Depends who gets onto the board. There are probably a lot of forces interested in ousting him now, so he'd need to do an amazing job vetting the new board members.
My guess is that he has less than a year, based on the my assumption that there will be constant pressure placed on the board to oust him.
What surprises me is how much regard the valley has for this guy. Doesn’t Quora suck terribly? I’m for sure its target demographic and I cannot for the life of me pull value from it. I have tried!
The paper reads a lot more nuanced than that. It compares the "system card" released with GPT-4 to the delay of Claude and the merits of each approach vis a vis safety.
"Microsoft’s original agreement with OpenAI also barred Microsoft from pursuing AGI based on OpenAI tech on its own; my understanding is that this clause was removed in the most recent agreement."
(It's hidden under a citation bubble you need to click after the third paragraph.)
I see. Pursuing AGI sounds distinct from commercializing future versions of ChatGPT based on OpenAI IP. I imagine the exact legal wording in the contract makes all the difference.
The WSJ article from June he cited indicates the license still comes with restrictions.
"A potential return of Sam Altman as OpenAI’s CEO will likely strengthen Microsoft’s strategic positioning, especially if it’s able to procure a seat on the new board. This could also be the preferred outcome for Microsoft, given a high legal risk if it hires a majority of OpenAI employees. We see little to no likelihood that Microsoft will buy OpenAI amid ongoing regulatory hurdles."
> given a high legal risk if it hires a majority of OpenAI employees
What legal risk would that be? All they have to do is to claim that they are protecting their interests, besides it is not as if Microsoft has ever been afraid of a legal challenge.
MS and OpenAI certainly have non-solicitation clauses in their contracts. MS could afford the legal battle but isn't it better for them to wait it out and see what happens first?
The letter from OpenAI employees to the board expressly says:
"We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAl and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary run by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAl employees at this new subsidiary should we choose to join."
I think it's safe to say there probably isn't any non-solicitation clause; or at least, it's a very weak one or specific one that Microsoft isn't violating (i.e. you won't reach out over LinkedIn).
It is different between JV partners or between vendor and customer . If non solicit agreement were not legal for those , consulting companies either tech or management consulting will not be able to operate at all .
Do you mean to say that if non-solicitation agreements were entirely unenforceable, consulting companies would see all of their best consultants poached by clients?
I've yet to see a more clear example of solicitation and MS is very much out front with this, presumably their ability to protect their interest in OpenAI outweighs the risk that the competition (Google, etc) would snap up the employees. Think of it as a stop-gap move to ensure that people won't leave and it looks different already. If there is any legal risk (which I doubt) then it is more than offset by their most simple excuse to ignore it, besides the legalities involving non-poaching agreements to begin with.
The clauses are common in the UK but I see them all the time from startups incorporated in Delaware. Maybe they're there for the deterrent factor. Also, hi!
Yes, they get put in but if you try to enforce them you'll find that you can't.
We sign contracts with non-poaching elements in them all the time because the companies we look at are afraid that we will use our inside knowledge to go after their best talent. But I suspect that just the basic protections an employee has under employment law would be enough to stop a company from trying to enforce this (we have a term for this in Dutch which is called 'broodroof' but I don't know any good English translation).
That said: for Execs and consultants it is a different matter. But they are not rank-and-file employees.
