It's not so much related to Enron or what a historic corporation did right or what a historic corporation did wrong, although those aspects are interesting too...
What's interesting is the use of an AI, an LLM, to create a "knowledge map" (in this case a Wiki, but it could have taken other forms) of a whole bunch of disjoint, separate, and apparently (at first glance, to the naked eye of a casual observer) disparate information from different emails at different dates and times to different parties outside of the company, the only common thread being that they were sent by employees of the same company, and for the AI/LLM to be able to extract facts and a knowledge graph ("who knew what, when") again, in the form of a Wiki (but could have been in another format), and this allows "making sense of", some "higher level viewpoint of" (at least to some better degree than all of the emails alone), again, in this case, in the form of a Wiki.
Now, this set of ideas could have some application far beyond Enron, far beyond investigations, far beyond what Enron historically did right or Enron historically did wrong...
For example, large companies and other organizations could create Wikis based on public facts in email corpuses for onboarding new employees. Not just for email interactions with outside companies (customers, suppliers, etc.) but for how different systems, different business processes used by the company work, or are supposed to work. Sort of like new employee manuals where there are entries like "if this fails, then do this...", or here's our documentation which shows that we're ISO-9000 compliant, etc. etc.
Point is, the amount of uses for something like this in a corporate setting is theoretically unlimited.
Of course, there might be issues as to what information different types of employees could read about, that is, larger corporations may wish to set access controls to different types of information, but there's no reason why an AI/LLM couldn't perform this function (with human oversight!) as well. Each of those could be ironed-out on an per-company, per-case, ad-hoc basis...
But again, the point is, the amount of potential uses for something like this in a corporate setting is theoretically unlimited...
It's not impossible to solve, and it doesn't require any kind of onerous human verification either. We already saw this earlier this year: LLM-generated comments were everywhere on HN, rotting this place out. Then dang implemented a no-LLM-comments policy and a filter that does a remarkably good job of automatically detecting and flagging them. It is by choice that the submissions of blatantly obviously LLM-generated content are allowed to rot out ShowHN.
I guess “something” meant a vetted web of trust. My children will be better off if they don’t need to learn to navigate the internet cesspool, so either you’re wrong and it sucks for them, or you’re right and it sucks for them. Either way, well-played! Very clever!
You're not wrong. These load-bearing air molecules are not too energized; they are quite tranquil―and the wavelengths emitted off plants' photosynthesis organs are equally pleasing.
Ah, Enron. The good ole days when fraudulent execs still went to jail and corporations still saw consequences of fraud.
2002, Arthur Andersen gets indicted for deliberately aiding Enron in cooking the books. 2003, Bush DoJ's attorney general binds prosecutors to effectively always settle corporate cases without convictions. So nowadays you have companies like Boeing murdering 300+ without real consequences. It's a real shame.
> The good ole days when fraudulent execs still went to jail
Well, not one guy. Lou Pai cheated on his wife with stripper Melanie Fewell who was also married. He was known in the Enron offices to enjoy Houston area strip clubs. But in a first for him, he knocked Melanie up over the course of the affair. Pai's first wife and mother of his first two children Lana Lee learned about it and started divorce proceedings. To satisfy asset division as part of their divorce terms, Pai sold $250M worth of Enron stock just months before it crashed and Enron went bankrupt. Pai then married Fewell. Pai was briefly the largest(? maybe top two?) private land owners in Colorado, and his ranchland included Culebra Peak, one of CO's 14ers.
In 2008 he settled a civil suit alleging insider trading brought by the SEC. The settlement was $31.5 and does not include an admission of the SEC's claims. He was barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 5 years.
Lou landed on his feet. He and Melanie are still married. They and their daughter seem to be big figures in dressage, running Canaan Ranch and the Bred in the USA Syndicate, which seems to be a syndicate of 14 breeders. Maybe someone who knows horses can explain exactly how big a deal they are; they might not be much after all.
Lou Pai is an American role model, I love that he used divorce as a tool as the breadwinner. It is advertised as a failure mode, societally, and doubly so for the person that accumulated assets. Helped me realize to take a second look at the system at the level lawyers operate at
SEC only went after him because the movie came out
I think our current commissioner was working at the SEC at that time, I wonder what he thinks of it
He was having sex with strippers in the club's VIP, a feature that's often denied as existing, meeting more visually and sexually attractive, younger, more feminine women in that route, with a nice bankroll.
The utility of his prior lifestyle had diminished, he didn't need a dual income household and he certainly didn't want it.
He was bored of it, the university pipeline straight to running a corporate VC arm full of corporate climbers that want to prove how they fit in male dominated spaces with masculine behaviors. The representation of that was and is completely contrived - for any guy with options - and he went along with it because people told him to in the DC area, and that's who his peers were. Assortative mating that he realized was not serving him and he wasn't poor enough to need it.
I wouldn't say the conception was planned, he was just having fun with his favorite stripper, but pouring gas on himself at the gas station to mask her sent was.
Now, he retired his whole bloodline, after making a bloodline at all with his favorite stripper, giving her the dream of ponies, horses, and seemingly living happily ever after. I never followed up on his daughter being an adult now, but the privilege of pursuing dressage because of the father's successful indiscretions is fascinating.
I'll definitely aim to replicate, it looks far more appealing than upper middle class assortative mating does, with all the failure modes reappropriated as exception handling. I'll just avoid the first marriage, and refine the journey with trusts more effectively in such a wild wealth disparity and power dynamic, but also keep the divorce court ordered insider trading immunity in my back pocket.
No, Bush's AG did not bind prosecutors to effectively always settle corporate cases without convictions. Following high-profile corporate scandals (e.g., Enron, WorldCom, Tyco), Bush established the Corporate Fraud Task Force in 2002. Over the next couple of years the DOJ obtained over 500 corporate fraud convictions or guilty pleas. They charged over 900 defendants and over 60 corporate CEOs and presidents with some type of corporate fraud crime in connection with over 400 filed cases.
Certainly what it feels like... but you've got: SBF, Holmes, Madoff who have done and are doing prison time. But yea, the Boeing case stands out for sure.
A company I had private stock in just sold. The email I got saying that they wanted to get me paid ASAP was electric. Finally, for just a day or two, I was in the elite of the elite: people who are owed money and that the enforcement arm of the US government will ensure are made whole. The payday was under $100, but the feeling was priceless.
On top of defrauding the investor class as others mentioned, they had already completely lost their power at that point. So it was just taking down someone who was already down. Their companies/funds were dead already.
If Arthur Andersen hadn't been indicted, it's possible it would have continued as a company and gotten away with it, at the very least much more likely than the above three.
xbar 1 day ago
jreynar 1 day ago
enjoyyourlife 1 day ago
peter_d_sherman 4 hours ago
It's not so much related to Enron or what a historic corporation did right or what a historic corporation did wrong, although those aspects are interesting too...
What's interesting is the use of an AI, an LLM, to create a "knowledge map" (in this case a Wiki, but it could have taken other forms) of a whole bunch of disjoint, separate, and apparently (at first glance, to the naked eye of a casual observer) disparate information from different emails at different dates and times to different parties outside of the company, the only common thread being that they were sent by employees of the same company, and for the AI/LLM to be able to extract facts and a knowledge graph ("who knew what, when") again, in the form of a Wiki (but could have been in another format), and this allows "making sense of", some "higher level viewpoint of" (at least to some better degree than all of the emails alone), again, in this case, in the form of a Wiki.
Now, this set of ideas could have some application far beyond Enron, far beyond investigations, far beyond what Enron historically did right or Enron historically did wrong...
For example, large companies and other organizations could create Wikis based on public facts in email corpuses for onboarding new employees. Not just for email interactions with outside companies (customers, suppliers, etc.) but for how different systems, different business processes used by the company work, or are supposed to work. Sort of like new employee manuals where there are entries like "if this fails, then do this...", or here's our documentation which shows that we're ISO-9000 compliant, etc. etc.
Point is, the amount of uses for something like this in a corporate setting is theoretically unlimited.
Of course, there might be issues as to what information different types of employees could read about, that is, larger corporations may wish to set access controls to different types of information, but there's no reason why an AI/LLM couldn't perform this function (with human oversight!) as well. Each of those could be ironed-out on an per-company, per-case, ad-hoc basis...
But again, the point is, the amount of potential uses for something like this in a corporate setting is theoretically unlimited...
Anyway, great article, and great idea!
genxy 1 day ago
anotherhue 1 day ago
jreynar 1 day ago
Kwpolska 1 day ago
pixl97 1 day ago
Unless we get some kind of verified human authentication it's nearly impossible to solve. And that in itself introduces all kinds of new problems.
Welcome to the dead internet.
anonymous908213 1 day ago
pixl97 1 day ago
At best we get this
https://xkcd.com/810/
irishcoffee 1 day ago
pixl97 1 day ago
Well, the future sucks for your children.
Also, thank goodness I made thousands of HN accounts to sell to LLMs.
No, this really just shifts the shape of the problem around, but the problem is still the same size.
irishcoffee 1 day ago
chung8123 1 day ago
Razengan 1 day ago
cwnyth 1 day ago
jetbalsa 1 day ago
qclibre22 1 day ago
pretty cool.
happyash1 1 day ago
tonymet 1 day ago
contubernio 1 day ago
nonethewiser 1 day ago
Capricorn2481 1 day ago
tonymet 1 day ago
Kim_Bruning 1 day ago
jreynar 1 day ago
deaux 1 day ago
2002, Arthur Andersen gets indicted for deliberately aiding Enron in cooking the books. 2003, Bush DoJ's attorney general binds prosecutors to effectively always settle corporate cases without convictions. So nowadays you have companies like Boeing murdering 300+ without real consequences. It's a real shame.
1-more 1 day ago
Well, not one guy. Lou Pai cheated on his wife with stripper Melanie Fewell who was also married. He was known in the Enron offices to enjoy Houston area strip clubs. But in a first for him, he knocked Melanie up over the course of the affair. Pai's first wife and mother of his first two children Lana Lee learned about it and started divorce proceedings. To satisfy asset division as part of their divorce terms, Pai sold $250M worth of Enron stock just months before it crashed and Enron went bankrupt. Pai then married Fewell. Pai was briefly the largest(? maybe top two?) private land owners in Colorado, and his ranchland included Culebra Peak, one of CO's 14ers.
In 2008 he settled a civil suit alleging insider trading brought by the SEC. The settlement was $31.5 and does not include an admission of the SEC's claims. He was barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 5 years.
Lou landed on his feet. He and Melanie are still married. They and their daughter seem to be big figures in dressage, running Canaan Ranch and the Bred in the USA Syndicate, which seems to be a syndicate of 14 breeders. Maybe someone who knows horses can explain exactly how big a deal they are; they might not be much after all.
https://www.usef.org/us-equestrian-teams/athletes/natalie_pa...
yieldcrv 1 day ago
SEC only went after him because the movie came out
I think our current commissioner was working at the SEC at that time, I wonder what he thinks of it
1-more 1 day ago
yieldcrv 1 day ago
The utility of his prior lifestyle had diminished, he didn't need a dual income household and he certainly didn't want it.
He was bored of it, the university pipeline straight to running a corporate VC arm full of corporate climbers that want to prove how they fit in male dominated spaces with masculine behaviors. The representation of that was and is completely contrived - for any guy with options - and he went along with it because people told him to in the DC area, and that's who his peers were. Assortative mating that he realized was not serving him and he wasn't poor enough to need it.
I wouldn't say the conception was planned, he was just having fun with his favorite stripper, but pouring gas on himself at the gas station to mask her sent was.
Now, he retired his whole bloodline, after making a bloodline at all with his favorite stripper, giving her the dream of ponies, horses, and seemingly living happily ever after. I never followed up on his daughter being an adult now, but the privilege of pursuing dressage because of the father's successful indiscretions is fascinating.
I'll definitely aim to replicate, it looks far more appealing than upper middle class assortative mating does, with all the failure modes reappropriated as exception handling. I'll just avoid the first marriage, and refine the journey with trusts more effectively in such a wild wealth disparity and power dynamic, but also keep the divorce court ordered insider trading immunity in my back pocket.
opo 1 day ago
https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2004/July/04_dag_495....
scottrogers86 1 day ago
jonathanlb 1 day ago
The difference here is that they defrauded the investor class.
1-more 1 day ago
59percentmore 1 day ago
scottrogers86 1 day ago
stymaar 1 day ago
Too nice of a way to talk about the Epstein class.
deaux 19 hours ago
If Arthur Andersen hadn't been indicted, it's possible it would have continued as a company and gotten away with it, at the very least much more likely than the above three.