Condolences to the family. It sounds like he was a very thoughtful and principled person.
OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
11–20 of 499 posts
Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
#12[deleted]
Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
#13http://suchir.net/fair_use.html
When does generative AI qualify for fair use? by Suchir Balaji
Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
#14[flagged]
Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
#15Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
#16So, not at all the point of the article, but ... who does Mercury News think is benefited by the embedded map at the bottom of the article with a point just labeled "San Francisco, CA", centered at Market & Van Ness? It's not where the guy lived. If you're a non-local reader confused about where SF is, the map is far too zoomed in to show you.
Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
#17I'm confused by the term "whistleblower" here. Was anything actual released that wasn't publicly known? It seems like he just disagreed with whether it was "fair use" or not, and it was notable because he was at the company. But the facts were always known, OpenAI was training on public copyrighted text data. You could call him an objector, or internal critic or something.
The article holds clues: "Information he held was expected to play a key part in lawsuits against the San Francisco-based company."
Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
#18Normally the word "whistleblower" means someone who revealed previously-unknown facts about an organization. In this case he's a former employee who had an interview where he criticized OpenAI, but the facts that he was in possession of were not only widely known at the time but were the subject of an ongoing lawsuit that had launched months prior.
As much as I want to give this a charitable reading, the only explanation I can think of for using the word whistleblower here is to imply that there's something shady about the death.
Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
#19I'm confused by the term "whistleblower" here. Was anything actual released that wasn't publicly known? It seems like he just disagreed with whether it was "fair use" or not, and it was notable because he was at the company. But the facts were always known, OpenAI was training on public copyrighted text data. You could call him an objector, or internal critic or something.
The article holds clues: "Information he held was expected to play a key part in lawsuits against the San Francisco-based company."
and later:
>In a Nov. 18 letter filed in federal court, attorneys for The New York Times named Balaji as someone who had “unique and relevant documents” that would support their case against OpenAI. He was among at least 12 people — many of them past or present OpenAI employees — the newspaper had named in court filings as having material helpful to their case, ahead of depositions.
Yes it's true it's been public knowledge that OpenAI has trained on copyrighted data, but details about what was included in training data (albeit dated ...), as well as internal metrics (e.g. do they know how often their models regurgitate paragraphs from a training document?) would be important.
Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
#20Anyone who's a whistleblower should compile key docs and put it in a "dead man's switch" service that releases your testimony/docs to multiple news agencies in the event of your untimely demise. The company you're whistle blowing against and their major shareholders should know this exists. Also, regularly post public video attesting to you current mental state.