Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 499 posts

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#341

Post by rightbyte »

hulitu wrote: post #234
pyuser583 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American press is much more independent than European press. When WSJ broke the Elizabeth Holmes story, much ink was spilled showing how no European paper would take on a corporation strong government support. Looking at Europe, governments first instinct is to protect national favorites. European whistleblowers are likely to face defamation suits, something thankfully difficult in America.

> European whistleblowers are likely to face defamation suits, something thankfully difficult in America. In US they will always find a "minor" who was "raped" 20 years ago. Or the whistleblower will suddenly commit suicide.

The Boeing whistleblower comes to mind.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#342

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#343

Post by 0x41head »

ajdude wrote: post #112
ata_aman wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a DMS as a service anywhere? I know it’s very easy to setup but wondering if anyone is offering this.

I use deadmansswitch.net - it sends you an email to verify that you are still alive, but you can also use a Telegram bot. In this case I have it set to send a passphrase to an encrypted file with all of my information to trusted individuals.

I made something similar with https://github.com/0x41head/posthumous-automation

It's completely open-source and you can self host it.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#344

Post by mattigames »

unraveller wrote: post #240
neuroelectron wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Web scraping is legal and benefiting from published works is entirely the point, so long as you don't merely redistribute it. Training on X doesn't run afoul of fair-use because it doesn't redistribute nor does using it simply publish a recitation (as Suchir suggested). Summoning an LLM is closer to the act of editing in a text editor than it is to republishing. His hang up was on how often the original works were be…

"Summoning an LLM is closer to the act of editing in a text editor than it is to republishing." This quote puts so succinctly all that is wrong with LLM, it's the most convenient interpretation to an extreme point, like the creators of fair use laws ever expected AI to exist, like the constrains of human abilities were never in the slightest influential to the fabrication of such laws.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#346

Post by IAmGraydon »

adrianmonk wrote: post #201
IAmGraydon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you give it to anyone? That’s not how a dead man’s switch works.

Isn't it? A dead man's switch is a device that triggers an automatic action upon your death. Information and instructions given to a lawyer fits that definition.

I see. I guess I think of it as something that triggers automatically if you don’t reset it every day and doesn’t rely on another person. For example, a script that publishes the information if you don’t input the password every day.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#347

Post by cenamus »

z3c0 wrote: post #320
greenavocado wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Good lord, what an atrocious Gish gallop of selective quotes and evidence. This might be one of the worst displays of sharpshooter logic I've ever seen. AND it features a quote from William Pierce, an infamous neo-Nazi. Probably more, but I gave up after the umpteenth unverifiable quote. Just goes to show how much modern right-wing propaganda aligns with traditional neo-Nazi propaganda.

"Upper echelon", "the rich and powerful", all some thin-veiled euphemisms for jews, among the antisemitic circles.

The US just needs to accept that it has it's own nobility again, money aristocracy.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#348

Post by panzi »

KMnO4 wrote: post #331
crote wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Needlessly tied to crypto Let’s unpack that. By “crypto” you probably mean cryptocurrency, but let’s not forget it’s the same crypto as in cryptography. You absolutely want cryptography involved in something like this for obvious reasons. You’ve probably also heard the term blockchain and immediately think of speculative currency futures. So throw that to the wind for a second and imagine how useful a distributed l…

Yeah, but I don't think you need proof of work for this. Something more akin to git with commit signing should work. The thing with cryptocurrencies is that there isn't anything of real value in the Blockchain. If you view git as Blockchain there is something of real value in it: the code. And here the encrypted data.

Although I don't know how you could make any kind of Blockchain containing data to be released at some condition and no way to release it before? If it's all public in the Blockchain it's all already public. You need atrusted authority that has a secret key to unlock the data. And if you have that all that Blockchain stuff is utterly redundant anyway.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#349

Post by lxgr »

KMnO4 wrote: post #331
crote wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Needlessly tied to crypto Let’s unpack that. By “crypto” you probably mean cryptocurrency, but let’s not forget it’s the same crypto as in cryptography. You absolutely want cryptography involved in something like this for obvious reasons. You’ve probably also heard the term blockchain and immediately think of speculative currency futures. So throw that to the wind for a second and imagine how useful a distributed l…

How can a smart contract “keep a secret” in a trustless way?

Isn’t effectively all the trust still in the party releasing it at the right time, or not releasing it otherwise? If so, is the blockchain aspect anything other than decentralization theater?

I guess one thing you can do with a blockchain is keeping that trusted party honest and accountable for not releasing at the desired date and in the absence of a liveness signal, but I’m not sure that’s the biggest trust issue here (for me, them taking a look without my permission would be the bigger one).

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#350

Post by [deleted] »

abeppu wrote: post #16

So, 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.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN