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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

#321

Post by imglorp »

bdndndndbve wrote: post #311

This is extremely sad and I'm sorry for Suchir's family and friends. As someone who has struggled with suicidal ideation while working in the tech industry for over a decade, I do wonder if the insane culture of Bay Area tech has a part to play. Besides the extreme hustle culture mindset, there's also a kind of naive techno-optimism that can make you feel insane. You're surrounded by people who think breaking the law…

Further piling on potential stress for any whistleblower in a highly specialized field, once you're publicly critical of that field, you're basically unemployable there. And that's without any active retribution from the offending employer. Any retribution, such as blacklisting among peer HR departments would bring an even dimmer outlook.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#322

Post by amelius »

AliAbdoli wrote: post #206
snovv_crash wrote: post #205

Given the outcomes of the Facebook mood experiments and how I've seen people put together very targeted ads, I'm wondering whether it's possible to induce someone (who's already under a lot of pressure) to commit suicide simply via a targeted information campaign. I'm speculating less on what happened here, and more on the general "yes that would be possible" situation. How would one protect themselves from something…

I'm going to have to go with Tyler The Creator's advice here: "Just Walk Away From The Screen"

Try it now. I'm sure you'll be back within 24h.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#323

Post by dmurray »

Fnoord wrote: post #126
typeofhuman wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also most certainly have a dead man's switch releasing everything I know. I would have given it to an attorney along with a sworn deposition.

What if you'd die from a genuine accident?

I was intending to release the information, so releasing it when I'm dead seems fine.

So why didn't I immediately publish it all while alive? Perhaps I preferred to control the flow of information, redact certain parts, or extort the organisation I was blowing the whistle on. None of those seem all that important to me compared to deterring people from assassinating me in the first place.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#324

Post by astura »

TMWNN wrote: post #79
DevX101 wrote: post #20

Anyone 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.

Didn't Luigi Mangione do this, arrange for a YouTube video to auto-publish after his arrest?

No, but someone did impersonate him on YouTube.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#325

Post by crote »

zcw100 wrote: post #304
typeofhuman wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also most certainly have a dead man's switch releasing everything I know. I would have given it to an attorney along with a sworn deposition.

Something like https://killcord.io

Is there something like this which is still maintained and isn't needlessly tied to crypto?

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#326

Post by gsibble »

strogonoff wrote: post #211

Suchir’s suicide (if it was a suicide) is a tragedy. I happen to share some of his views, and I am negative on the impact of current ML tech on society—not because of what it can do, but precisely because of the way it is trained. The ends do not justify the means—and it is easy to see the means having wide-ranging systemic effects besides the ends, even if we pretended those ends were well-defined and planned (which…

I enjoy using Generative AI but have significant moral qualms with how they train their data. They flagrantly ignore copyright law for a significant amount of their data. The fact they do enter into licensing agreements with some publishers basically shows they know they are breaking the law.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#327

Post by that_guy_iain »

csomar wrote: post #156
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.…

> But it's not clear from the article how critical this guy is in the upcoming lawsuits

If he was the key piece to the lawsuit the lawsuit wouldn't really have legs. To get the ball rolling someone like him would have to be critical but after they're able to get the ball rolling and get discovery if after all that all you have is one guy saying there is copyright infringement you've not found anything.

And realistically, the lawsuit is, while important, rather minor in scope and damage it could do to OpenAI. It's not like folk will go to jail, and it's not like OpenAI would have to close its doors, they would pay at most a few hundred million?

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#328

Post by crote »

withinboredom wrote: post #264
A1kmm wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you could even use SSS (Shamir's Secret Sharing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing ) to split the key to decrypt your confidential information across n people, such that some k (where k Then, for example, consider n = 5, k = 3 - if any 3 of 5 selected friends decide the trigger has been met, they can work together to decrypt the information. But a group of 2 of the 5 could not - reducing th…

Then you just make those friends a target. They only need to buy-off or kill 3. It is unlikely the general public would know of them, so it likely wouldn’t be reported on.

Turn it around: require a 3/5 quorum to disarm the public-release deadman switch. Buying off 3 people whose friend you have just murdered isn't going to be trivial.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#329

Post by stefan_ »

lolinder wrote: post #49
anon373839 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Normally the word "whistleblower" means someone who revealed previously-unknown facts Not to be pedantic, but this is actually incorrect, both under federal and California law. Case law is actually very explicit on the point that the information does NOT need to be previously unknown to qualify for whistleblower protection. However, disclosing information to the media is not typically protected.

Right, but as you note the legal definition doesn't apply here anyway, we're clearly using the colloquial definition of whistleblower. And that definition comes with the implication that powerful people would want a particular person dead. In this case I see very little reason to believe that would be the case. No one has hinted that this employee has more damning information than was already public knowledge, and th…

We are? It's just you here, making a bizarre nitpick in a thread on a persons death.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#330

Post by verisimi »

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.

People are free to comment on media events. You too are free to assume the moral high ground by commenting on the same event, telling people what they should or should not do.

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