# Boycott OpenAI

I have canceled my OpenAI subscription in protest over OpenAI's lack of
ethics.

In particular, I object to:

-   threats to confiscate departing employees' equity unless those
    employees signed a life-long non-disparagement contract
-   Sam Altman's pattern of lying about important topics

I'm trying to hold AI companies to higher standards than I use for
typical companies, due to the risk that AI companies will exert unusual
power.

A boycott of OpenAI subscriptions seems unlikely to gain enough
attention to meaningfully influence OpenAI. Where I hope to make a
difference is by discouraging competent researchers from joining OpenAI
unless they clearly reform (e.g. by firing Altman). A few good
researchers choosing not to work at OpenAI could make the difference
between OpenAI being the leader in AI 5 years from now versus being,
say, a distant 3rd place.

A year ago, I thought that OpenAI equity would be a great investment,
but that I had no hope of buying any. But the value of equity is heavily
dependent on trust that a company will treat equity holders fairly. The
legal system helps somewhat with that, but it can be expensive to rely
on the legal system. OpenAI's equity is
[nonstandard](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/q3zs7E7rktHsESXaF/openai-8-the-right-to-warn#Possession_is_Nine_Tenths_of_the_Law)
in ways that should create some unusual uncertainty. Potential employees
ought to question whether there's much connection between OpenAI's
future profits and what equity holders will get.

How does OpenAI's behavior compare to other leading AI companies?

I'm unsure whether Elon Musk's [xAI](https://x.ai/) deserves a
boycott, partly because I'm unsure whether it's a serious company.
Musk has a history of
[breaking](https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2022/07/14/twitter-vs-musk-the-complaint/)
[contracts](https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-rules-that-twitter-violated-contract-when-it-withheld-millions-of-dollars-in-bonuses/)
that bears some similarity to OpenAI's attitude. Musk also bears some
responsibility for SpaceX [requiring non-disparagement
agreements](https://www.reuters.com/business/spacex-forced-workers-sign-illegal-severance-agreements-us-agency-claims-2024-03-21/).

Google has shown [some signs of being
evil](https://www.natesilver.net/p/google-abandoned-dont-be-evil-and).
As far as I can tell, DeepMind has been relatively ethical. I've heard
clear praise of Demis Hassabis's character from Aubrey de Grey, who
knew Hassabis back in the 1990s. Probably parts of Google ought to be
boycotted, but I encourage good researchers to work at DeepMind.

Anthropic seems to be a good deal more ethical than OpenAI. I feel
comfortable paying them for a subscription to Claude Opus. My evidence
concerning their ethics is too weak to say more than that.

P.S. Some of the better sources to start with for evidence against Sam
Altman / OpenAI:

-   [a lengthy Zvi
    post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YwhgHwjaBDmjgswqZ/openai-fallout)
    about one week's worth of evidence
-   [Leopold
    Aschenbrenner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdbVtZIn9IM&t=9084s)
-   [Geoffrey
    Irving](https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/1726754277618491416)

But if you're thinking of working at OpenAI, please look at more than
just those sources.