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.
“I believe OpenAI used the pretext of their lawsuit against Elon Musk to intimidate their critics and imply that Elon is behind all of them,” Calvin says. Last month, The San Francisco Standard reported that OpenAI had subpoenaed Encode AI to find out whether the group is funded by Elon Musk. OpenAI issued the subpoena as part of its countersuit against Elon Musk, which claims the billionaire has engaged in “bad-faith tactics to slow down OpenAI.” OpenAI also subpoenaed Meta about its involvement with Musk’s $97.4 billion takeover bid.
Encode advocates for safety in AI and recently put together an open letter that presses OpenAI on how it plans to preserve its nonprofit mission amidst its corporate restructuring plans. The organization also pushed for SB 53, the landmark AI bill in California signed into law in September, which compels large AI companies to reveal information about their safety and security processes.
“This is not normal. OpenAI used an unrelated lawsuit to intimidate advocates of a bill trying to regulate them. While the bill was still being debated,” Calvin said, adding that he didn’t turn over any of the documents requested.
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 directly involved in the lawsuit by virtue of having filed an amicus brief,” Kelly writes. “However, The Midas Project received a similar subpoena despite us not having any involvement in 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.
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Emma Roth