DeepMind staff push to drop lifetime non-disparagement clauses

Workers inside Google's artificial intelligence division are pushing executives to release them from non-disparagement agreements, arguing that they must be free to inform the public about the risks of the technology they are working to advance. The Washington Post reports the clauses, signed by DeepMind employees in Britain, forbid them from criticizing the company for the rest of their lives, even after they leave.

Dozens of staff joined a thread about the contract language on an internal messaging platform. Some posted an emoji of the text "1984," a reference to the dystopian novel.

On Friday, a Google executive responded in the thread and said the company would not enforce the clause against workers who had already left. Google has also updated the terms for new hires to remove the post-termination aspect of non-disparagement. That is not what the organizing staff are asking for: they want the clause dropped entirely from existing contracts, not just for future hires.

"Google DeepMind researchers are under in perpetuity non-disparagement clauses forbidding them from ever speaking critically of the company," Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh wrote on X. "I'd already confirmed this with multiple people." Nathan Calvin, in his own post, called the practice "truly appalling" and urged Google to release prior employees who had signed from those obligations.

The pattern mirrors OpenAI's 2024 climbdown, when the company, under public pressure, released former staff from a similar perpetual non-disparagement obligation that had been bundled with vested equity. The Post does not report how many current or former DeepMind employees are bound by the lifetime clause, nor whether it would survive scrutiny at a UK employment tribunal if tested. It lands in a run of transparency disputes we're tracking across our AI safety coverage this week.