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OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

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Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#151

Post by nox101 »

nox101 wrote: post #140

Being this is ostensibly related to an AI company trying to make AGI reminds me of "Eagle Eye" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059786/

Curious why the downvote? Because someone actually died? It doesn't change the fact that "Eagle Eye" is about (spoiler) an AGI killing people both directly and indirectly (by manipulating others, AI "Swats" you, ...) and here is a company trying to make AGI.

If the AGI actual existed it could certainly indirectly get people killed that were threatening it's existence. It could "swat" people. Plant fake evidence (mail order explosives to the victim's house, call the FBI). It could manipulate others. Find the most jealous unstable person. Make up fake texts/images that person is having an affair with their partner. Send fake messages from partner provoking them into action, etc... Convince some local criminal the victim is invading their turf". We've already seen several examples of LLMs say "kill your parents/partner".

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#152

Post by signatoremo »

dtquad wrote: post #39
cced wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren’t theres couple of dead Boeing whistleblowers in recent times relating to poor AA/design?

They were whistleblowers related to Boeing manufacturing and quality control. Boeing manufacturing is also the source of the persistent Boeing problems and issues that goes back to before the MCAS catastrophic incidents and has continued after MCAS was fixed. Airbus has deeply integrated R&D and manufacturing hubs where the R&D engineers and scientists can just walk a few minutes and they will be inside the factory h…

> Airbus has deeply integrated R&D and manufacturing hubs where the R&D engineers and scientists can just walk a few minutes and they will be inside the factory halls manufacturing the parts they designs.

This is not true. Airbus has a history of competition between French and Germany parts. The assembly plants are spread in France, Germany, UK, Spain, Italy. No such things as deeply integrated R&D and manufacturing hubs.

Boeing crisis makes Airbus look better. Airbus itself isn’t renown for efficiency.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#153

Post by slavik81 »

kachapopopow wrote: post #141

Okay, first boeing now openai... Yep, my view of this world being more civilized than portrayed in the movies is disappearing every day. Looks like we're going to start having to take conspiracy movie-like theories seriously now.

There's surveillance camera footage of the vehicle John Barnett was sitting in at the time of his death. The conspiracy theories are not credible.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#154

Post by casefields »

DevX101 wrote: post #68
BillFranklin wrote: post #60

There are some pretty callous comments on this thread. This is really sad. Suchir was just 26, and graduated from Berkeley 3 years ago. Here’s his personal site: https://suchir.net/ . I think he was pretty brave for standing up against what is generally perceived as an injustice being done by one of the biggest companies in the world, just a few years out of college. I’m not sure how many people in his position would…

If I'm a whistleblower in an active case and I end up dead before testifying, I absolutely DO want the general public to speculate about my cause of death.

I feel the same way but I’m not sure if I should.

The internet wildly speculating would probably get back to my mom and sister which would really upset them. Once I’m gone my beliefs/causes wouldn’t be more important than my family’s happiness.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#155

Post by usea »

bubaumba wrote: post #134
consumer451 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's very naive to believe in 'European press'. To get the idea check Ukrainian war coverage. What you'll see first is how single sided it is. This is such a wild take from my POV, a person in the EU. Have you considered the possibility that the nearest imperialist power beginning to violently invade Europe again is likely to trigger a common reaction? This is one of those rare cases in modern history where there i…

I can explain a bit. Russians living in Empire of Evil can see all internet including US and EU news. At the same time 'Putin propaganda' channels are blocked in EU. In EU only one side is available. This creates an information bubble, as intended. Which is a basic crowd control technique used to drive public opinion. In this case to support the war. The result is obvious, EU polls show much stronger support than the…

Europeans having stronger opinions than others about Russia invading Europe is not evidence of a conspiracy.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#156

Post by csomar »

BillFranklin wrote: post #60

There are some pretty callous comments on this thread. This is really sad. Suchir was just 26, and graduated from Berkeley 3 years ago. Here’s his personal site: https://suchir.net/ . I think he was pretty brave for standing up against what is generally perceived as an injustice being done by one of the biggest companies in the world, just a few years out of college. I’m not sure how many people in his position would…

> Before others post about the definition of whistleblower or talk about assassination theories just pause to consider whether, if in his position, you would that want that to be written about you or a friend.

Yes, if I was a few months away from giving the court a statement and I "suicided" myself, I'd rather have people tribulate about how my death happened than expect to take the suicide account without much push.

Sure, if I killed myself in silence I want to go in silence. But it's not clear from the article how critical this guy is in the upcoming lawsuits

> 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

#157

Post by ggjkvcxddd »

BillFranklin wrote: post #60

There are some pretty callous comments on this thread. This is really sad. Suchir was just 26, and graduated from Berkeley 3 years ago. Here’s his personal site: https://suchir.net/ . I think he was pretty brave for standing up against what is generally perceived as an injustice being done by one of the biggest companies in the world, just a few years out of college. I’m not sure how many people in his position would…

Thanks for posting this. Suchir was a good dude. Nice, smart guy.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#158

Post by im3w1l »

XorNot wrote: post #142
DevX101 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm a whistleblower in an active case and I end up dead before testifying, I absolutely DO want the general public to speculate about my cause of death.

To what, encourage whistleblowers to not come forward because "everyone knows they'll get killed"? The only benefit of turning it into gossip is to dissuade other whistleblowers, without the inconvenience of actually having to kill anyone.

It's a lot harder to get away with the murder if the case will receive heavy scrutiny. Publicly requesting scrutiny may dissuade someone from trying.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#159

Post by neuroelectron »

bpodgursky wrote: post #10

I'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 issue is it has to be proven in court. This man was personally responsible for developing web scraping; stealing data from likely copyrighted sources. He would have had communications specifically addressing the legality of his responsibilities, which he was openly questioning his superiors about.
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