Settlement with OpenAI for Discriminating Against U.S. Workers

Settlement with OpenAI for Discriminating Against U.S. Workers(justice.gov)

37 points by ethanwillis 14 hours ago | 7 comments

wxw 14 hours ago |

> The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced today that it has secured a combined $3,200,000 settlement [...]

> The settlement addresses allegations that both companies violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by discriminating against U.S. workers and instead preferred workers with temporary employment visas [...]

> In addition, OpenAI took other steps to discourage U.S. workers from applying, such as advertising positions on the radio late at night.

They knew what they were doing here and probably don't mind being fined said amount.

credit_guy 14 hours ago | |

I seriously doubt that. Here's why:

> The agreement also requires OpenAI to train its personnel on the INA’s anti-discrimination requirements, revise its employment policies, and be subject to departmental monitoring and reporting requirements, to prevent future discrimination.

Being subject to inspections from the Government to monitor your implementation of X or Y is not fun. I've been through that. The company spends an unholy amount of resources to make sure the results of those inspections are positive. The legal risk if the inspectors don't like what they see is simply too high. The punishment for the first offense of 3 mil is nothing, lighter than a slap on the wrist, but the second could be devastating, and the upper management does not like to entertain the possibility. And even if the consequences of a repeat offense are not entirely devastating, it's is extremely likely that a few people will lose their jobs, even if only as scapegoats. And people don't like losing their jobs. Those people in high positions that are at risk of losing their jobs will direct lots and lots of people under them to spend lots and lots of time in lots of meetings, writing lots of reports, just to make sure the inspectors are happy.

quietsegfault 13 hours ago | | |

Oh no. They might charge them double - 10x, even!

minimaltom 11 hours ago |

This is actually nice to see, because sneaky things to maximize good outcomes for PERM like advertising roles on the radio late at night / in random community newspapers is (or was) standard practice.

jmpman 11 hours ago |

And then their employees were removed from the country, right? Right?

Grombobulous 11 hours ago | |

That's not how visas work. Those employees have 60 up to days to find another sponsoring employee, or they can acquire a different visa, like a visitor or student visa.

It doesn't really make sense to unjustly punish the employees for the employers' mistake, does it? Those foreign employees followed the process. It's not their fault that their employers abused the system.

I know it's fun to clamor for ripping apart due process in favor of xenophobic fantasies, but you really don't want to live in the resulting society, and I don't just mean that statement in the context of immigration policy.

As it relates to immigration policy, I have a fun prompt you can input into your AI of choice: "Would the US be shrinking in population if there was no immigration? What are the implications for economic prosperity if that were to happen?"