Prior to this, workers had to promise not to criticize the company in order to keep their vested ownership.
According to a statement released by OpenAI to Bloomberg, the business has stated that it will not enforce any nondisparagement agreements that former employees have signed and will completely delete the phrase from its leaving papers. A recent article published by Vox stated that OpenAI was forcing departing employees to choose between the ability to speak out against the firm and the ability to maintain the vested ownership that they had acquired. In the event that employees choose not to sign the agreement or if they breach it, they might potentially lose millions of dollars. The Chief Executive Officer of OpenAI, Sam Altman, expressed his “embarrassement” and stated that he was unaware of the existence of the provision. He also pledged to get the company’s papers modified.
According to Bloomberg, the business informed former workers that “OpenAI has not canceled, and will not cancel, any vested units.” This statement was made regardless of whether or not the employees had executed the agreement. As a result, they were completely released from the agreement, “unless the nondisparagement provision was mutual.” As a result of their refusal to sign when they left their position, at least one former worker claimed that they had lost their vested equity, which was comparable to multiple times the amount of personal wealth that their family had. With this alteration, it is not obvious whether or not they will be able to get it back. The current employees were also informed about this new development by the company, which helped to alleviate their concerns with regard to the fact that they will need to be careful with everything they say in order to avoid losing their stocks.
“We are sorry for the distress that this has caused to great people who have worked hard for us,” Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon said in a statement before the announcement was made. We have been making efforts to resolve this issue as rapidly as we possibly can. “We are going to put in even more effort to improve.”
Aside from this particular controversy, OpenAI has been involved in a number of other contentious situations as of late. It was recently disclosed by the corporation that it was going to dismantle the team that it had established the previous year in order to assist in ensuring that mankind is protected from future artificial intelligence systems that could be so powerful that they could cause our extinction. Just before to that, Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist at OpenAI and one of the team’s leaders, resigned from his position at the business. Another team head, Jan Leike, stated in a series of tweets that “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products” within OpenAI. This statement was made in reference to security procedures. After Scarlett Johansson declined Altman’s offer to donate her voice to the company, she accused OpenAI of stealing her voice without her consent for ChatGPT’s Sky voice assistant. This accusation came after Johansson had previously declined Altman’s request. OpenAI has refuted allegations that it replicated the voice of the actor, stating that it had hired another actor a significant amount of time before Altman contacted Johansson.