I suspect the usual dynamics at companies is that when others start doing something, you better start doing it too, or it will seem like negligence. For example, if you are a company lawyer, and other companies have NDAs, you better prepare one for your company, too. Because the risks are asymmetric—if you do the same thing everyone else does, and something bad happens, well that’s the cost of doing business; but if you do something different from everyone else, and something bad happens, that makes you seem incompetent.
why do they do it? surely it’s obvious that the negative press from doing this is worse than the negative press from not doing it?
Perhaps it wasn’t obvious previously.
I suspect the usual dynamics at companies is that when others start doing something, you better start doing it too, or it will seem like negligence. For example, if you are a company lawyer, and other companies have NDAs, you better prepare one for your company, too. Because the risks are asymmetric—if you do the same thing everyone else does, and something bad happens, well that’s the cost of doing business; but if you do something different from everyone else, and something bad happens, that makes you seem incompetent.
They’re standard practice at a lot of the types of firms that AI Safety companies tend to hire from, so it could even just be force of habit tbh.