 백서를 발표한 제3의 이사회 멤버인 헬렌 토너(Helen Toner)를 해임하려는 맥콜리의 의도에 대해 다른 이사회 멤버에게 거짓말을 했다. 또한 알트만은 챗GPT(ChatGPT)를 공개적으로 출시하기로 한 결정을 이사회에 알리지 않았고, 잠재적인 이해상충을 공개하지 않은 점에 대해서도 멤버들의 우려를 샀다.

맥콜리는 법원에 "우리는 비영리 이사회였고 우리의 사명은 산하에 있는 영리 기업을 감독하는 것이었다"라고 말했다. "우리가 그렇게 할 수 있는 주요 방법은 철저함을 유지하는 것이었다."

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Elon Musk's legal effort to dismantle OpenAI may hinge on how its for-profit subsidiary enhances or detracts from the frontier lab's founding mission of ensuring that humanity benefits from artificial general intelligence. On Thursday, a federal court in Oakland heard a former employee and board member say the company's efforts to push AI products into the marketplace compromised its commitment to AI safety. Rosie Campbell joined the company's AGI readiness team in 2021, and left OpenAI in 2024 after her team was disbanded. Another safety-focused team, the Super Alignment team, was shut down in the same time period. "When I joined it was very research-focused and common for people to talk about AGI and safety issues," she testified. "Over time it became more like a product-focused organization." Under cross-examination, Campbell acknowledged that significant funding was likely necessary for the lab's goal of building AGI, but said creating a super-intelligent computer model without the right safety measures in place wouldn't fit with the mission of the organization she originally joined. Campbell pointed to an incident where Microsoft deployed a version of the company's GPT-4 model in India through its Bing search engine before the model had been evaluated by the company's Deployment Safety Board (DSB). The model itself did not present a huge risk, she said, but the company needed "to set strong precedents as the technology gets more powerful. We want to have good safety processes in place we know are being followed reliably." OpenAI's attorneys also had Campbell admit that in her "speculative opinion," OpenAI's safety approach is superior to that at xAI, the AI company that Musk founded that was acquired by SpaceX earlier this year. Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 REGISTER NOW OpenAI it releases evaluations of its models and shares a safety framework publicly, but the company declined to comment on its current approach to AGI alignment. Dylan Scandinaro, its current head of Preparedness, was hired from Anthropic in February. Altman said the hire would let him "sleep better tonight." The deployment of GPT-4 in India, however, was one of the red flags that led OpenAI's non-profit board to briefly fire CEO Sam Altman in 2023. That incident took place after employees including then-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and then-CTO Mira Murati complained about Altman's conflict-averse mangement style. Tasha McCauley, a member of the board at the time, testified about concerns that Altman was not forthcoming enough with the board for its unusual structure to function. McCauley also discussed a widely-reported pattern of Altman misleading the board. Notably, Altman lied to another board member about McCauley's intention to remove Helen Toner, a third board member who published a white paper that included some implied criticism of OpenAI's safety policy. Altman also failed to inform the board about the decision to launch ChatGPT publicly, and members were concerned about his lack of disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. "We are a non-profit board and our mandate was to be able to oversee the for-profit underneath us," McCauley told the court. "Our primary way to do that was being called into question. We did not have a high degree of confidence at all to trust that the information being conveyed to us allowed us to make decisions in an informed way." However, the decision to boot Altman came at the same time as a tender offer to the company's employees. McCauley said that when OpenAI's staff started to side with Altman and Microsoft worked to restore the status quo, the board ultimately reversed course, with the members opposed to Altman stepping down. The apparent failure of the non-profit board to influence the for-profit organization goes directly to Musk's case that the transformation of OpenAI from research organization into one of the largest private companies in the world broke the implicit agreement of the organization's founders. David Schizer, a former Dean of Columbia Law School who is being paid by Musk's team to act as an expert witness, echoed McCauley's concerns. "OpenAI has emphasized that a key part of its mission is safety and they are going to prioritze safety over profits," Schizer said. "Part of that is taking safety rules seriously, if something needs to be subject to safety review, it needs to happen. What matters is the process issue." With AI already deeply embedded in for-profit companies, the issue goes far beyond a single lab. McCauley said the failures of internal governance at OpenAI should be a reason to embrace stronger government regulation of advanced AI—"[if] it all comes down to one CEO making those decisions, and we have the public good at stake, that's very suboptimal." Topics AI , Elon Musk , OpenAI , openai lawsuit , sam altman When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission . This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Tim Fernholz Senior Reporter Tim Fernholz is a journalist who writes about technology, finance and public policy. He has closely covered the rise of the private space industry and is the author of Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the New Space Race. Formerly, he was a senior reporter at Quartz, the global business news site, for more than a decade, and began his career as a political reporter in Washington, D.C. You can contact or verify outreach from Tim by emailing tim.fernholz@techcrunch.com or via an encrypted message to tim_fernholz.21 on Signal. View Bio May 27 Athens, Greece StrictlyVC Athens is up next. Hear unfiltered insights straight from Europe’s tech leaders and connect with the people shaping what’s ahead. Lock in your spot before it’s gone. 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