{"id":581691,"date":"2026-05-13T12:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T12:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/581691\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T12:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T12:44:09","slug":"beware-what-you-tell-your-ai-chatbot-its-not-a-shrink-its-a-snitch-arwa-mahdawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/581691\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware what you tell your AI chatbot. It\u2019s not a shrink \u2013 it\u2019s a snitch | Arwa Mahdawi"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hottest new read of 2026 may well be The Secret Diary of Greg Brockman, Aged 38\u00be. It\u2019s got everything: feuding billionaires, scheming CEOs and a perhaps somewhat unreliable narrator. You won\u2019t find it in the library, but you can watch<\/a> Brockman, a co-founder and president of OpenAI, being forced to read<\/a> the juiciest bits out loud in court.<\/p>\n

Before you ask ChatGPT to explain, here\u2019s the backstory: Elon Musk is in a legal battle with Brockman and the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman<\/a>. Musk, a former board member of OpenAI, is accusing the men of violating the AI firm\u2019s founding agreement by turning it into a for-profit entity. Meanwhile, Altman et al are arguing Musk is just upset he\u2019s not in control of the company and wants to bring down his competition.<\/p>\n

Helpfully for Musk, Brockman kept a diary during the company\u2019s founding years; this has become central to the case. In one heavily cited extract, Brockman writes: \u201cFinancially what will take me to $1B?\u201d Another scrutinised passage: \u201cIt\u2019d be wrong to steal the non-profit from [Musk]. to convert to a b-corp without him. that\u2019d be pretty morally bankrupt. and he\u2019s really not an idiot.\u201d (He may have been lusting after billions, but his sentence structure suggests Brockman is ambivalent about capitalism \u2013 or at least capitals.)<\/p>\n

Look, I\u2019m not an expert in crime management, but I\u2019m pretty sure there are certain thoughts you shouldn\u2019t share with Dear Diary. Even Brockman\u2019s tech bro peers are aghast at his journal-maxxing. \u201cI love the guy, but what \u2026 is he thinking?\u201d David Friedberg, a co-host of the All-In podcast, said on a recent episode<\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019re just sitting here at home, like, let me write about the crime I\u2019m committing \u2026 and by the way, let me never delete it.\u201d Alleged crime, David, alleged.<\/p>\n

Not a lot of people are keeping journals laying out potentially problematic corporate manoeuvres. However, millions of people are using tools such as ChatGPT as a sort of therapist<\/a> or digital confession box; a place to share private or half-formed thoughts. \u201cWithin the next decade,\u201d one lawyer told Axios<\/a>, \u201cthe diary equivalent will be standard discovery in every major executive litigation in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does this mean? It means you shouldn\u2019t trust a chatbot with your secrets because, as a number of recent cases demonstrate (including one where a former NFL player allegedly asked ChatGPT<\/a> for help after he killed his girlfriend), conversations with AI are admissible in court. Even if you don\u2019t expect any legal trouble, you should be wary about sharing your sensitive information: most chatbot conversations are not private<\/a>, and may be retained indefinitely and shared with other humans. Your AI chatbot is not a shrink \u2013 it\u2019s a snitch.<\/p>\n

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hottest new read of 2026 may well be The Secret Diary of Greg Brockman, Aged 38\u00be. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-581691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}