Will OpenAI send police to your door if you advocate for AI regulation? Nathan Calvin, a lawyer who shapes policies surrounding the technology at Encode AI, claims OpenAI did just that.
“One Tuesday night, as my wife and I sat down for dinner, a sheriff’s deputy knocked on the door to serve me a subpoena from OpenAI,” Calvin writes on X. In addition to subpoenaing the organization he works for, Calvin claims that OpenAI subpoenaed him personally, with the sheriff’s deputy asking for his private messages with California legislators, college students, and former OpenAI employees.
When reached for comment, OpenAI pointed The Verge to a post from Aaron Kwon, the company’s chief strategy officer, saying: “Our goal was to understand the full context of why Encode chose to join Elon’s legal challenge.” Encode backed Musk’s efforts to block OpenAI from becoming a for-profit company last year. Kwon also adds that “it’s quite common for deputies to also work as part-time process servers.”
Tyler Johnston, the founder of the AI watchdog group The Midas Project, similarly reported that he and his organization received subpoenas from OpenAI. Johnston said OpenAI asked for “a list of every journalist, congressional office, partner organization, former employee, and member of the public” that the organization has spoken to about OpenAI’s restructuring.
In an emailed statement to The Verge, The Midas Project chief of staff Jack Kelly pushes back on Kwon’s response. “Kwon’s comments about the subpoenas appear to justify them by stating that Encode was a party to the legal case,” Kelly writes. “However, The Midas Project received a similar subpoena despite us not being a party to the legal case.”
OpenAI’s head of mission alignment, Joshua Achiam, responded to Calvin’s post on X. “At what is possibly a risk to my whole career I will say: this doesn’t seem great,” Achiam wrote. “We can’t be doing things that make us into a frightening power instead of a virtuous one. We have a duty to and a mission for all of humanity. The bar to pursue that duty is remarkably high.”
Update, October 10th: Added a response from OpenAI and The Midas Project.
