MIRI employee here!

We're on good terms with the people at OpenAI, and we're very excited to see new AI teams cropping up with an explicit interest in making AI's long-term impact a positive one. Nate Soares is in contact with Greg Brockman and Sam Altman, and our teams are planning to spend time talking over the coming months.

It's too early to say what sort of relationship we'll develop, but I expect some collaborations. We're hopeful that the addition of OpenAI to this space will result in promising new AI alignment research in addition to AI capabilities research.

Almost certainly, the AI safety pie getting bigger will translate to more resources for MIRI too.

That said, although a lot of money and publicity was thrown around regarding AI safety in the last year, so far I haven't seen any research outside MIRI that's tangible and substantial. Hopefully big money AI won't languish as a PR existence, and of course they shouldn't reinvent MIRI's wheels either.

I'm sure if OpenAI ever produces people with anything interesting to contribute to the alignment problem, MIRI will happily collaborate. That $1bn commitment must be disappointing to some people though.

MIRI is just a highly evolved form of LARP for burnt out savants. One would hope OpenAI is more pragmatic.