Sam Altman says he is embarrassed that there was a provision about potential equity cancellation in exit docs, and OpenAI never took back anyone's vested equity

in regards to recent stuff about how openai handles equity: we have never clawed back anyone's vested equity, nor will we do that if people do not sign a separation agreement (or don't agree to a non-disparagement agreement). vested equity is vested equity, full stop. there was

@sama 2024-05-19 Sam Altman

Context & Ripple Effects

The statement came after reporting that OpenAI’s off-boarding terms tied vested equity to a lifelong nondisparagement commitment, making a personnel-contract issue a public test of the company’s governance practices. the reported exit-contract terms made the distinction between a contractual provision and actual clawbacks consequential.

The issue did not end with this denial: later leaked documents were reported to conflict with leadership’s account of awareness, while OpenAI subsequently released many former employees from related nondisparagement agreements. That sequence raises the stakes for how the lab documents and administers employee equity.

First-order effects

Current and former OpenAI employees receive a public assurance that vested equity will not be cancelled for declining separation or nondisparagement terms.
OpenAI and Altman must defend the gap between the stated policy and an exit-document provision that reportedly contemplated equity cancellation.

Second-order effects

The assurance reduces the leverage such provisions can exert over departing staff, while increasing pressure on OpenAI to align its standard agreements, internal practices, and public explanations.
Reporting on documents that challenged leadership’s awareness claim makes contractual transparency a reputational issue, not merely an employment-law matter.

Third-order effects

If highly valued AI labs rely more heavily on equity to recruit and retain talent, exit restrictions attached to that equity can become a broader governance and employee-mobility flashpoint.
The episode points toward greater scrutiny of whether nominally vested compensation is practically conditional; the extent of any industry-wide policy change remains uncertain.

The trend: Frontier AI companies are facing closer scrutiny of how concentrated ownership, employee equity, and governance controls shape talent mobility and institutional accountability.

Discussion

Vox Sigal Samuel on x
“I lost trust”: Why the OpenAI team in charge of safeguarding humanity imploded
@kevinmarks.com Kevin Marks on bluesky
So is he releasing all ex-employees from the non-disparagement clause then?
@benjamindekr @benjamindekr on x
@sama So if the journalist hadn't blown the whistle, it would still be there?
@kelseytuoc Kelsey Piper on x
@we4v3r @sama I get where you're coming from here. On the other hand, my sources were very worried Sam would say something implying a policy change and still not actually release them from NDAs, hoping the outrage has cooled. And I feel a sense of obligation to them to follow thr…
@stclairashley Ashley St. Clair on x
@sama How do you “accidentally” put in a clause that could cancel equity if they say something you don't like? Really weird for a “mistake” to disproportionately benefit you so heavily
@kelseytuoc Kelsey Piper on x
@we4v3r @sama I've talked to a lot of former employees and they want an unambiguous “we're sorry, you're free of the agreement, and you can sell your equity at the next tender offering.” And this seems like a reasonable thing for them to want.
@marvinvonhagen Marvin von Hagen on x
@sama does that mean former employees are allowed to criticize OpenAI without any negative consequences?
@autismcapital @autismcapital on x
@sama Busted ;)
@kelseytuoc Kelsey Piper on x
I am glad that OpenAI acknowledges this as an embarrassment, a mistake, and not okay. It's in their power to set right by releasing everyone who was threatened with loss of equity from the NDAs they signed under this threat.
@daaniyaan Ariyan on x
@sama This text gives a Sam Bankman Fried kind of feeling, tbh.
@catehall Cate Hall on x
Will you extend the same offer to @DKokotajlo67142 , who *didn't* sign and was forced to surrender his equity as a result? [image]
@timnitgebru @timnitgebru on x
Friends, not only does saving the world through “magic intelligence in the sky” require $7T to be handed to these men, it also requires our benevolent benefactors to write out NDAs to former employees. Saving humanity is difficult business indeed.
@kelseytuoc Kelsey Piper on x
Sam Altman now says “i did not know this was happening and i should have.” about employees being threatened with loss of their vested equity if they don't sign a restrictive separation agreement. @sama, will you void the restrictive separation agreement that ex-exployees signed?
@amasad Amjad Masad on x
@sama Fwiw Sam has always been a big advocate for how employee equity is treated in the valley and shifted meaningfully in a positive direction while he was running YC https://blog.samaltman.com/... [image]
r/OpenAI r on reddit
[Sama] we have never clawed back anyone's vested equity, nor will we do that if people do not sign a separation agreement …
@karaswisher Kara Swisher on threads
Read these threads by Jan Leike since the struggle and debate at OpenAI and throughout the sector over safety and consequences of the development of this tech is real and should receive maximum scrutiny.
@jonasd Jonas Downey on threads
Having been through a few similar situations in past jobs, I've found that efforts like safety, ethics, craft and quality, etc, only succeed when people at the top of the company care deeply about those things. …
@ociubotaru Oleg Ciubotaru on threads
Agree with Yann LeCun's take on OpenAI's super alignment team... “It seems to me that before “urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than us” we need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat. Such a sense of urgency …
@ylecun Yann LeCun on x
It seems to me that before “urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than us” we need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat. Such a sense of urgency reveals an extremely distorted view of reality. No wonder the more
@janleike Jan Leike on x
Yesterday was my last day as head of alignment, superalignment lead, and executive @OpenAI.
@martin_casado @martin_casado on x
thank fucking god for Yann .... protect him at all costs.
@bindureddy Bindu Reddy on x
OpenAI - we care for safety a lot, are extremely prudent and will hold back release for an indefinite time until we are completely satisfied about safety! Also OpenAI - we stayed up all weekend trying io ship 4o just before I/O. We envision a future where everyone will get a
@notpatrick @notpatrick on x
I don't have a strong opinion for or against OpenAI. But this response to the disbanding of their “let's make sure AI is safe” team is abysmal. It's “look, we're doing... stuff. Ok?” A 9 yo could ha... Wait. Did ChatGPT write this? It's so bland, ChatGPT could've written this.
@jmannhart Jonathan Mannhart on x
Greg Brockman, in response to heavy criticism and safety concerns (without actually addressing any specifics): “There's no proven playbook for how to navigate the path to AGI.” No. But we damn well know with very high probability what is *not* part of that playbook.
@rao_hacker_one Arun Rao on x
Good to see a thoughtful statement from @gdb on this - I'd encourage the @openai leadership team to talk about this more and not just delegate it to safety researchers. Talk about risks you see and lessons you've learned, collaborate with other players, admit and correct
@shakeelhashim Shakeel on x
This is a lot of text, but doesn't answer fundamental questions: - Did OpenAI give the superalignment team the compute it promised to? - How is shuttering that team consistent with a need for an “enormous amount of foundational work”? - Why are there such restrictive NDAs?
@heypfly @heypfly on x
Just like nuclear weapons, there are risks and we must continue to move forward. The fate that humanity should have is that if it really goes out of control, it will return to Muskett's willingness to gamble and accept defeat
@anecdotal Hollis Robbins on x
Unclear whether this statement was intended to sound so dire: “we have raised awareness of the risks and opportunities of AGI so that the world can better prepare for it.”
@mrbill_i_am Bill on x
“we care tremendously about looking like we do great safety work while we blindly charge ahead to find product/market fit that's superior to iphone level before we run out of money” fixed it for you
@iterintellectus Vittorio on x
i like this “users will increasingly interact with systems — composed of many multimodal models plus tools — which can take actions on their behalf, rather than talking to a single model with just text inputs and outputs.”
@provisionalidea James Rosen-Birch on x
“AGI was an effective marketing ploy, but now that we're a real company with an actual product, we have to shift focus to what safety means for everyone else in the world: quality control. We hope those of you who believed the hype won't turn on us as we make this change.”
@joshjob42 Josh Job on x
This says nothing. Platitudes. What happened to the Superalignment team? Do you just not think that's a problem anymore? How much of your resources are you spending on safety, not bullshit “don't say slurs” safety, actual don't-end-the-fucking-world safety? This is gobbledygook
@xrobservatory @xrobservatory on x
While recognizing AGI can cause human extinction, companies such as @OpenAI fail to offer any concrete mitigation of this risk. This is unsurprising, since it is not in their direct interest to do so. It is now up to governments to develop regulation which ensures existential
@_aidan_clark_ Aidan Clark on x
Anyone saying “this [huge group of clearly intelligent people] are all acting dumb, X is clearly the way forward” where X is a thing they are professionally invested in, should probably be written off as uninteresting.
@varunchandrase3 Varun Chandrasekaran on x
Saying something, without saying anything concrete..
@autismcapital @autismcapital on x
Babe wake up! New Sam Altman x Greg Brockman “Don't let the door hit you on the way out,” statement just dropped.
@codytfenwick Cody Fenwick on x
I think one powerful way for Greg and Sam to demonstrate they are serious about safety, as they suggest here, is to publicly welcome criticism from former employees and release them from any non-disparagement clauses.
@kristileilani Kristi Hines on x
“We are also continuing to collaborate with governments and many stakeholders on safety.” [image]
@maxkannen @maxkannen on x
A lot of text for saying nothing. Not even addressing what happend to the super-alignment team and what will happen to it in the future.
@0xkyon @0xkyon on x
greg had to post this bc sama doesn't like punctuation
@ns123abc Nik on x
NOT A SINGLE UNTRUE WORD WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY THOROUGHLY DECEPTIVE [image]
@keshavatearth Keshav Jindal on x
This is a non-answer.
@albertjlguo Albert Guo on x
“There's no proven playbook for how to navigate the path to AGI.”
r/singularity r on reddit
Sam and Greg address Jan's statements

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