Sam Altman is ‘really embarrassed’ by OpenAI’s strict non-disclosure agreements

On Friday, after the departure of several prominent OpenAI employees, Fox story It revealed that OpenAI employees are required to sign a restrictive agreement outside of the service. Now, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says part of the agreement should never have happened, and this is “one of the few times I’ve ever been truly embarrassed while running OpenAI.”

The agreement includes non-disclosure and non-disparagement provisions that prohibit departing employees from criticizing OpenAI for life; They can’t even say they signed a non-disclosure agreement. Failure to sign or violate the agreement means the former employee loses all his vested shares in the company.

“We have never redeemed vested shares for anyone, and we would not do so if people did not sign a separation agreement (or did not agree to a non-disparagement agreement). Vested shares are equity, full stop,” Altman said. In a Saturday post on X.

“There was a clause about potential cancellation of shares in our previous exit documents; although we never took anything back, this should never have been something we had in any documents or communications. This is on me and one of the few times that I’m so embarrassed to run OpenAI, I didn’t know this was happening and I should have known.

Altman says OpenAI is now revamping its exit paperwork. “If any former employees who signed one of these old agreements are concerned about that, they can contact me and we will fix that as well. Very sorry about that.”

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OpenAI researcher Jan Lek resigned from OpenAI this week along with fellow researcher Ilya Sutskever. Lake said he “finally reached a breaking point” on the company’s core priorities, despite Sutskever He said The company is believed to be on the right track to developing “safe and useful” general artificial intelligence.

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