OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/openai-president-explains-to-jury-why-his-diary-entries-sound-greedy/

by koolba • 3 months ago

88 94 3 months ago

koolba• 3 months ago

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.".

Xunjin• 3 months ago

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?

yieldcrv• 3 months ago

he didn’t so they litigate what did happen

mcmcmc• 3 months ago

Yep. Both sides just look like assholes

watwut3• 3 months ago

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.

notnullorvoid• 3 months ago

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.

balance0062• 3 months ago

Doing fractional Head of AI work for mid-market operators for the past year, I get the same question every discovery call: "what happens to my data and my workflow if [vendor] gets bought, sued, or pivots?"

The Brockman diary is the rare moment where the people running the vendor write the answer in their own words, in real time. What it actually shows is the people closest to the conversion knew the governance risk was real and contested. Not an argument for picking sides between Musk and Altman. An argument for the boring practitioner version: if your business depends on a model API, your contract and your switching cost are the only things that matter. The internal ethics of the vendor are not a hedge.

We default to Claude for client work right now with the explicit caveat that we'd swap to whichever model is best and cheapest in 18 months, and we structure the stack so they can. That's the lesson the diary should put on every CTO's whiteboard, regardless of who they think is the bad actor.

Darmani• 3 months ago

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.

cameldrv• 3 months ago

From what I heard at the time, Elon was running OpenAI as, to some degree an element of the Elon keritsu. Neurallink was upstairs from OpenAI, and OpenAI badges would open doors at Tesla and vice-versa. Elon will also move people from one of his companies to another if the need arises. I think some of the OpenAI execs were very upset when he moved Karpathy from OpenAI to Tesla to take over Autopilot.

beAbU• 3 months ago

Ofcourse you can steal a charity! So long as it's not _his_ charity.

tim3332• 3 months ago

Though as far as I can tell the charity which Musk put about $30m into still exists and holds 26% of OpenAI's commercial arm valued at ~200bn. So rather than being stolen it's still there and with 7000x as much assets? Not sure how that plays out legally? It looks hard for Musk to win to me. IANAL.

captn3m0• 3 months ago

IANAL, but as an analogy perhaps: Some of the investments made from FTX stolen assets got amazing gains (Anthropic being a notable investment). But it doesn’t undo the crime.

misiti37802• 3 months ago

Who keeps a personal diary in 2026?

hdndjsbbs• 3 months ago

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.

THansenite4• 3 months ago

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.

jjulius2• 3 months ago

I do! It's cathartic and peaceful. :)

What's the big deal if people do? Why judge? Why even... care? :)

add-sub-mul-div• 3 months ago

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

misiti37802• 3 months ago

you going to document this exchange in your diary ?

5/6/2026

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

aquariusDue• 3 months ago

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.

THansenite4• 3 months ago

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.

lesuorac2• 3 months ago

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.

bonsai_spool• 3 months ago

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.

solomatov• 3 months ago

Could you share links about this? When it turned into a different interpretation?

ForHackernews• 3 months ago

You have options:

- Don't write it down.

- Delete it before you're subpoenaed.

- Mail it to your attorney.

raverbashing• 3 months ago

- Write it in a contrived and confusing way

watwut3• 3 months ago

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

THansenite4• 3 months ago

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.

balance0062• 3 months ago

This is the angle I think is going to matter for everyone reading.

A growing share of operators I work with use ChatGPT and Claude the way Brockman used a private journal: to think out loud, draft messy first thoughts, vent about colleagues, work through hard decisions. They treat the chat window as an extension of the inside of their head.

It's not. Every prompt is logged on the vendor side and is discoverable in litigation. Most enterprise buyers I deal with have not connected this dot. Their company's policy on email retention is rigorous; their policy on AI chat retention is "default settings, whatever those are."

Brockman's diary being read aloud in court is going to do for AI chat history what email did for casual workplace correspondence twenty years ago. People are going to start writing as if a lawyer might read it eventually. And the thoughtful internal candor that kept companies honest is going to migrate somewhere even less discoverable, or stop happening at all.

rithdmc• 3 months ago

Have you considered shredding the journal pages after?

aworks• 2 months ago

I had a boss who took his notes on loose-leaf notebook paper and would weed the notebook frequently. He had been involved in litigation in the past.

kotaKat2• 3 months ago

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.

bombcar8• 3 months ago

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."

dmix• 3 months ago

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

skrebbel2• 3 months ago

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?

arduanika2• 3 months ago

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!)

skrebbel2• 3 months ago

> 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.

bombcar8• 3 months ago

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.

jeffwask3• 3 months ago

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.

dgellow4• 3 months ago

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

jeffwask3• 3 months ago

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.

cogman102• 3 months ago

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.

cogman102• 3 months ago

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.

pohl• 3 months ago

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

pjc50• 3 months ago

Discovery is a lot more intrusive than people expect.

wafflemaker• 3 months ago

Discovery is a lot more intrusive than people expect.

As an outside observer (from Europe), but with all my knowledge of law originating from American TV, Is it the same in other countries, or is American system special in the case of discovery?

bombcar8• 3 months ago

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).

wslh• 3 months ago

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?

stevetron• 3 months ago

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.

weinzierl• 3 months ago

Would it have helped him if he had encrypted it, or would he have had to reveal it anyway?

SoftTalker2• 3 months ago

Would he have had to provide it if it were locked in a safe?

bombcar8• 3 months ago

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'.

j-bos2• 3 months ago

With a duress password, it could have allowed him to destroy it, but that itself would be illegal and he'd likely be found in contempt of court and probably with some other charges related to tampering with evidence. But he wouldn't have had to have read it in court. IANAL

didip• 3 months ago

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.

globalnode2• 3 months ago

have to use a local llm for that if thats how you wish to use them.

dgellow4• 3 months ago

But your local logs can be requested as well

poszlem• 3 months ago

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

brap• 3 months ago

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.

NordStreamYacht• 3 months ago

They do it to keep track of the stories they have told different people.

SoftTalker2• 3 months ago

Jounaling is a habit of most of the highly successful people I know (granted, that's a single-digit number, so TIFWIW).

Levitz2• 3 months ago

Journaling is widely recognized as a positive for mental health I think?

joshstrange• 3 months ago

I’m too paranoid to write a diary, even a handwritten one, and I’m literally a nobody.

Also a nobody and I feel this. See also: therapy, I'm sure I would/could benefit from it but I have zero trust that those records wouldn't be leaked/stolen/compelled in the future. Especially with the current US government, I wouldn't want a (more of a) record of "wrongthink" (whatever the window shifts to make that in the future).

prosunpraiser• 3 months ago

How the hell is it even admissible?

teshier-A2• 3 months ago

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

dgellow4• 3 months ago

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

AnimalMuppet• 3 months ago

More comments than upvotes. That's at least part of the flamewar detector.

teshier-A2• 3 months ago

I wasn't aware, thank you

j-bos2• 3 months ago

If it weren't for it being OpenAI, this story would not be noteworthy. I think a more interesting story is how many commenters on Hacker News have no idea how discovery or privilege works. Interesting blind spot.

1vuio0pswjnm72• 3 months ago

"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."

Live audio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ZoBSAqmq4

THansenite4• 3 months ago

I'm imagining a Dungeon Crawler Carl style view-meter that shows more people tuning in as he gets to some juicier parts of his journal. B-b-b-b-b-b-b-osss BATTLE!!!!

1vuio0pswjnm72• 3 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY7wda6U8sg

OpenAI president forced to read his personal diary entries to jury

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