OpenAI withdrew its contentious decision to essentially force former workers to choose between retaining their vested interest in the business and signing an eternal non-disparagement agreement.
TakeAway Points:
- OpenAI withdrew its contentious decision to essentially force former workers to choose between retaining their vested interest in the business and signing an eternal non-disparagement agreement.
- The confidential document was distributed to both current and past staff members, and CNBC was able to examine it.
OpenAI withdraws its Controversial Decision
Each former employee received a memo that said, at the time of their resignation 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 cancelled, and will not cancel, any Vested Units,” stated the memo, which was viewed by CNBC.
According to the memo, OpenAI will also not uphold any additional non-disparagement or non-solicitation clauses that the worker may have agreed to.
“As we shared with employees, we are making important updates to our departure process,” an OpenAI spokesperson said 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.
“We’re incredibly sorry that we’re only changing this language now; it doesn’t reflect our values or the company we want to be,” the OpenAI spokesperson added.
The release from the non-disparagement provision was first covered by Bloomberg. The NDA provision was first made public by Vox.
OpenAI intend to Uphold its Name
One week after Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, and Jan Leike, the team head, made their announcements of leaving. OpenAI’s “safety culture and protocols have taken a backseat to shiny goods,” according to a Friday post by Leike. OpenAI said on Monday that it would be removing “Sky,” one of the voices from the well-known chatbot, after releasing a number of audio voices for ChatGPT.
The artificial intelligence film “Her” starred Scarlett Johansson, whose voice was strikingly similar to “Sky,” causing criticism. Even though the Hollywood star told them not to use her voice, she has claimed that OpenAI stole it.
“We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky. We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them.” the Microsoft-backed company posted on X.
Just one year after the business established the group, OpenAI dismantled its team focused on the long-term hazards of artificial intelligence, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNBC on Friday.
Some of the team members are being transferred to various other teams inside the organisation, according to the source.
Days after team leaders Jan Leike and Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, announced their leaving, the news was released. OpenAI’s “safety culture and protocols have taken a backseat to shiny goods,” according to a Friday post by Leike.
Since its founding last year, OpenAI’s Superalignment team has concentrated on “scientific and technical advancements to direct and govern AI systems considerably smarter than us.” During that period, OpenAI announced that it will devote 20% of its processing capacity to the project over a four-year period.
The business declined to speak on the record, referring CNBC instead to a recent post on X by co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, in which he expressed his sadness for Leike’s departure and stated that the company still had work to accomplish.
Co-founder of OpenAI Greg Brockman said on X on Saturday that the business had “raised awareness of the hazards and prospects of AGI [artificial general intelligence] so that the world may better prepare for it.” The statement was released under both his and Altman’s names.
