Will OpenAI dispatch law enforcement to your residence if you advocate for regulating AI? Nathan Calvin, a policy-shaping attorney at Encode AI, alleges that OpenAI did exactly 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. Beyond subpoenaing his organization, Calvin states that OpenAI also subpoenaed him personally, with the deputy seeking his private communications with California legislators, students, and former OpenAI employees.
When asked for a statement, OpenAI directed The Verge to a post by Aaron Kwon, the chief strategy officer, who stated: “Our goal was to understand the full context of why Encode chose to join Elon’s legal challenge.” Encode supported Musk’s attempt to prevent OpenAI from transitioning to a for-profit entity last year. Kwon also remarked that “it’s quite common for deputies to also work as part-time process servers.”
Tyler Johnston, who founded the AI watchdog group The Midas Project, also reported receiving subpoenas from OpenAI. Johnston mentioned OpenAI requested “a list of every journalist, congressional office, partner organization, former employee, and member of the public” that the organization has contacted regarding OpenAI’s restructuring.
In a statement emailed to The Verge, The Midas Project’s chief of staff Jack Kelly contested 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, reacted 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.
