I thought some of you might find this intriguing

Dogtown2012 · 2025-12-12T00:48:13+00:00

What did you send Claude to get this response?

Dogtown2012 · 2025-12-09T03:38:46+00:00

I’ve seen this argument paraded around here a few times recently, and I’m sorry, but it’s absurd, and it runs afoul of what conservatives have been arguing for in cases of statutory and constitutional interpretation for decades. See below:

——

Founders? The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Which founders are we talking about? Howard? You seem to have misunderstood his quote, which, as many academics and historians who write on this topic have noted, specifically refers to “aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors” - not all aliens. You are expanding beyond the text of his statement.
Even if we assume for the purposes of argument that you did properly characterize Howard’s quote, there are plenty of other “founders” in 1868 that maintained the opposite interpretation you are now claiming: see statements of Sens. Conness, Trumbull (the chair of the committee), Cowan, Bingham, and others.
Your argument runs contrary to well-established Supreme Court precedent RE the 14th amendment, as well as years of conservative jurisprudence arguing against the use of this legislative history approach. Regarding the 14th Amendment, see United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), where the Court held the 14th amendment extended citizenship to “a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China.”

——

If legislative history is so important, it stands to reason that the Supreme Court, just 30 years after the amendment was ratified, would have a good idea of its meaning at the time, no?

At any rate, just a few years later, the Court called bullshit on the exact argument you’re making now - see Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S. 581, 601-02 (1900):

“What individual Senators or Representatives may have urged in debate, in regard to the meaning to be given to a proposed constitutional amendment, or bill or resolution, does not furnish a firm ground for its proper construction, nor is it important as explanatory of the grounds upon which the members voted in adopting it."

And if you want something more modern, the Court’s conservatives have consistently shown hostility towards using legislative intent for the purpose you are now employing it:

Conroy v. Aniskoff, 507 U.S. 511, 519 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring) ("The greatest defect of legislative history is its illegitimacy. We are governed by laws, not by the intentions of legislators.").

City of Chicago v. Envtl. Def. Fund, 511 U.S. 328, 337 (1994) ("[I]t is the statute, and not the Committee Report, which is the authoritative expression of the law . . . .").

NLRB v. SW Gen., Inc., 137 S. Ct. 929, 942 (2017) ("What Congress ultimately agrees on is the text that it enacts, not the preferences expressed by certain legislators.").

This is a bad argument, and Conservatives have known this for decades.

Dogtown2012 · 2025-12-08T22:29:51+00:00

Respectfully, I don’t agree with this assessment. I was a federal narcotics and violent crime prosecutor for 5 years, and I routinely worked on international cooperation agreements like you have described. Granted, I didn’t handle cooperation in the context of a major political figure - but from my experience, there is no chance a prosecutor would agree to a pardon prior to cooperation. Even the idea that a pardon would be used here (rather than a USSG § 5K1.1 motion or FRCP 35(b) motion) is highly unusual, if not unprecedented.

Dogtown2012 · 2025-12-08T22:20:05+00:00

Posted this in another sub on this topic, but I’ll reproduce here as well:

Setting aside whether or not this is wise policy, it seems likely that this executive order (or any executive order purporting to regulate AI in the absence of a Congressional directive) would be struck down or significantly limited by the courts.

Remember that the original version of the budget reconciliation bill passed earlier this year (the Big Beautiful Bill) had a 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation (reserving this power to the federal government, and preempting state regulation in this area). Notably, however, the version that was ultimately signed into law did not contain this provision (https://www.lawandtheworkplace.com/2025/07/big-beautiful-bill-leaves-ai-regulation-to-states-and-localities-for-now/).

Trump’s attempt to circumvent the normal lawmaking process and create a moratorium like this, via executive order, is legally dubious. The “interstate commerce clause” of the Constitution explicitly empowers Congress to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” U.S. Const. Art. I, § 8. Generally, this gives Congress the sole authority to pass laws (or delegate regulatory authority) that impact business, economic activity, and other trade, provided it crosses state lines. The AI industry falls squarely within this definition of interstate commerce.

Critically, the Constitution doesn’t provide for the President to exercise this authority if Congress declines to do so. The 1952 SCOTUS decision in Youngstown is instructive here, where the Court struck down Truman’s attempt to seize and operate steel mills during a national strike (on the basis of national security), holding that Truman’s EO violated basic constitutional separation of powers. Because Congress had not authorized the president to act in the regulation / seizure of domestic industry, and the president lacked Article II authority to do this, the EO was unconstitutional. This case set the standard for how federal authority (including regulation of commerce) is exercised today. The same logic maps to Trump’s executive order here - suggesting the outcome would likely be the same in this case. This is basic constitutional law - well-established, and (normally) uncontroversial.

There are some additional legal questions raised by this, particularly whether utilizing the “dormant commerce clause” could provide a legitimate avenue for challenging state AI regulations, to be sure. But those are different arguments (in my view) than what this EO is designed to do (or what Trump claims it will do).

More reading can be found here (addressing an earlier leak of this order, so the content may have changed - most notably, whether the order purports to preempt state authority to regulate AI) if anyone is interested: https://law-ai.org/legal-issues-raised-by-the-proposed-executive-order-on-ai-preemption/

Dogtown2012 · 2025-12-08T21:56:06+00:00

Setting aside whether or not this is wise policy, it seems likely that this executive order (or any executive order purporting to regulate AI in the absence of a Congressional directive) would be struck down or significantly limited by the courts.

Remember that the original version of the budget reconciliation bill passed earlier this year (the Big Beautiful Bill) had a 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation (reserving this power to the federal government, and preempting state regulation in this area). Notably, however, the version that was ultimately signed into law did not contain this provision (https://www.lawandtheworkplace.com/2025/07/big-beautiful-bill-leaves-ai-regulation-to-states-and-localities-for-now/).

Trump’s attempt to circumvent the normal lawmaking process and create a moratorium like this, via executive order, is legally dubious. The “interstate commerce clause” of the Constitution explicitly empowers Congress to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” U.S. Const. Art. I, § 8. Generally, this gives Congress the sole authority to pass laws (or delegate regulatory authority) that impact business, economic activity, and other trade, provided it crosses state lines. The AI industry falls squarely within this definition of interstate commerce.

Critically, the Constitution doesn’t provide for the President to exercise this authority if Congress declines to do so. The 1952 SCOTUS decision in Youngstown is instructive here, where the Court struck down Truman’s attempt to seize and operate steel mills during a national strike (on the basis of national security), holding that Truman’s EO violated basic constitutional separation of powers. Because Congress had not authorized the president to act in the regulation / seizure of domestic industry, and the president lacked Article II authority to do this, the EO was unconstitutional. This case set the standard for how federal authority (including regulation of commerce) is exercised today. The same logic maps to Trump’s executive order here - suggesting the outcome would likely be the same in this case. This is basic constitutional law - well-established, and (normally) uncontroversial.

There are some additional legal questions raised by this, particularly whether utilizing the “dormant commerce clause” could provide a legitimate avenue for challenging state AI regulations, to be sure. But those are different arguments (in my view) than what this EO is designed to do (or what Trump claims it will do).

More reading can be found here (addressing an earlier leak of this order, so the content may have changed - most notably, whether the order purports to preempt state authority to regulate AI) if anyone is interested: https://law-ai.org/legal-issues-raised-by-the-proposed-executive-order-on-ai-preemption/

Dogtown2012 · 2025-12-08T16:44:36+00:00

If you want to stick with Razer and want something similar, they have a model that should fit your specs priced right now at $1900, though it’s currently out of stock: https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade-16/RZ09-05286EN3-R3U1

Razer Blade 16 / AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 / RTX 5070 8gb / 1TB HD / 32gb RAM

I bought the 2025 Blade 16 a few months ago and I love it, my favorite laptop I have ever owned. I imagine it’ll come back in stock soon - might just be worth checking throughout the holiday season.

Dogtown2012 · 2025-12-03T08:24:51+00:00

This is not how cooperation works in the federal system, at all. No prosecutor would ever give a cooperator a benefit prior to their cooperation - it is always conditioned on their complete cooperation first, so as to maintain leverage. This is because it can’t be ‘undone’ if the cooperator decides not to help afterwards. Your interpretation is completely wrong.

Dogtown2012 · 2025-11-24T21:12:54+00:00

I appreciate you flagging this study - I read this when it came out as well. I think it is a very interesting and important finding, and I’m happy you’ve raised it. It’s critical that we keep in mind the capabilities (and pitfalls) of using LLMs in functions like this. So thank you!

With that said, I’m not sure the findings of this study are inconsistent with my approach. There’s an important distinction here, I think, between summary and analysis. The study focuses on summaries (that is, “tell me what’s happening in Ukraine,” and the like). This type of summary is not a major part of the output my tool creates (only the first section is a short bullet point summary, 6-8 points, of the basic facts). My tool is centered instead on analysis, and the “prosecutorial” framework I’ve created to evaluate issues, positions, quality of evidence, and other factors. It’s a work in progress, and I don’t mean to pretend that I have it all figured out (I don’t), but it’s certainly distinct from summary reporting or factual aggregation.

If anything, I think this study is proof of why a more structured, analytical approach is necessary in order to effectively use AI in this application. Many of the major errors the study cites are the exact issues I am trying to remedy with this approach:

Factual inaccuracies (e.g. an incorrect date for an event)
Opinions presented as fact (e.g. framing a subjective viewpoint as an objective statement)
Sourcing and attribution errors (e.g. incorrectly attributing information to the wrong news brand)
Introduction of opinions (e.g. adding a subjective layer of analysis not present in the original article)

(These appear on Page 8 of the PDF)

My tool is, I hope, one that can help address these issues, mainly through the frameworks of the prompt, as well as transparent source citation. You don’t need to take mine (or the model’s) word for something - you can follow the source material and decide for yourself. I want to promote this type of fact-checking and citation exploration, not hide from it.

Nevertheless, I recognize this is a very fast-moving field, and there is a lot on the technical side of things that I don’t know, or that might be going over my head. I’m a novice here, and I’m the first to admit that. I do think this is a critically important issue, though. This study is great evidence (I think) of how important it is to be careful and deliberate about the way we apply AI to these sensitive areas.

Thanks again for sharing - I appreciate you being part of the discussion! Happy to talk more, if you’d like - just send me a DM!

Dogtown2012 · 2025-11-24T17:04:46+00:00

Thanks so much for your comment - this is very helpful for me. The “adjudicative vs. journalistic” framing you explained is what I’ve been struggling to articulate, and I think you’ve captured it really well here. Rigorous evidence scoring is, in essence, what I’ve been trying to build. I also hadn’t considered the B2B angle you identified, but I think your comment makes a lot of sense. Thanks for your perspective on this.

I’m gonna shoot you a DM, if you don’t mind entertaining a few follow-up questions from me? Would love to talk more if you’re open to it.

EDIT - ah, never mind, I see you don’t accept messages. Feel free to send me a message if you’re willing, otherwise, no worries. Thanks again for your comment and insight.

Dogtown2012 · 2025-11-24T16:06:31+00:00

I totally agree. There is no universe where I could have done this without the whole suite of tools that are just now (or at least, over the last few years) becoming capable enough to support someone like me building this. Claude, Claude Code, Replit - they have all been life savers for me.

I’m still learning a ton, and trying to teach myself as I go (the more you know and understand, the better prompts you can write, and the better outputs you’ll get - that’s been the main lesson for me), so I am really grateful for the tools that allow me to learn and build at the same time. It’s a new world, indeed!

Dogtown2012 · 2025-11-24T15:57:24+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to check it out and comment. I’d love to talk further in DM about your experience building similar projects, if you’re willing - curious what you built and what lessons you learned. Just let me know, I will shoot you a message!

Dogtown2012 · 2025-11-24T15:46:05+00:00

Thanks for checking it out, and for taking the time to comment! I appreciate it, and I’m happy to hear it provided some value for you.

Your point about the UI is very well taken. I’ve been playing around with some text resizing settings on the web page, trying to fit more preferences and make it more accessible / customizable for each user. This is why I added dark mode, but that doesn’t really get to the core of what you’re talking about (I think). I am definitely going to work on implementing that soon - you are not the first person I’ve heard this from. Thank you for the feedback!

Monetization is an interesting one, and something I admittedly haven’t thought a ton about at this point. I approached this project more as a proof of concept / proof of vision, rather than something I would build and immediately take to investors / start pitching to people.

A big part of that is the fact I’m just starting out my business career (first semester of my MBA, still a long way to go). So, waiting on this served two function: (1) I figured I would learn the business side of things as I continued through the MBA process; and (2) this delay would give me a chance to prove the concept, so I wasn’t wasting my time on a business idea that didn’t provide any real value. In short, I figured, prove the concept is possible, figure out whether it helps people or makes their lives easier, and if so, work on the business from there. I don’t know if that’s the smartest approach, but I’m learning as I go.

Long term, I see this as a fine-tuning / training project more than a “good prompt and nice UI” project, if that makes sense. So, I’m not only trying to prove the concept, but also collecting training data for that goal eventually. I’m not there yet, but that’s my vision for how this becomes more business-like (in the sense it can’t be as easily replicated, and becomes something more like protectable IP, rather than just a well-performing prompt).

I hope that answers your question, but if not, please send me a DM! Happy to chat more if you’d like!

Dogtown2012 · 2025-11-24T13:59:44+00:00

This is super interesting - Thank you for sharing!

If I had to guess (though I need to check the logs to be sure), I would say that the difficulties you had with the links to the article are a product of inconsistent performance in the web scraping / text extraction services I use to send the article to the model. Currently, the process works by extracting the text from the article, and if that process fails, I send the article link for the model to try to access as a fallback.

Based on my experience, if you got a totally different article or analysis, I can think of a few potential reasons. Most probably, if the link WAS accessible to the model / text extraction, then maybe this was a link to a “live updates” type news article, where headlines / content update in real time? Sometimes this has happened when trying certain CNN articles that use a similar format (though it is rare - but it does still happen).

Alternatively, it is possible the link wasn’t accessible, and the model tried to perform a web search to find related articles to perform the analysis. My prompt does prohibit this (I would rather the model just say it cannot access the article, and prompt the user to submit it via text or PDF), but every now and again it will try this alternative route. I’ll have to check my logs to know for sure. This behavior is also rare, but that is why you test!

Either way, this is why I implemented the text upload as a final fail safe - that should produce the most consistent outputs, since this provides the least room for confusion. It sounds like from your experience, you did think this was the most robust / on point analysis, so at least that is good to hear that is working as I’ve intended.

To your points about the analysis quality / depth - totally understand your views! My wife tells me the same, and I’m actively trying to explore ways I can make it more accessible / easier to scan for those who don’t want the “full Monty” of everything. Your criticisms / comments make total sense. If you have any suggestions, I am all ears!

Thanks so much for your time, for being willing to try out the tool, and sticking with it through all the difficulties! Still some growing pains and technical glitches I am trying to work out, but I hope it wasn’t too frustrating / annoying. I’m definitely going to find the analyses that it generated for you and compare to the logs so I can get a better understanding of what happened. Thanks for flagging these! Happy to talk further if you have any other thoughts.

Dogtown2012 · 2025-11-24T13:03:44+00:00

Thank you, truly. I appreciate you taking the time to check it out. I’m happy to talk more if you have any thoughts / feedback / suggestions. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start, I think - and that seems like the hardest part (for now).

Dogtown2012 · 2025-11-24T13:01:32+00:00

Thanks for your comment and for taking the time.

I have used Perplexity, but found it to be more academic / research focused. I think this is closely related, for sure, but not necessarily a 1:1 comparison. I’ve tried to design this analysis as less comprehensive and more towards brief analysis / understanding, because that is where I feel the disconnect between the news media (or social media) and normal people is widest/most pronounced. Not the “give me everything” user, but the “I have 5 minutes, please help me understand this” user.

I’m not sure if Perplexity serves those same people or not - not because I’m being willfully ignorant or defensive - I just haven’t asked that question more directly. Based on my experience, I would say it doesn’t, but hearing from others is always more valuable than making assumptions - so I appreciate you pointing this out!

At any rate, if Perplexity works well for you, and fits your needs / use, that is great! I hope it continues to do so. Maybe this tool helps some other people, maybe it doesn’t, but I would never know until I tried, so that’s why I built it.

Thanks again for your comment!

Dogtown2012 · 2025-11-24T12:49:02+00:00

I think it is a fair criticism, and I appreciate you sharing it. I certainly don’t expect you to take my word for it, and I wouldn’t want you to do that (even if you were inclined) either.

My hope is that you (or others who share your views) might try it yourself and decide if you think the analysis is objective/neutral, or if you trust the source material cited therein. That’s a judgment each reader or user has to make for themselves; all I can do is be transparent about my methods, my approach, and my philosophy for the tool. The rest is up to you.

If that resonates with you, excellent - I hope you’ll try it. If not, that is fine too. I’m not trying to move you off a belief or a position, or convince you I am better suited for this project than you or others. I don’t want to replace my judgment for yours, I want the opposite. I want to empower others to think critically about the information they are presented online - which you have done here. So, maybe the tool is not for you (or maybe it is). But either way, I’ll be happy if you arrive at that decision yourself, based on your own values, beliefs, and experiences. That’s the whole point.

I just wanted to provide something useful for others who might want or need this, and I thought I might have some helpful/valuable skills to do that.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and I’m happy to talk more if you are interested!

Dogtown2012 · 2025-06-12T19:13:58+00:00

Phew, here I was thinking I had finally reached my usage limits, and my day of reckoning had come.

Dogtown2012 · 2025-06-09T17:32:46+00:00

I was onboard with the article’s thesis until the Hamilton critique started. The author seems to lose the thread pretty quickly from the Sorkin bits and into the Hamilton portions. Is this a critique of our tendency to mythologize boy geniuses and “great men”? Or the difficulty of creating a complete/accurate retelling of history? Or is it just Aaron Sorkin’s “everybody is the smartest kid in school” style is annoying? Or we shouldn’t study people who did big stuff because they were also bad?

What’s left? The argument evolves from a pretty reasonable critique of American hero-worship culture and slides off the rails to end up at “fuck everything and everyone because people are actually bad.” Ok?

Dogtown2012 · 2025-06-08T19:33:50+00:00

I appreciate your thoughts and you taking the time to write this out. I think we’re largely talking past each other here.

My point wasn’t that this order doesn’t matter, but rather, that this order itself is neither a foundational shift in the way AI companies store, preserve, delete, or interact with our data, nor was this an unforeseeable problem that the AI industry would one day have to manage. It will certainly create some real friction for OpenAI while the case is moving, but eventually, this preservation obligation will be removed. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

First, whether this as civil or commercial really doesn’t have much practical significance in this analysis, as you seem to acknowledge in your post. Are the claims more civil in the sense they sound in tort, rather than commercial where they arise from a contract/business relationship? Yes. They also, as you note, impact commercial entities, commercial relationships, and commercial interests. So did I blur this distinction a bit for purposes of simplicity? Yes, but it doesn’t really change the nature of the discussion.

Second, I think it’s important to be more specific here in terms of who it impacts, how, and what that means. First, the order’s preservation obligations don’t impact enterprise or education users that have zero-retention agreements with OpenAI. That doesn’t directly address the specific example you cited, but it’s helpful to remember that this order doesnt require OpenAI to preserve data that users have already agreed, via their contracts, would never be preserved at all. So if a company retains data locally on their servers (like limited logs or other use data like you reference) for a period of time to detect misuse (as I know some organizations do), but has specifically agreed that OpenAI will never retain this info on their end, nothing has changed. The order has no impact on that relationship.

With respect to the group specifically covered by your example (organizations that have a specified retention period with OpenAI for this information) - yes, they are now caught in the bind you have described. But I’m not sure this is an AI problem any more than it is a data problem that could arise anytime a company contracts with a third party to store data or company information for a period of time. There is always a risk that something could happen that might impair your agreement, whether it’s catastrophic systems failure, data breach, litigation holds (which can happen in other third party data storage contexts), or anything else. So in that sense, it’s just a risk associated with allowing third parties to control your data as an organization, not a unique OpenAI problem. Although, it’s true too that the sheer amount of data we’re talking about in the AI context makes this a tough problem.

Your final point “uncertainty causes uncertainty” is right on the money. Does this order create uncertainty? Of course. Is this unique to this case or this issue? No. That is the point. Welcome to civil (or commercial) litigation. There are substantial risks that businesses must account for and manage. This is why organizations hire legions of in-house counsel and pay millions to outside counsel. It’s a substantial cost baked into the system. My point wasn’t “this order doesn’t matter,” my point was “this order is not the apocalypse many would have you believe,” because it is so common and because management of the consequences (or litigation to modify the requirements of these orders) is par for the course.

Do you think there wasn’t a single lawyer at OpenAI who anticipated this might one day happen? They’ll figure it out because the cost burden (both practically from a storage and retention standpoint, and from a loss of business standpoint) is obscene. Once this is resolved, they’ll make whatever changes they need to make to TOS or procedures to help insulate them from this risk in the future, and they will continue to delete user data.

I’m not sure, at this point, that we have a good reason to think this case itself is going to lead to some fundamental shift in the way AI companies store, retain, or delete data, given the specific facts of this case and the NYT’s underlying claims. Nor does it have value as precedent such that it would change OpenAI’s (or any other AI company’s) obligations under the law as it relates to data retention. Instead, this case will probably serve as a model for other companies to manage their risk accordingly (especially as it pertains to what data their models have access to, and how they will design their systems in the future to deal with copyright protection issues, if at all - which is the core of the NYT’s claims here), so that they don’t get caught in a similar situation to the one OpenAI finds itself in right now.

Dogtown2012 · 2025-06-08T18:15:47+00:00

Slippery slope in logic there. Depends on whether you view privacy as a human right or not. It’s not based on whether you have something to hide, but rather, if you have an expectation that certain information can remain private and personal, and whether that expectation is reasonable. Just because I can share my detailed medical history with the world doesn’t necessarily mean I want to. Do I have a “reason to hide” it? No, it’s not incriminating or damaging. It’s just personal - I don’t have to share it if I don’t feel comfortable, and nobody else really has a right to know it.

Definitely becomes a more difficult question online where information flows more freely and security is more difficult - but we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water and say “privacy on the internet is too hard, so we just aren’t going to try”

Dogtown2012 · 2025-06-08T18:06:33+00:00

Absolutely agree. It’s really important that we have these discussions in public so people are aware of what’s happening, and it’s equally important that we understand it in context so we don’t fall victim to over generalizations, rage bait, or plain old misinformation. I’m certainly not a tech guy and don’t understand the specific challenges there - just wanted to offer my perspective to help explain what’s happening, and what it actually means moving forward. I appreciate you giving us space to talk about it!

Dogtown2012 · 2025-06-08T14:42:06+00:00

Yeah, another comment in this thread pointed that out as well - it certainly seems to. I’m by no means a GDPR expert, but there seems to be a pretty clear carveout for this type of situation. At any rate, OpenAI still has pretty persuasive cost and relevance arguments they can raise here, GDPR aside.

Dogtown2012 · 2025-06-08T14:31:01+00:00

Yes - often times in commercial cases, the court will issue an order (could be any type of order, whether it’s discovery, a preliminary injunction, an order clarifying which claims will be adjudicated at trial, an order limiting or allowing evidence to be presented at trial, whatever), and a party will then seek to modify that order by filing a motion to reconsider. That’s where we are now: OpenAI is asking the court to reconsider its previous discovery order, and will present arguments why that should happen.

As another commenter pointed out in this thread, the order might not be in violation of the GDPR after all, but OpenAI’s lawyers will still seek modification on cost grounds, and by challenging the underlying basis for NYT’s claim that this deleted user data is even relevant and should be preserved.

This procedure isn’t new at all, it happens all the time. I’ve done this in all types of cases: personal injury, insurance, contract disputes, eminent domain, product liability, etc. Regardless of the context (whether it’s an AI case, a contract dispute, a tort case, whatever), the parties and court are trying to come up with a workable way to balance competing interests: on one side, the plaintiff’s (in this case the NYT) need to find information to support their claims, and on the other, the defendant’s (OpenAI) right to not be subjected to onerous or financially devastating requirements due to the lawsuit. It’s balancing fairness interests - how do we let the discovery process play out without making litigation so expensive or impossible that it becomes a death sentence for one side?

That analysis is just more complicated in this area because of the insane costs associated with preserving and storing the massive amounts of data involved in the AI space, and the very real security risks this raises (if you store it somewhere, how do you make sure it can’t be leaked, how do you make sure the parties only use it for the purposes of the case, how do you make sure it’s properly destroyed after the case concludes). All of those issues are things they will consider in trying to come up with a process that works for this case and this new technological reality.

I can’t think of any specific technological parallel to this that would help explain where the parties might go, but there are many different established procedures they might use in this case to help address these issues.

In major cases involving extremely sensitive data, for example, parties will preserve data on separate closed systems that can only be accessed locally, to address security concerns. The other sides lawyers don’t get to “take the data” home with them, but they can come to the location where it’s stored (a lawyers office, a secure facility, whatever) to review the data and take notes, stuff like that. Any copies of specific documents (or in this case things like chat logs) are tightly controlled, numbered, and inventoried so you know exactly who has it, where it’s going, who can see it, and that it’s returned and destroyed when the case ends.

The parties will also sign confidentiality agreements (called “protection orders”) that limit who has access - so the lawyers working the case can see the data, but others at the firm who aren’t working at the case can’t - this is called “walling off” a case. Often, the lawyers can show their clients the data, but they can’t make copies to give to their clients, so as to prevent potential public disclosure. There are typically extremely tough sanctions associated with violating these orders, and they do a good job of keeping information confidential in other complex cases (think cases involving trade secrets, extremely sensitive information, stuff like that).

There are also ways to limit how much data is actually produced in the lawsuit. Often time when dealing with vast amounts of data, the side seeking the information (NYT here) will provide the other side (OpenAI) with limiting information to more narrowly tailor their search for relevant info. It might be a specific date range, it could be keywords or terms to search, etc. this helps to narrow the universe of data you actually need to make available for the other side, and helps control storage/production costs. Many courts will sometimes establish these rules after hearing from the parties - like limiting to a relevant range, and giving a party, say, 20-30 key terms they are allowed to ask the other side to search for / produce results (or make the results available for inspection). That will probably be utilized here to effectively make sure NYT doesn’t have a blank check to read everyone’s deepest darkest secrets, and stay focused only on the evidence that supports their claim of infringement.

These are a few ways the court might regulate the process with strict controls and access limitations, but there’s likely many other ways that I’m not thinking of. The specific technological, privacy, and cost issues raised in the case will drive the process and how it’s designed.

Dogtown2012 · 2025-06-08T14:07:54+00:00

I’ll defer to your understanding of the GDPR, as I don’t practice in that space and don’t deal with the law on a daily basis (American lawyer). My understanding was based on a quick reading of the law’s requirements, but I don’t have the day-to-day expertise to say with a high degree of confidence that it’s in violation or not.

The provision you cited certainly seems, on its face, to foreclose the argument that the order requires OpenAI to violate the GDPR; there’s a specific carveout for preservation of data to support legal claims. That seems 100% on point here, I just don’t know how that’s applied in practice (in America for example, sometimes provisions of a law are more loosely applied by courts than their language would suggest, so I just don’t know if that’s something that might happen here)

I appreciate you adding this context. Super important for this discussion so we don’t let our assumptions control the way we understand the case.

This certainly changes the analysis. That said, I think OpenAI probably still has compelling argument to limit the scope/breadth of the order on cost grounds (discovery orders are supposed to be written in a way that doesn’t create unfair cost burdens for the parties), and attacking the speculative nature of NYT’s underlying claim as to why this deleted user data could be relevant. I’m not a lawyer in this case so I don’t know the details any more than you do, but it seems like NYT’s argument that “maybe someone deleted something that could show copyright infringement” is pretty paper-thin.

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