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In an attempt to get myself to write more here is my own shortform feed. Ideally I would write something daily, but we will see how it goes.
I am confident, on the basis of private information I can't share, that Anthropic has asked at least some employees to sign similar non-disparagement agreements that are covered by non-disclosure agreements as OpenAI did.
Or to put things into more plain terms:
I am confident that Anthropic has offered at least one employee significant financial incentive to promise to never say anything bad about Anthropic, or anything that might negatively affect its business, and to never tell anyone about their commitment to do so.
I am not aware of Anthropic doing anything like withholding vested equity the way OpenAI did, though I think the effect on discourse is similarly bad.
I of course think this is quite sad and a bad thing for a leading AI capability company to do, especially one that bills itself on being held accountable by its employees and that claims to prioritize safety in its plans.
This is true. I signed a concealed non-disparagement when I left Anthropic in mid 2022. I don't have clear evidence this happened to anyone else (but that's not strong evidence of absence). More details here
EDIT: I should also clarify that I personally don't think Anthropic acted that badly, and recommend reading about what actually happened before forming judgements. I do not think I am the person referred to in Habryka's comment.
I can confirm that my concealed non-disparagement was very explicit that I could not discuss the existence or terms of the agreement, I don't see any way I could be misinterpreting this. (but I have now kindly been released from it!)
EDIT: It wouldn't massively surprise me if Sam just wasn't aware of its existence though
3Ben Pace
I think this is a reasonable question to ask. I will note that in this case, if your guess is right about what happened, the breaking of the agreement is something that it turned out the counterparty endorsed, or at least, after the counterparty became aware of the agreement, they immediately lifted it.
I still think there's something to maintaining all agreements regardless of context, but I do genuinely think it matters here if you (accurately) expect the entity you've made the secret agreement with would likely retract it if they found out about it.
(Disclaimer that I have no private info about this specific situation.)
In an attempt to get myself to write more here is my own shortform feed. Ideally I would write something daily, but we will see how it goes.