Your disdain is showing.
That you jump immediately to criticizing AI ethicists as counting angels on pins and implying that's why they left OpenAI rather than OpenAI not being a place where AI ethics is a priority is, well, let's say generous to these AI labs.
I think the field is changing from one of high theory to high application. People good at one are not usually good at the other, and says nothing about OpenAI's view of AI ethics as a priority...merely the people in the field and how they relate to the greater industry.
AI ethics is first and foremost about setting policy and advising on how those systems should be constructed.
This is because ethics isn't some separable function. It threads through everything an organization does. You can't just treat it as another department/function/unit if you want any hope of actually making it work.
Specifically because in these companies they aren't optimizing for ethical behaviour.
They're optimizing for profit. And those damn ethicists just get in the way.
Funny thing: that doesn't typically happen to the internal legal counsel or accounting that's responsible for guiding processes/practices that are required for compliance or similar.
Why?
Because there's consequences.
Another example you might be familiar with is enterprise architects. When you spend all of your time in theory you lose sight of practical implications. Of course, since you only had the idea, when it doesn't go to your ideal it can always be blamed on the implementers.
I take it you've never worked with an in-house legal counsel, accounting department, or good ol' fashioned HR?
I agree with you, but then we have HR for a reason.