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OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

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

#91

Post by rvz »

OldMatey wrote: post #17

Well that's not worrying. /s I am curious how long it will take for Sam to go from being perceived as a hero to a villain and then on to supervillain. Even if they had a massive, successful and public safety team, and got alignment right (which I am highly doubtful about being possible) it is still going to happen as massive portions of white collar workers loose their jobs. Mass protests are coming and he will be an…

> I am curious how long it will take for Sam to go from being perceived as a hero to a villain and then on to supervillain.

He probably already knows that, but doesn't care as long as OpenAI has captured the world's attention with ChatGPT generating them billions and their high interest in destroying Google.

> Mass protests are coming and he will be an obvious focus point for their ire.

This is going to age well.

Given that no-one knows the definition of AGI, then AGI can mean anything; even if it means 'steam-rolling' any startup, job, etc in OpenAI's path.

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

#92

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

olliej wrote: post #85

As I say over and over again: equity compensation from a non-publicly traded company should not be accepted as a surrogate for below market compensation. If a startup wants to provide compensation to employees via equity, then those employees should have first right to convert equity to cash in funding rounds or sale, there shares must be the same class as any other investor, because the idea that an “early employee”…

Totally agree. For all this to work there needs to also be transparency. Anyone receiving equity should have access to the cap table and terms covering all equity given to investors. Without this, they can be taken advantage of in so many ways.

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

#93

Post by thorum »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #53
thorum wrote: post #37

Extra respect is due to Jan Leike, then: https://x.com/janleike/status/1791498174659715494

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 disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction.

> While superintelligence seems far off now, we believe it could arrive this decade.

> Managing these risks will require, among other things, new institutions for governance and solving the problem of superintelligence alignment:

> How do we ensure AI systems much smarter than humans follow human intent?

> Currently, we don't have a solution for steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI, and preventing it from going rogue. Our current techniques for aligning AI, such as reinforcement learning from human feedback, rely on humans’ ability to supervise AI. But humans won’t be able to reliably supervise AI systems much smarter than us, and so our current alignment techniques will not scale to superintelligence. We need new scientific and technical breakthroughs.

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

#94

Post by Animats »

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.

That's when you need a lawyer.

In general, an agreement to agree is not an agreement. A requirement for a "general release" to be signed at some time in the future is iffy. And that's before labor law issues.

Someone with a copy of that contract should run it through OpenAI's contract analyzer.

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

#95

Post by dboreham »

N0b8ez wrote: post #90
refulgentis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding a disclaimer for people unaware of context (I feel same as you): OpenAI made a large commitment to super-alignment in the not-so-distant past. I beleive mid-2023. Famously, it has always taken AI Safety™ very seriously. Regardless of anyone's feelings on the need for a dedicated team for it, you can chalk to one up as another instance of OpenAI cough leadership cough speaking out of both sides of it's mouth as…

>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?

It's the "fusion in 20 years" of AI?

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

N0b8ez wrote: post #90
refulgentis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding a disclaimer for people unaware of context (I feel same as you): OpenAI made a large commitment to super-alignment in the not-so-distant past. I beleive mid-2023. Famously, it has always taken AI Safety™ very seriously. Regardless of anyone's feelings on the need for a dedicated team for it, you can chalk to one up as another instance of OpenAI cough leadership cough speaking out of both sides of it's mouth as…

>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?

[deleted]

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

#97

Post by mrj »

Melatonic wrote: post #59
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.

I'm no lawyer but this sounds like something that would not go well for OpenAI if strongly litigated

Yeah, courts have generally found that this is "under duress" and not enforceable.

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

#98

Post by ctoth »

N0b8ez wrote: post #90
refulgentis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding a disclaimer for people unaware of context (I feel same as you): OpenAI made a large commitment to super-alignment in the not-so-distant past. I beleive mid-2023. Famously, it has always taken AI Safety™ very seriously. Regardless of anyone's feelings on the need for a dedicated team for it, you can chalk to one up as another instance of OpenAI cough leadership cough speaking out of both sides of it's mouth as…

>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

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

#99

Post by singleshot_ »

asperous wrote: post #11

Not a lawyer but those contracts aren't legal. You need something called "consideration" ie something new of value to be legal. They can't just take away something of value that was already agreed upon. However they could add this to new employee contracts.

They give you a general release of liability, as noted elsewhere in the thread.

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

#100

Post by hi-v-rocknroll »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #16

Is this a legally enforceable suppression of free speech? If so, are there ways to be open about OpenAI, without triggering punitive action?

Hush money payments and NDAs aren't illegal as Trump discovered, but perhaps lying about or concealing them in certain contexts is.

Also, when secrets or truthful disparaging information is leaked anonymously without a metadata trail, I'm thinking there's probably little or no recourse.

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