Despite its name and initial mission statement, OpenAI has increasingly moved away from transparency, no longer open-sourcing its models and now losing key members of its safety team. The company's commitment to external oversight and transparency is being questioned, particularly in light of its restrictive nondisclosure agreements. The company's leadership maintains its goal of building artificial general intelligence, but it is unclear who will lead the safety-focused superalignment team following the recent resignations.
Key takeaways:
- OpenAI's co-founder and chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, and his co-team leader Jan Leike have resigned from the company. Their departure has sparked speculation about the company's direction and safety-focused culture.
- Former OpenAI employees are subject to an extremely restrictive off-boarding agreement that includes nondisclosure and non-disparagement provisions. Violating this agreement can result in the loss of all vested equity earned during their time at the company.
- Despite its initial commitment to transparency and accountability, OpenAI has increasingly become more closed, even abandoning the idea of open-sourcing its models due to safety concerns.
- The company's leadership claims to welcome the world's input into its mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. However, the restrictive agreements for former employees and the company's shift away from a safety-focused culture suggest otherwise.