Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 1001 posts

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#121

Post by smabie »

kfrzcode wrote: post #73
impossiblefork wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech is a much more general notion than anything having to do with governments. The first amendment is a US free speech protection, but it's not prototypical. You can also find this in some other free speech protections, for example that in the UDHR >Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart inf…

Free speech is a God-given right. It is innate and given to you and everyone at birth, after which it can only be suppressed but never revoked.

Did God tell you this? People who talk about innate rights are just making things up

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#122

Post by EA-3167 »

nsoonhui wrote: post #114

But what's stopping the ex-staffers from criticizing once they sold off the equity?

Nothing, these don't seem like legally enforceable contracts in any case. What they do appear to be is a massive admission that this is a hype train which can be derailed by people who know how the sausage is made.

It reeks of a scammer's mentality.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#123

Post by jprete »

beastman82 wrote: post #101
apsec112 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. The earlier tweets explain: the initial agreement says the employee must sign a "general release" or forfeit the equity, and then the general release they are asked to sign includes a lifetime no-criticism clause.

ITT: a bunch of laymen thinking their 2 second proposal will outlawyer the team of lawyers who drafted these.

Lawyers are 100% capable of knowingly crafting unenforceable agreements.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#124

Post by bradleyjg »

apsec112 wrote: post #27
jp57 wrote: post #21

The only way I can see this being a valid contract is if the equity grant that they get to keep is a new grant offered the time of signing the exit contract. Any vested equity given as compensation for work could not then be offered again as consideration for signing a new agreement. Maybe the agreement is "we will accelerate vesting of your unvested equity if you sign this new agreement"? If that's the case then it…

It's not. The earlier tweets explain: the initial agreement says the employee must sign a "general release" or forfeit the equity, and then the general release they are asked to sign includes a lifetime no-criticism clause.

The earlier tweets explain …

What a horrific medium of communication. Why anyone uses it is beyond me.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#125

Post by N0b8ez »

ctoth wrote: post #98
N0b8ez wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To really stress this: OpenAI's still-present cofounder shared yesterday on a podcast that they expect AGI in ~2 years and ASI (superpassing human intelligence) by end of the decade. Link? Is the ~2 year timeline a common estimate in the field?

https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/john-schulman

Is the quote you're thinking of the one at 19:11?

> I don't think it's going to happen next year, it's still useful to have the conversation and maybe it's like two or three years instead.

This doesn't seem like a super definite prediction. The "two or three" might have just been a hypothetical.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#126

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

thorum wrote: post #93
a_wild_dandan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think superalignment is absurd, and model "safety" is the modern AI company's "think of the children" pearl clutching pretext to justify digging moats. All this after sucking up everyone's copyright material as fair use, then not releasing the result, and profiting off it. All due respect to Jan here, though. He's being (perhaps dangerously) honest, genuinely believes in AI safety, and is an actual research expert,…

The superalignment team was not focused on that kind of “safety” AFAIK. According to the blog post announcing the team, https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/ > Superintelligence will be the most impactful technology humanity has ever invented, and could help us solve many of the world’s most important problems. But the vast power of superintelligence could also be very dangerous, and could lead to the…

> Superintelligence will be the most impactful technology humanity has ever invented, and could help us solve many of the world’s most important problems. But the vast power of superintelligence could also be very dangerous, and could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction.

Superintelligence that can be always ensured to have the same values and ethics as current humans, is not a superintelligence or likely even a human level intelligence (I bet humans 100 years from now will see the world significantly different than we do now).

Superalignment is an oxymoron.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#127

Post by xyst »

worik wrote: post #54
toomuchtodo wrote: post #24

I would strongly encourage anyone faced with this ask by OpenAI to file a complaint with the NLRB as well as speak with an employment attorney familiar with California statute.

[flagged]

The FUD is strong with this one

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#129

Post by fragmede »

It's time to find a lawyer. I'm not one but there's an intersection with California SB 331, also known as “The Silenced No More Act”. while it is focused more on sexual harrasment, it's not limited to that, and these contracts may run afoul of that.

https://silencednomore.org/the-silenced-no-more-act

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#130

Post by ihumanable »

ndriscoll wrote: post #116
thorum wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The superalignment team was not focused on that kind of “safety” AFAIK. According to the blog post announcing the team, https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/ > Superintelligence will be the most impactful technology humanity has ever invented, and could help us solve many of the world’s most important problems. But the vast power of superintelligence could also be very dangerous, and could lead to the…

That doesn't really contradict what the other poster said. They're calling for regulation (digging a moat) to ensure systems are "safe" and "aligned" while ignoring that humans are not aligned, so these systems obviously cannot be aligned with humans; they can only be aligned with their owners (i.e. them, not you).

Alignment in the realm of AGI is not about getting everyone to agree. It's about whether or not the AGI is aligned to the goal you've given it. The paperclip AGI example is often used, you tell the AGI "Optimize the production of paperclips" and the AGI started blending people to extract iron from their blood to produce more paperclips.

Humans are used to ordering around other humans who would bring common sense and laziness to the table and probably not grind up humans to produce a few more paperclips.

Alignment is about getting the AGI to be aligned with the owners, ignoring it means potentially putting more and more power into the hands of a box that you aren't quite sure is going to do the thing you want it to do. Alignment in the context of AGIs was always about ensuring the owners could control the AGIs not that the AGIs could solve philosophy and get all of humanity to agree.

Post reply on HN