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OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

arstechnica.com

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Re: OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

#61

Post by THansenite »

ForHackernews wrote: post #11
THansenite wrote: post #4

I honestly don't know how I feel about this. I keep a journal where I can get thoughts out of my head so I can move on. Like the article, its nothing I'd really be ashamed of, but I see it as a kind of personal therapy where I can dump my thoughts. I write with the assumption they are my private thoughts and even I don't have any plans on going back and rereading. I know I'm not a CEO, but even I wouldn't want my pri…

You have options: - Don't write it down. - Delete it before you're subpoenaed. - Mail it to your attorney.

I can understand what you are going for here, but I feel it is a slippery slope along the lines of police saying, "why can't I search your house if you have nothing to hide?" Orwellian oversight leads to stifling creativity because you know people are watching. I like that I can 'speak freely' in my journal since they are my personal thoughts.

Re: OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

#62

Post by bombcar »

pohl wrote: post #43
cogman10 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you learn anything from this, it's that anything you write can ultimately show up in court. You have no right to privacy and your written words, no matter where they are written, are subject to be taken as evidence. Yes it feels intrusive, but it's literally the first thing a lawyer would ask for.

Launder your personal journal through an LLM, folks. That way the sentiments can't be provably your own.

People should be up-to-date on discovery and LLMs, multiple cases of interactions with an LLM being subpoenaed.

Re: OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

#63

Post by dgellow »

teshier-A wrote: post #60

Can't help but notice this is now on the second page of HN (position 42), 37 minutes after being posted with 52 points. I was top 10 when I clicked

That just means HN anti-flamewar has been triggered, it’s fairly standard on this site for controversial topics

Re: OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

#64

Post by Darmani »

koolba wrote: post #2

From the article, emphasis mine: > Additionally, Brockman’s journal showed him grappling with whether voting against Musk’s plan or for Musk’s ejection from the board would be morally wrong. > “Can’t see us turning this into a for-profit without a very nasty fight,” Brockman wrote in another entry. “ It’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. That’d be pretty morally bankrupt. ” This is pretty damning for OpenAI…

> This is pretty damning for OpenAI

I don't see how. Cases are decided by facts and law, not feelings -- except to the extent those feelings are probative of state of mind, which is relevant for some legal issues but not others. My understanding is that the crux of the case is on the extent to which a number of informal messages should be considered a binding contract.

Trying to go from a single admission like this to an overall legal conclusion is a lot like seeing a single line in a program and then concluding there's a bug -- without having ever seen the rest of the program. You might think "this line always crashes, " but actually it's never called (does not go to any matter at issue), or none of the terms mean what you think they mean, etc.

Re: OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

#65

Post by dgellow »

raverbashing wrote: post #50
ForHackernews wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have options: - Don't write it down. - Delete it before you're subpoenaed. - Mail it to your attorney.

- Write it in a contrived and confusing way

It will be interpreted by the opposing counsel however they want

Re: OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

#66

Post by misiti3780 »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #41
misiti3780 wrote: post #3

Who keeps a personal diary in 2026?

Sometimes a sentence can end with a question mark but demonstrate the diametric opposite of curiosity.

you going to document this exchange in your diary ?

5/6/2026

Drank a cup of coffee; Made snarky remark to HN user.

Re: OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

#67

Post by bombcar »

kotaKat wrote: post #52
THansenite wrote: post #4

I honestly don't know how I feel about this. I keep a journal where I can get thoughts out of my head so I can move on. Like the article, its nothing I'd really be ashamed of, but I see it as a kind of personal therapy where I can dump my thoughts. I write with the assumption they are my private thoughts and even I don't have any plans on going back and rereading. I know I'm not a CEO, but even I wouldn't want my pri…

The simple solution is to "not write your private thoughts on someone else's loaned paper". Keep your personal life to personal paper and personal devices. Don't write your life out onto something subject to discovery by someone else's legal department.

The key is that your personal private papers may be subject to discovery via your employer, your life, and more.

Especially if you're a C-level exec.

Policies about document and media handling are important if you're up where discovery is an active possibility. Or "have nothing to hide."

Re: OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

#68

Post by watwut »

palmotea wrote: post #34
watwut wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the claim here is not that Musk is not an asshole. This is a court case where two assholes fight about who defrauded that other one more successfully. Whoever wins and whoever looses, we know both involved men have pretty non-existent morality. And in the grand scheme of things, OpenAI being charity was always bullshit too.

> Whoever wins and whoever looses, we know both involved men don't have pretty non-existent morality. I'm guessing that double negative is a mistake. Do you mean to strike the "don't" to make it "have pretty non-existent morality" or just "both involved men don't have morality"?

Thank you. I corrected it.

Re: OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

#69

Post by freejazz »

pohl wrote: post #43
cogman10 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you learn anything from this, it's that anything you write can ultimately show up in court. You have no right to privacy and your written words, no matter where they are written, are subject to be taken as evidence. Yes it feels intrusive, but it's literally the first thing a lawyer would ask for.

Launder your personal journal through an LLM, folks. That way the sentiments can't be provably your own.

They'll just do discovery for the LLM interactions...

Re: OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

#70

Post by bombcar »

watwut wrote: post #51
ForHackernews wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have options: - Don't write it down. - Delete it before you're subpoenaed. - Mail it to your attorney.

Mailing a thing to your attorney does not make it secret.

People treat attorney-client privilege like it's the seal of the confessional or something, but it's much more limited than you might expect.

And it is not there to protect you it is there to protect the lawyer which incidentally might protect you. It's to ensure that a vigorous defense is not compromised.

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