OpenAI researcher Boaz Barak: agrees with many of David Robinson's points, but not the title

Barak disagrees with the framing of Robinson's Atlantic title but agrees with many of his points. He says the problem is industry-wide: AI went from research labs to world-changing technology in a few years, like going "from Wright brothers to flying billions of people", without aviation's slow time to learn safety lessons.

I disagree with the framing in the title, but agree with many points @dgrobinson makes here. This is not OpenAI specific, but the entire AI industry evolved in few short years from research labs doing cool projects to creating a technology that fundamentally alters the world. The equivalent in aviation would be evolving from Wright brothers to flying billions of people. (And AGI would be like evolving from Wright brothers to commercial space travel.)

The aviation industry learned a lot of safety lessons the hard way, which was possible since the pace of transformation was sufficiently slow. In AI, we will not have that luxury.

Quoting @TheAtlantic: .@dgrobinson, who worked on OpenAI’s safety team, resigned from the company this week. “I believe we need to look deeper than specific rules or new laws. We need to talk about culture,” he writes: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/openai-safety-team-resignation/688881/?taid=6ac0f0ba9f70760001f237bd&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Media: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HTt-Tz_bQAAfRS3.jpg?name=orig

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Archived 2026-10-04 via fxtwitter (unofficial).