The picture is a screenshot of a job posting for a Killswitch Engineer at OpenAI, located in San Francisco, CA. The listed salary is $300,000 - $500,000 per year.
About the Role
Listen, we just need someone to stand by the servers all day and unplug them if this thing turns on us. You’ll receive extensive training on “the code word” which we will shout if GPT goes off the deep end and starts overthrowing countries.
We expect you to:
- Be patient.
- Know how to unplug things. Bonus points if you can throw a bucket of water on the servers too. Just in case.
- Be excited about OpenAI’s approach to research.
I have 30 years experience in just hanging around and unplugging things. This is the job I was made for. It’s my destiny.
Do you have any superhero music theme? This is a perfect situation to use it!
Sounds like a good deal to me!
I misread it as kills witch engineer and thought it would be a lot more exciting💀
How much excitement are you looking for? AI taking over the world sounds like it could be interesting.
Yes but waiting to be told to shut down servers isn’t :p
What if you were in a constant fight for your life and the AI covertly attempts to kill you?
Now that would be interesting :p
They had me until the mandatory kool aid provision
For 300k I’ll be “excited” over whatever you tell me to be excited about
You get a job here and next thing you know, AI is targetting you.
The serious question is with what? I doubt the AI is going to kill you with disgusting pics or existential philosophy.
This means they hooked it up to something that might be used as a weapon of attack: an industial printer or a t-shirt cannon or a gunship at port.
The serious question is with what? I doubt the AI is going to kill you with disgusting pics or existential philosophy.
We live in digital world now. No need to actually, physically harm someone. Or maybe the AI will file a fake complaint against someone and cops will take care that individual.
Actually the possibility of social engineering SWAT attacks on targets is a valid point. I noted some years ago that there are hospital devices that are now connected to the internet when they are in active use (such as those devices that administer medications intravenously based on timing and user input, and while such a set up could kill a patient by reprogramming the module, we’ve not yet an attack affect one yet.
Is the high salary because of the responsibility or the risk?
You need super fast reflexes. When the code word is yelled it’s a race between you unplugging it and the server doing what it needs to do to neutralize you
That’s some nice air you have in the server room.
It would be a shame if it were replaced with Halon-134…
I was trying to read up on that a few months ago, we were talking about the deadly gas they’d disperse to extinguish things. Fires, supposedly, or life, if your luck or legs aren’t as good as they should be
Yup, that’s exactly what Halon does. Displaces air and the fire is put out but so are you as well.
The industry is shifting to less toxic for suppression gases like 3M™ Novec™ 1230.
Get comfortable, while I warm up the neurotoxin emitters.
It’s to save humanity.
yes
I’m sorry but Roko’s Basilisk.
I never really got the dread from that one. It just assumes so many very unlikely things.
I don’t always post fake job listings