Nathan Calvin (@_NathanCalvin) / X

Nathan Calvin

2,328 posts

Nathan Calvin

@_NathanCalvin

General Counsel Encode AI

Washington DC

Joined February 2014

Pinned
Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
May 19
Encode AI is one of four co-authors on a new report about xAI's AI safety record, an area that should be receiving much more scrutiny and attention in the lead up to SpaceX's IPO. Elon Musk was among the earliest and most vocal proponents warning about severe AI risks and
The Midas Project
@TheMidasProj
May 19
SpaceX is about to go public, and inside it now is xAI, a frontier AI lab that ranks behind its peers in every major published assessment of AI safety practices. What does that mean for investors? Our new report with @GuidelightAI, @EncodeAction, and @LASST_law is out today.
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
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. I held back on talking about it because I didn't want to distract from SB 53, but Newsom just signed the bill so... here's what happened: 🧵
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
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. 7/15
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
You might recall a story in the SF Standard that talked about OpenAI retaliating against critics. Among other things, OpenAI asked for all my private communications on SB 53 - a bill that creates new transparency rules and whistleblower protections at large AI companies. 2/15
Emily Dreyfuss
@EmilyDreyfuss
Sep 2, 2025
Inside OpenAI, there's a growing paranoia that some of its loudest critics are being funded by Elon Musk and other billionaire competitors. Now, they are going after these nonprofit groups, but their evidence of a vast conspiracy is often extremely thin sfstandard.com/2025/09/02/ope…
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
Why did OpenAI subpoena me? Encode has criticized OpenAI’s restructuring and worked on AI regulations, including SB 53. 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. 3/15
The Midas Project
@TheMidasProj
Aug 4, 2025
🚨 Breaking: A group of 100+ Nobel laureates, professors, whistleblowers, public figures, artists, and nonprofit organizations just released a letter asking OpenAI to tell the truth about its restructuring. Here’s what they had to say: 🧵
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
A magistrate judge even chastised OpenAI more broadly for their behavior in the discovery process in their case against Musk. 9/15
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
There’s a big problem with that idea: Elon isn’t involved with Encode. Elon wasn’t behind SB 53. He doesn’t fund us, and we’ve never spoken to him. 4/15
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
Does anyone believe these actions are consistent with OpenAI’s nonprofit mission to ensure that AGI benefits humanity? OpenAI still has time to do better. I hope they do. 15/15
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
OpenAI had no legal right to ask for this information. So we submitted an objection explaining why we would not be providing our private communications. (They never replied.) 8/15
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
But they didn’t stop there. They also sent a sheriff’s deputy to my home and asked for me to turn over private texts and emails with CA legislators, college students, and former OAI employees. 6/15
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
OpenAI went beyond just subpoenaing Encode about Elon. OpenAI could (and did!) send a subpoena to Encode’s corporate address asking about our funders or communications with Elon (which don’t exist). If OpenAI had stopped there, maybe you could argue it was in good faith. 5/15
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
Prior to OpenAI, Chris Lehane’s PR clients included Boeing, the Weinstein Company, and Goldman Sachs. One person who worked on a campaign with Lehane said to the New Yorker “The goal was intimidation, to let everyone know that if they fuck with us they’ll regret it” 12/15
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
I want to see that side of OAI, but instead I see them trying to intimidate critics into silence. This episode was the most stressful period of my professional life. Encode has 3 FTEs - going against the highest-valued private company in the world is terrifying. 14/15
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
Oct 10, 2025
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
There is more I could go into about the nature of OAI's engagement on SB 53, but suffice to say that when I saw OpenAI’s so-called “master of the political dark arts” Chris Lehane claim that they "worked to improve the bill," I literally laughed out loud. 11/15
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