> 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. And ties in quite tightly to Musk's comment earlier this week of "It's not okay to steal a charity.".
Another part also says:
"After Musk announced he was resigning from OpenAI in February 2018, Musk gave a departing speech at an all-hands meeting, Brockman testified. In front of about 40 OpenAI employees, Musk said that he was leaving because the only viable path that he saw forward was for OpenAI to merge with Tesla. However, the other leaders did not think so, Musk said, choosing a different path that Musk would never choose. According to Brockman, the speech was meant to lower morale at OpenAI, as workers understood that Musk was leaving to pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI) at Tesla because he no longer had confidence in OpenAI."
Still his goals was to merge with Tesla... Ain't this also steal a charity?
I don't really want to advocate for Musk, but is it not possible that his goal was to merge with Tesla as an alternative to OpenAI becoming a seperate for-profit. If the option of staying a non-profit was going off the table I'd also probably want to advocate for merging with an existing for-profit I own that had aligned interests.
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"?
Ianal but openais defense seems to actually have spent some time in the hearings showing examples of Musk’s (perceived) hypocrisy (him not giving to charity because he views his companies as societally beneficial), which suggests to me that this stuff is legislatively relevant
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.
> Ultimately, the OpenAI president had to read some of the most embarrassing entries aloud in front of a jury and a packed courthouse, as well as over a YouTube livestream that peaked at around 1,200 viewers.
Anyone know which livestream they are talking about?
Discovery is terribly intrusive and invasive, more than you would ever think.
It's one of the huge reasons that lawsuits are often settled, because ain't nobody want all the dirty laundry aired.
Discovery asking for a peon's diary is likely to get squashed pretty easily, discovery asking for the president's personal diary is likely to be approved if there's an argument it applies (and likely you'll see what happened here, it's provided sealed, and if both sides agree it's applicable, it's unsealed).
He kept them on his work laptop, and they were swept up in discovery. Don't ignore your security team when they talk about data protection and not doing personal business on work devices.
Even if it were a notebook, it could end up in court. If someone sees you writing in a book and talks about it during discovery, you can end up with a court order to produce that book.
Discovery can even be more broad - "provide all written or recorded messages involving this decision" and if you "forget" about your private diary and it's later found out, that's a paddlin'.
Absolutely, they can be but your lawyers at least have a leg to stand on to push for exclusion. If they are just sitting next to the PowerPoint you gave on Tuesday, they will definitely be included.
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.
Aside from the disheartening forced-reading of this deeply-personal journal, I've gleaned from it that Musk wanted to bring OpenAI into Tesla, and OpenAI leaders did not. My thought is "OF COURSE" Musk would want to bring it in under his corporate control. I'm glad it didn't.
I’m too paranoid to write a diary, even a handwritten one, and I’m literally a nobody.
It’s beyond me how these super important (and controversial) people keep diaries where they lay out their evil plots like a villain from Scooby Doo. And save it on a work computer.
He would have to reveal it, and refusing to decrypt would be a contempt of court charge, or a "jury, presume that everything in this damn document is the worst you can imagine."
This is why politicians don't write things down and can 'never recall'.
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 private thoughts brought into a courtroom that I never thought would see the light of day.
Yeah, the Framers of the constitution felt the same as you and the 5th amendment used to apply to your belongings as well so a diary you wrote couldn't be used against you.
> your belongings as well so a diary you wrote couldn't be used against you
What's the history around this? And don't these protections only relate to criminal proceedings?
edit: seems the parent is referring to the historical entity of the mere evidence rule which isn't the same as saying that the Framers believed a certain interpretation for the 4/5th amendments.
The right against self-incrimination is limited in civil trials. Additionally, unlike criminal trials where a jury will be instructed that a defendant's refusal to answer cannot be construed as evidence, there is no such instruction in civil trials, and it is common to argue that a refusal to answer indicates hiding something.
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 only reason this diary hit the discovery towers was because he wrote and kept it on the company laptop. If he didn't, this would have never come to light.
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.
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.
Privacy and privilege (e.g. attorney/client) are different things, but I'd be curious about the edge cases here: can a personal journal become privileged or protected?
Seriously is nothing sacred anymore? Like I think the entirety of OpenAI leadership are scumbags but how is it OK to force someone, anyone, to publish their most private thoughts?
EDIT: I sorry read over this part:
> OpenAI submitted the journals as evidence in October that was initially sealed and then unsealed in January
So they chose to submit it as evidence themselves. I stand corrected, insane move though, why would you submit your own private notes as evidence in a high-stakes court case?
Because he had them on an OpenAI device and when OpenAI lawyers saw them, they knew they would be penalized more if they hid them. This happens a lot, I believe it was a Sony lawsuit where personal emails on work devices exposed a number of affairs unrelated to the case because it was all part of discovery.
cc: lawyer don't do a thing, and wouldn't in this case.
The lawyers submitted it sealed which means they "did their best" to protect privacy, but the guy had written snidely-whiplash-esque plans and pondering, so they were unsealed. Even I can see that it is applicable to the case.
So if I say a worry to my therapist, and years later I get sued in a civil lawsuit, my opponents can just ask the therapist for their meeting notes and those get submitted and then published on the internet? No, I assume? So then where's the line? I'm no lawyer (in fact I'm a total noob in this area) but seems very weird to me that private notes can just be subpoena'd like that.
Medical (and especially therapy) notes, attorney/client communications, and a few other have privilege [1] and you would not /required/ to submit this. If the opposing side requested something that turned them up, and they were responsive, you'd include a response and include a reference in a "privilege log" [0]
What is privileged is subtle and often overstated. You can't just put "attorney/client privilege" and CC a lawyer — you need to be asking a genuine legal question. Google almost got in trouble for something like this [2].
Private notes, including diaries, are not privileged. I'd like to see some serious proposals for "diary privilege" but no state has such a rule.
Lawyers, priests, doctors, and clinical therapists are specifically protected to varying degrees under the law. As for your own private journals, that's up to the judge to decide whether it's relevant enough to be subpoenaed. Your journal recorded on company property when that company is in litigation probably doesn't stand much chance of protection.
It's actually very helpful! Even just to keep track of what you did and how you were feeling on a given day.
I didn't keep one for a long time because I grew up in a household where I didn't feel secure - if I had a journal my parents would have snooped for sure. As I've gotten older I (a) see the value in remembering the past (b) feel more trust in the people around me.
Highly recommend trying a journalling habit for a month. It's also very satisfying to do it in a little notebook with a pen instead of typing. It feels more tangible.
As others have said journals are pretty neat and actually live on a spectrum where the chronological aspect is the common defining feature. By that I mean you can keep something like a gratitude journal where you write daily a set number of things you are grateful that day (after a bad flu I was grateful to be able to swallow without pain for example) or at the other end you have work journals to keep track of what you've done on that day if you ascribe to the CYA professional principle. For a while I kept a physical bullet journal but at some point I went digital instead.
Generally speaking even the "Dear diary," style of journal is helpful, if not to gather your thoughts and reflect then at least to practice writing.
It is actually a decent sized community. As someone who works in technology, I enjoy the aspect of actually creating something physical when so much is ones and zeros on silicone. While not daily, I try to journal regularly as a practice to slow down, focus my thoughts, and use it as therapy to get frustrations/emotions/musings out so I can move on.
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. And ties in quite tightly to Musk's comment earlier this week of "It's not okay to steal a charity.".
Another part also says: "After Musk announced he was resigning from OpenAI in February 2018, Musk gave a departing speech at an all-hands meeting, Brockman testified. In front of about 40 OpenAI employees, Musk said that he was leaving because the only viable path that he saw forward was for OpenAI to merge with Tesla. However, the other leaders did not think so, Musk said, choosing a different path that Musk would never choose. According to Brockman, the speech was meant to lower morale at OpenAI, as workers understood that Musk was leaving to pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI) at Tesla because he no longer had confidence in OpenAI."
Still his goals was to merge with Tesla... Ain't this also steal a charity?
I don't really want to advocate for Musk, but is it not possible that his goal was to merge with Tesla as an alternative to OpenAI becoming a seperate for-profit. If the option of staying a non-profit was going off the table I'd also probably want to advocate for merging with an existing for-profit I own that had aligned interests.
Yep. Both sides just look like assholes
he didn’t so they litigate what did happen
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.
Ianal but openais defense seems to actually have spent some time in the hearings showing examples of Musk’s (perceived) hypocrisy (him not giving to charity because he views his companies as societally beneficial), which suggests to me that this stuff is legislatively relevant
> 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.
[dead]
> Ultimately, the OpenAI president had to read some of the most embarrassing entries aloud in front of a jury and a packed courthouse, as well as over a YouTube livestream that peaked at around 1,200 viewers.
Anyone know which livestream they are talking about?
Edit: found it, audio-only and no archive https://www.youtube.com/@USDCCAND/streams
> OpenAI submitted the journals as evidence in October that was initially sealed and then unsealed in January.
How does that work? How can a company submit a personal journal as evidence? That feels extremely intrusive
Discovery is terribly intrusive and invasive, more than you would ever think.
It's one of the huge reasons that lawsuits are often settled, because ain't nobody want all the dirty laundry aired.
Discovery asking for a peon's diary is likely to get squashed pretty easily, discovery asking for the president's personal diary is likely to be approved if there's an argument it applies (and likely you'll see what happened here, it's provided sealed, and if both sides agree it's applicable, it's unsealed).
He kept them on his work laptop, and they were swept up in discovery. Don't ignore your security team when they talk about data protection and not doing personal business on work devices.
Even if it were a notebook, it could end up in court. If someone sees you writing in a book and talks about it during discovery, you can end up with a court order to produce that book.
Discovery can even be more broad - "provide all written or recorded messages involving this decision" and if you "forget" about your private diary and it's later found out, that's a paddlin'.
Absolutely, they can be but your lawyers at least have a leg to stand on to push for exclusion. If they are just sitting next to the PowerPoint you gave on Tuesday, they will definitely be included.
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.
They'll just do discovery for the LLM interactions...
Discovery is a lot more intrusive than people expect.
Aside from the disheartening forced-reading of this deeply-personal journal, I've gleaned from it that Musk wanted to bring OpenAI into Tesla, and OpenAI leaders did not. My thought is "OF COURSE" Musk would want to bring it in under his corporate control. I'm glad it didn't.
I’m too paranoid to write a diary, even a handwritten one, and I’m literally a nobody.
It’s beyond me how these super important (and controversial) people keep diaries where they lay out their evil plots like a villain from Scooby Doo. And save it on a work computer.
Journaling is widely recognized as a positive for mental health I think?
They do it to keep track of the stories they have told different people.
Jounaling is a habit of most of the highly successful people I know (granted, that's a single-digit number, so TIFWIW).
Would it have helped him if he had encrypted it, or would he have had to reveal it anyway?
He would have to reveal it, and refusing to decrypt would be a contempt of court charge, or a "jury, presume that everything in this damn document is the worst you can imagine."
This is why politicians don't write things down and can 'never recall'.
Would he have had to provide it if it were locked in a safe?
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 private thoughts brought into a courtroom that I never thought would see the light of day.
Yeah, the Framers of the constitution felt the same as you and the 5th amendment used to apply to your belongings as well so a diary you wrote couldn't be used against you.
> your belongings as well so a diary you wrote couldn't be used against you
What's the history around this? And don't these protections only relate to criminal proceedings?
edit: seems the parent is referring to the historical entity of the mere evidence rule which isn't the same as saying that the Framers believed a certain interpretation for the 4/5th amendments.
The right against self-incrimination is limited in civil trials. Additionally, unlike criminal trials where a jury will be instructed that a defendant's refusal to answer cannot be construed as evidence, there is no such instruction in civil trials, and it is common to argue that a refusal to answer indicates hiding something.
Could you share links about this? When it turned into a different interpretation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_evidence_rule
(4th and 5th overlap here but I generally just cite the 5th as the reason why the 4th applies is because of the 5th)
Have you considered shredding the journal pages after?
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."
The only reason this diary hit the discovery towers was because he wrote and kept it on the company laptop. If he didn't, this would have never come to light.
Carry two phones, carry two laptops.
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.
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.
- Write it in a contrived and confusing way
It will be interpreted by the opposing counsel however they want
i knew i should have learnt how to write klingon or drow as a teen.
[dead]
I know a lot of people use private conversations with chatbot as a replacement to journaling which is a form of self therapy.
So… those can be aired willy nilly too then. They are out on public clouds now.
have to use a local llm for that if thats how you wish to use them.
But your local logs can be requested as well
You need a rigorous and enforced deletion policy setup years before you get subpoenaed.
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
I wasn't aware, thank you
More comments than upvotes. That's at least part of the flamewar detector.
Privacy and privilege (e.g. attorney/client) are different things, but I'd be curious about the edge cases here: can a personal journal become privileged or protected?
I cannot believe nobody brought up that episode of The Office with Jan’s deposition. This is both sad and hilarious, just like in the show. https://youtu.be/V3GbCByGltU?si=ctDluaazxGJ-Io81&t=215
Seriously is nothing sacred anymore? Like I think the entirety of OpenAI leadership are scumbags but how is it OK to force someone, anyone, to publish their most private thoughts?
EDIT: I sorry read over this part:
> OpenAI submitted the journals as evidence in October that was initially sealed and then unsealed in January
So they chose to submit it as evidence themselves. I stand corrected, insane move though, why would you submit your own private notes as evidence in a high-stakes court case?
Because he had them on an OpenAI device and when OpenAI lawyers saw them, they knew they would be penalized more if they hid them. This happens a lot, I believe it was a Sony lawsuit where personal emails on work devices exposed a number of affairs unrelated to the case because it was all part of discovery.
> anymore?
This is how discovery has always worked.
> submitted
Doesn't necessarily mean they volunteered it. Either submission or the unsealing could have been in response to a subpoena or court ruling.
Maybe the solution is to write at the top of your journal that you are cc'ing your lawyer on it. (Not legal advice!)
cc: lawyer don't do a thing, and wouldn't in this case.
The lawyers submitted it sealed which means they "did their best" to protect privacy, but the guy had written snidely-whiplash-esque plans and pondering, so they were unsealed. Even I can see that it is applicable to the case.
> > anymore?
> This is how discovery has always worked.
So if I say a worry to my therapist, and years later I get sued in a civil lawsuit, my opponents can just ask the therapist for their meeting notes and those get submitted and then published on the internet? No, I assume? So then where's the line? I'm no lawyer (in fact I'm a total noob in this area) but seems very weird to me that private notes can just be subpoena'd like that.
NAL but generally familiar with law.
Medical (and especially therapy) notes, attorney/client communications, and a few other have privilege [1] and you would not /required/ to submit this. If the opposing side requested something that turned them up, and they were responsive, you'd include a response and include a reference in a "privilege log" [0]
What is privileged is subtle and often overstated. You can't just put "attorney/client privilege" and CC a lawyer — you need to be asking a genuine legal question. Google almost got in trouble for something like this [2].
Private notes, including diaries, are not privileged. I'd like to see some serious proposals for "diary privilege" but no state has such a rule.
[0] https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/creating-privilege-logs-a-... [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/privileged_communication [2] https://www.proskauer.com/blog/the-sound-of-silent-attorneys... — although they won later appeals. My point here is that its complicated.
Your work laptop documents are not private personal notes.
This is also partially why I do not log in to work accounts on personal devices or personal accounts on work devices.
Lawyers, priests, doctors, and clinical therapists are specifically protected to varying degrees under the law. As for your own private journals, that's up to the judge to decide whether it's relevant enough to be subpoenaed. Your journal recorded on company property when that company is in litigation probably doesn't stand much chance of protection.
How the hell is it even admissible?
[flagged]
Who keeps a personal diary in 2026?
It's actually very helpful! Even just to keep track of what you did and how you were feeling on a given day.
I didn't keep one for a long time because I grew up in a household where I didn't feel secure - if I had a journal my parents would have snooped for sure. As I've gotten older I (a) see the value in remembering the past (b) feel more trust in the people around me.
Highly recommend trying a journalling habit for a month. It's also very satisfying to do it in a little notebook with a pen instead of typing. It feels more tangible.
As others have said journals are pretty neat and actually live on a spectrum where the chronological aspect is the common defining feature. By that I mean you can keep something like a gratitude journal where you write daily a set number of things you are grateful that day (after a bad flu I was grateful to be able to swallow without pain for example) or at the other end you have work journals to keep track of what you've done on that day if you ascribe to the CYA professional principle. For a while I kept a physical bullet journal but at some point I went digital instead.
Generally speaking even the "Dear diary," style of journal is helpful, if not to gather your thoughts and reflect then at least to practice writing.
It is actually a decent sized community. As someone who works in technology, I enjoy the aspect of actually creating something physical when so much is ones and zeros on silicone. While not daily, I try to journal regularly as a practice to slow down, focus my thoughts, and use it as therapy to get frustrations/emotions/musings out so I can move on.
I do! It's cathartic and peaceful. :)
What's the big deal if people do? Why judge? Why even... care? :)
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.