Do we know if @Paul_Christiano or other ex-lab people working on AI policy have non-disparagement agreements with OpenAI or other AI companies? I know Cullen doesn’t, but I don’t know about anybody else.
I know NIST isn’t a regulatory body, but it still seems like standards-setting should be done by people who have no unusual legal obligations. And of course, some other people are or will be working at regulatory bodies, which may have more teeth in the future.
To be clear, I want to differentiate between Non-Disclosure Agreements, which are perfectly sane and reasonable in at least a limited form as a way to prevent leaking trade secrets, and non-disparagement agreements, which prevents you from saying bad things about past employers. The latter seems clearly bad to have for anybody in a position to affect policy. Doubly so if the existence of the non-disparagement agreement itself is secretive.
Couldn’t secretive agreements be mostly circumvented simply by directly asking the person whether they signed such an agreement? If they fail to answer, the answer is very likely ‘Yes’, especially if one expects them to answer ‘Yes’ to a parallel question in scenarios where they had signed a non-secretive agreement.
We also have some reason to suspect that senior leadership at Anthropic, and probably many of the employees, have signed the non-disparagement agreements.
I’d flag whether a non-disparagement agreement is even enforceable against a Federal government employee speaking in an official capacity. I haven’t done any research on that, just saying that I would not merely assume it is fully enforceable.
Any financial interest in an AI lab is generally going to require recusal/disqualification from a number of matters, because a Federal employee is prohibited from participating personally and substantially in any particular matter in which the employee knows they have a financial interest directly and predictably affected by the matter. That can be waived in some circumstances, but I sure wouldn’t consider waiver if I were the agency ethics official without a waiver by the former employer of any non-disparagement agreement in the scope of the employee’s official duties.
I’d flag whether a non-disparagement agreement is even enforceable against a Federal government employee speaking in an official capacity.
That’d be good if true! I’d also be interested if government employees are exempt from private-sector NDAs in their nonpublic governmental communications, as well as whether there are similar laws in the UK.
I think this isn’t relevant to the person in the UK you’re thinking of, but just as an interesting related thing, members of the UK parliament are protected from civil or criminal liability for e.g. things they say in parliament: see parliamentary privilege.
These things are not generally enforced in court. It’s the threat that has the effect, which means the non-disparagement agreement works even if it’s of questionable enforceability and even if indeed it is never enforced.
Would it go some way to answer the question if an ex-lab person has said something pretty bad about their past employer? Because this would in my simplistic world view mean either that they do not care about legal consequences or that they do not have such an agreement. And I think, perhaps naively that both of these would make me trust the person to some degree.
Do we know if @Paul_Christiano or other ex-lab people working on AI policy have non-disparagement agreements with OpenAI or other AI companies? I know Cullen doesn’t, but I don’t know about anybody else.
I know NIST isn’t a regulatory body, but it still seems like standards-setting should be done by people who have no unusual legal obligations. And of course, some other people are or will be working at regulatory bodies, which may have more teeth in the future.
To be clear, I want to differentiate between Non-Disclosure Agreements, which are perfectly sane and reasonable in at least a limited form as a way to prevent leaking trade secrets, and non-disparagement agreements, which prevents you from saying bad things about past employers. The latter seems clearly bad to have for anybody in a position to affect policy. Doubly so if the existence of the non-disparagement agreement itself is secretive.
Couldn’t secretive agreements be mostly circumvented simply by directly asking the person whether they signed such an agreement? If they fail to answer, the answer is very likely ‘Yes’, especially if one expects them to answer ‘Yes’ to a parallel question in scenarios where they had signed a non-secretive agreement.
I’m surprised this hasn’t already happened (unless it has?)
Surely someone reading this has a way of getting in contact with Paul?
We also have some reason to suspect that senior leadership at Anthropic, and probably many of the employees, have signed the non-disparagement agreements.
This is all fairly bad.
Additionally there was that OpenAI language stating “we have canceled the non-disparagement agreements except where they are mutual”.
for the benefit of other readers, Linch also posted this to LessWrong’s open thread
I’d flag whether a non-disparagement agreement is even enforceable against a Federal government employee speaking in an official capacity. I haven’t done any research on that, just saying that I would not merely assume it is fully enforceable.
Any financial interest in an AI lab is generally going to require recusal/disqualification from a number of matters, because a Federal employee is prohibited from participating personally and substantially in any particular matter in which the employee knows they have a financial interest directly and predictably affected by the matter. That can be waived in some circumstances, but I sure wouldn’t consider waiver if I were the agency ethics official without a waiver by the former employer of any non-disparagement agreement in the scope of the employee’s official duties.
That’d be good if true! I’d also be interested if government employees are exempt from private-sector NDAs in their nonpublic governmental communications, as well as whether there are similar laws in the UK.
I think this isn’t relevant to the person in the UK you’re thinking of, but just as an interesting related thing, members of the UK parliament are protected from civil or criminal liability for e.g. things they say in parliament: see parliamentary privilege.
These things are not generally enforced in court. It’s the threat that has the effect, which means the non-disparagement agreement works even if it’s of questionable enforceability and even if indeed it is never enforced.
Would it go some way to answer the question if an ex-lab person has said something pretty bad about their past employer? Because this would in my simplistic world view mean either that they do not care about legal consequences or that they do not have such an agreement. And I think, perhaps naively that both of these would make me trust the person to some degree.