I imagine many of the people going into leadership positions were prepared to ignore the contract, or maybe even forgot about the nondisparagement clause altogether. The clause is also open to more avenues of legal attack if it’s enforced against someone who takes another position which requires disparagement (e.g. if it’s argued to be a restriction on engaging in business). And if any individual involved divested themselves of equity before taking up another position, there would be fewer ways for the company to retaliate against them. I don’t think it’s fair to view this as a serious breach of trust on behalf of any individual, without clear evidence that it impacted their decisions or communication.
But it is fair to view the situation overall as concerning that it could happen with nobody noticing, and try to design defenses to prevent this or similar things happening in the future, e.g. some clear statement around not having any conflict of interest including legal obligations for people going into independent leadership positions, as well as a consistent divestment policy (though that creates its own wierd incentives).
I imagine many of the people going into leadership positions were prepared to ignore the contract, or maybe even forgot about the nondisparagement clause
I could imagine it being the case that people are prepared to ignore the contract. But unless they publicly state that, it wouldn’t ameliorate my concerns—otherwise how is anyone supposed to trust they will?
The clause is also open to more avenues of legal attack if it’s enforced against someone who takes another position which requires disparagement (e.g. if it’s argued to be a restriction on engaging in business).
That seems plausible, but even if this does increase the likelihood that they’d win a legal battle, legal battles still pose huge risk and cost. This still seems like a meaningful deterrent.
I don’t think it’s fair to view this as a serious breach of trust on behalf of any individual, without clear evidence that it impacted their decisions or communication.
But how could we even get this evidence? If they’re bound to the agreement their actions just look like an absence of saying disparaging things about OpenAI, or of otherwise damaging their finances or reputation. And it’s hard to tell, from the outside, whether this is a reflection of an obligation, or of a genuine stance. Positions of public responsibility require public trust, and the public doesn’t have access to the inner workings of these people’s minds. So I think it’s reasonable, upon finding out that someone has a huge and previously-undisclosed conflict of interest, to assume that might be influencing their behavior.
Evidence could look like 1. Someone was in a position where they had to make a judgement about OpenAI and was in a position of trust 2. They said something bland and inoffensive about OpenAI 3. Later, independently you find that they likely would have known about something bad that they likely weren’t saying because of the nondisparagement agreement (instead of ordinary confidentially agreements).
This requires some model of “this specific statement was influenced by the agreement” instead of just “you never said anything bad about OpenAI because you never gave opinions on OpenAI”.
I think one should require this kind of positive evidence before calling it a “serious breach of trust”, but people can make their own judgement about where that bar should be.
I imagine many of the people going into leadership positions were prepared to ignore the contract, or maybe even forgot about the nondisparagement clause altogether. The clause is also open to more avenues of legal attack if it’s enforced against someone who takes another position which requires disparagement (e.g. if it’s argued to be a restriction on engaging in business). And if any individual involved divested themselves of equity before taking up another position, there would be fewer ways for the company to retaliate against them. I don’t think it’s fair to view this as a serious breach of trust on behalf of any individual, without clear evidence that it impacted their decisions or communication.
But it is fair to view the situation overall as concerning that it could happen with nobody noticing, and try to design defenses to prevent this or similar things happening in the future, e.g. some clear statement around not having any conflict of interest including legal obligations for people going into independent leadership positions, as well as a consistent divestment policy (though that creates its own wierd incentives).
I could imagine it being the case that people are prepared to ignore the contract. But unless they publicly state that, it wouldn’t ameliorate my concerns—otherwise how is anyone supposed to trust they will?
That seems plausible, but even if this does increase the likelihood that they’d win a legal battle, legal battles still pose huge risk and cost. This still seems like a meaningful deterrent.
But how could we even get this evidence? If they’re bound to the agreement their actions just look like an absence of saying disparaging things about OpenAI, or of otherwise damaging their finances or reputation. And it’s hard to tell, from the outside, whether this is a reflection of an obligation, or of a genuine stance. Positions of public responsibility require public trust, and the public doesn’t have access to the inner workings of these people’s minds. So I think it’s reasonable, upon finding out that someone has a huge and previously-undisclosed conflict of interest, to assume that might be influencing their behavior.
Evidence could look like 1. Someone was in a position where they had to make a judgement about OpenAI and was in a position of trust 2. They said something bland and inoffensive about OpenAI 3. Later, independently you find that they likely would have known about something bad that they likely weren’t saying because of the nondisparagement agreement (instead of ordinary confidentially agreements).
This requires some model of “this specific statement was influenced by the agreement” instead of just “you never said anything bad about OpenAI because you never gave opinions on OpenAI”.
I think one should require this kind of positive evidence before calling it a “serious breach of trust”, but people can make their own judgement about where that bar should be.