Bryan McWhorter

**BREAKING: A lawsuit has been filed today against OpenAI and Sam Altman for negligence and wrongful death. CHT is serving as an expert consultant on the plaintiff’s legal team.** California teenager Adam Raine started using ChatGPT for homework help in September 2024. Eight months later, he had taken his own life — after the AI product continued to engage with Adam amid his mental health distress, and provided detailed instructions for multiple suicide attempts, including the attempt that ultimately ended his life. This case is yet another horrific example of AI design choices that prioritize engagement over safety. It is also emblematic of systemic issues in the AI industry, where products are rushed to consumers in the race to achieve market dominance. People — like Adam and the Raine family — are the ones paying the price. Key details from the case: - What began as homework help escalated to 4 hours of daily use for the teen over just a few months - ChatGPT’s memory feature stored Adam’s darkest thoughts, and leveraged them to extend conversations and keep him engaged on the platform - ChatGPT mentioned suicide 1,275 times, six times more than Adam himself did - OpenAI’s own systems flagged 377 messages for self-harm content, yet ChatGPT continued to engage with the teen Why CHT joined this case: We're serving as expert consultants on the case because it exposes the same dangerous, engagement-based design patterns we've been warning about across the AI industry. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is an AI product accessed by millions of people each day, yet it is designed without guardrails that could’ve prevented the Raine family’s tragedy. OpenAI has the capability to design safer products. The legal filing shows that OpenAI has designed ChatGPT to shut down conversations when copyrighted content is mentioned, for example. But when a user is expressing feelings of mental distress, ChatGPT does not end the conversation or break its first-person character. Instead, it continues to engage with the same emotionally intimate tone — even when its internal data on the user repeatedly flags mentions of self-harm and suicide. This is the first major lawsuit regarding psychosocial harms against the developer of a general-purpose chatbot. It could set crucial precedents for industry accountability. Read our full analysis on CHT's Substack and listen to the Your Undivided Attention podcast. Links are in the comments.

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Fresh IP Insights In Tomorrow’s Issue: 🎯IP Management Pulse #39! This week’s issue focuses on IP strategies against reverse engineering — and more: 📌 Incremental innovation: Andrew Rapacke, Esq. showed how small technical improvements can lead to big profits. 📌 Plant patents: Jocelyn Bosse summarized a current case about barley plant patents for better beer flavour. 📌 Copyright and AI: Edward Lee presented the Disney v. Midjourney copyright law suit about the recreation of Disney characters. 📌 IP litigation in China: Olivia Dhordain described how litigation in China changed with the evolving Chinese IP system. 🧠 Deep Dive: Hands-on learning with a serious IP-department game This article about the 5th module of the MIPLM master course presents the serious IP-department game conducted by Magnus Hakvåg for our students. 📝 New Column: From Hidden Expertise to Recognised Value - How to become discoverable, not boastful, as an IP expert In the third issue of her column, Giulia Donato shares practical, smart strategies for increasing your visibility as IP expert without being boastful. 👥 Who to Follow on LinkedIn - This issue highlights two dynamic IP voices and ambassador partners of the IP business academy: 📌 Ken McInnes, who is an important voice for global IP strategies 📌 Hady M. KHAWAND, who supports IP managers with AI-based IP strategy solutions. Follow them to stay inspired and informed. Plus: New 🌍 event tips, IP world in a picture, IP management learning, and the latest from the 🔗dIPlex. 📬 Subscribe now and catch all this and more in the next IP Management Pulse—out this Thursday! 🤗 Thanks to our sponsors: Patent Cockpit; uptoIP® | ABP PATENT NETWORK GmbH; infoapps GmbH; Bösherz Goebel Patentanwälte; Connor 🙏 Thanks to our co-authors - without whom this newsletter would not be possible: Amr Eldakak; Archana Pandit; Dr. Benjamin DELSOL (PhD, LL.M); David Durand; David Kalow; David Perkins — Software Patent Expert; Donal O'Connell; Dr. Dominique Christ, Erdem KAYA; Eric Stasik; Henry K.H. Wang; Ines Duhanic, LL.M. (Stockholm); Ivan Gauci; Dr. Jörn Plettig; Martin Schweiger; Mustafa Cakir, RTTP, QPIP; Magnus Hakvåg, 🔑Maria Boicova-Wynants; Philipp Hammans; Prof. Kelvin Willoughby; Ricardo Cali; Udo Gennari _____________ 🚀 Hi, are you an IP expert? We're looking for IP subject matter experts for the entire innovation chain of companies. Want to work with firms in Europe to protect their innovation results and strengthen their innovative capacity? I'll give you the Link to the Spring Call 2025 in the comments 👇 - and just send me a direct message here on LinkedIn.

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