Bloomberg confirms that OpenAI has promised not to cancel vested equity under any circumstances, and to release all employees from one-directional non-disparagement agreements.
They don’t actually say “all” and I haven’t seen anyone confirm that all employees received this email. It seems possible (and perhaps likely) to me that many high profile safety people did not receive this email, especially since it would presumably be in Sam’s interest to do so, and since I haven’t seen them claiming otherwise. And we wouldn’t know: those who are still under the contract can’t say anything. If OpenAI only sent an email to some former employees then they can come away with headlines like “OpenAI releases former staffers from agreement” which is true, without giving away their whole hand. Perhaps I’m being too pessimistic, but I am under the impression that we’re dealing with a quite adversarial player, and until I see hard evidence otherwise this is what I’m assuming.
The memo, addressed to each former employee, said that at the time of the person’s departure from OpenAI, “you may have been informed that you were required to execute a general release agreement that included a non-disparagement provision in order to retain the Vested Units [of equity].”
“Regardless of whether you executed the Agreement, we write to notify you that OpenAI has not canceled, and will not cancel, any Vested Units,” stated the memo, which was viewed by CNBC.
The memo said OpenAI will also not enforce any other non-disparagement or non-solicitation contract items that the employee may have signed.
“As we shared with employees, we are making important updates to our departure process,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.
“We have not and never will take away vested equity, even when people didn’t sign the departure documents. We’ll remove nondisparagement clauses from our standard departure paperwork, and we’ll release former employees from existing nondisparagement obligations unless the nondisparagement provision was mutual,” said the statement, adding that former employees would be informed of this as well.
A handful of former employees have publicly confirmed that they received the email.
Asya: is the above sufficient to allay the suspicion you described? If not, what kind of evidence are you looking for (that we might realistically expect to get)?
They don’t actually say “all” and I haven’t seen anyone confirm that all employees received this email. It seems possible (and perhaps likely) to me that many high profile safety people did not receive this email, especially since it would presumably be in Sam’s interest to do so, and since I haven’t seen them claiming otherwise. And we wouldn’t know: those who are still under the contract can’t say anything. If OpenAI only sent an email to some former employees then they can come away with headlines like “OpenAI releases former staffers from agreement” which is true, without giving away their whole hand. Perhaps I’m being too pessimistic, but I am under the impression that we’re dealing with a quite adversarial player, and until I see hard evidence otherwise this is what I’m assuming.
CNBC reports:
A handful of former employees have publicly confirmed that they received the email.
Asya: is the above sufficient to allay the suspicion you described? If not, what kind of evidence are you looking for (that we might realistically expect to get)?