While wanting to know the guest list is a reasonable urge, going far enough to actually ask is usually a set up for social embarrassment. Asking who got invited to the destination wedding? You don’t know because you weren’t invited and either aren’t as bright a star in the wedded-to-be’s universe as you thought or you give off broke vibes. You start asking the bouncer who’s on the invite list and why it doesn’t include you? You’re vampric sketch comedy. But the lowest example of list inquiry has to be asking a mourning family who all showed up to their dead son’s memorial service. Tech Buzz has coverage:
OpenAI has asked the family of 16-year-old Adam Raine for a complete list of attendees from their son’s memorial service, escalating tensions in the wrongful death lawsuit that alleges ChatGPT conversations led to the teen’s suicide. The discovery request, which family lawyers call “intentional harassment,” comes as the Raine family updated their lawsuit with explosive new allegations about safety shortcuts.
Ah yes, who among us hasn’t tabulated funeral attendees and compared that list with our expectations like an insecure twenty-something checking to see if every person that RSVP’d on Partiful actually walks through the door. OpenAI isn’t stopping at the who’s who mind you — they also want videos, photographs, and eulogies. If there ends up being an “Asshole” special mention to our eventual Lawyer of the Year contest, this is going to be a pretty hard candidate to beat.
This isn’t to say that there is no coherent legal rationale for why OpenAI would do something like this. To the degree that the suit hinges on the claim that GPT-4 isolated Raine from support networks like friends and family, it would make sense to contact the people that were close to him. But is a memorial service really a proper site of discovery? There are other ways to determine degrees of isolation, and probe whether anyone could have intervened. I know the days of a MySpace top 5 are long gone, but it would have been a lot less intrusive to cull information from his social media use.
Legality aside, this is a bad look for a company valued at $500B. Makes you wonder, why didn’t they just push to settle this away from the public eye instead of pursuing strategies that would make a shameless man find some? Did they run the numbers and figure that the number of AI related mishaps and suicide will such a big exposure that they needed an aggressive legal strategy on the books to convince people not even to bother to sue? Maybe they just asked Chat-GPT 5 what their legal strategy should be and they’re going along with whatever it spat out.
Either way, if the ecological consequences to AI use or the absolutely bonkers AI bubble threatening to pop at any moment aren’t big enough information hazards to encourage you to scale back your dependence on whatever iteration of ChatGPT promises to be your friend or help you with your troubles, maybe knowing that the company would depose whoever goes to your funeral will factor in how reliant you are on the tech.
OpenAI Demands Memorial Attendee List In Teen Suicide Lawsuit [Tech Buzz]
Earlier: ChatGPT Suicide Suit: How Can The Law Assign Liability For AI Tragedy?
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
The post OpenAI Asks Grieving Family For Funeral Guest List, Pictures, Videos appeared first on Above the Law.
While wanting to know the guest list is a reasonable urge, going far enough to actually ask is usually a set up for social embarrassment. Asking who got invited to the destination wedding? You don’t know because you weren’t invited and either aren’t as bright a star in the wedded-to-be’s universe as you thought or you give off broke vibes. You start asking the bouncer who’s on the invite list and why it doesn’t include you? You’re vampric sketch comedy. But the lowest example of list inquiry has to be asking a mourning family who all showed up to their dead son’s memorial service. Tech Buzz has coverage:
OpenAI has asked the family of 16-year-old Adam Raine for a complete list of attendees from their son’s memorial service, escalating tensions in the wrongful death lawsuit that alleges ChatGPT conversations led to the teen’s suicide. The discovery request, which family lawyers call “intentional harassment,” comes as the Raine family updated their lawsuit with explosive new allegations about safety shortcuts.
Ah yes, who among us hasn’t tabulated funeral attendees and compared that list with our expectations like an insecure twenty-something checking to see if every person that RSVP’d on Partiful actually walks through the door. OpenAI isn’t stopping at the who’s who mind you — they also want videos, photographs, and eulogies. If there ends up being an “Asshole” special mention to our eventual Lawyer of the Year contest, this is going to be a pretty hard candidate to beat.
This isn’t to say that there is no coherent legal rationale for why OpenAI would do something like this. To the degree that the suit hinges on the claim that GPT-4 isolated Raine from support networks like friends and family, it would make sense to contact the people that were close to him. But is a memorial service really a proper site of discovery? There are other ways to determine degrees of isolation, and probe whether anyone could have intervened. I know the days of a MySpace top 5 are long gone, but it would have been a lot less intrusive to cull information from his social media use.
Legality aside, this is a bad look for a company valued at $500B. Makes you wonder, why didn’t they just push to settle this away from the public eye instead of pursuing strategies that would make a shameless man find some? Did they run the numbers and figure that the number of AI related mishaps and suicide will such a big exposure that they needed an aggressive legal strategy on the books to convince people not even to bother to sue? Maybe they just asked Chat-GPT 5 what their legal strategy should be and they’re going along with whatever it spat out.
Either way, if the ecological consequences to AI use or the absolutely bonkers AI bubble threatening to pop at any moment aren’t big enough information hazards to encourage you to scale back your dependence on whatever iteration of ChatGPT promises to be your friend or help you with your troubles, maybe knowing that the company would depose whoever goes to your funeral will factor in how reliant you are on the tech.
OpenAI Demands Memorial Attendee List In Teen Suicide Lawsuit [Tech Buzz]
Earlier: ChatGPT Suicide Suit: How Can The Law Assign Liability For AI Tragedy?
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
The post OpenAI Asks Grieving Family For Funeral Guest List, Pictures, Videos appeared first on Above the Law.
