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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

#471

Post by spacemadness »

bdcravens wrote: post #362
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 die in the midst of whistleblowing, I hereby give permission for everyone to not ignore that fact.

Nah, I’d rather continue to let random HN commenters shame me for thinking critically and not taking things at face value.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#472

Post by SideQuark »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #431
SideQuark wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer the probability, don’t make claims without making a solid estimate. No, it’s not low. No need to put conspiracies before evidence, and certainly not by making claims you’ve not done no diligence on. And the article provides statements by professionals who routinely investigate homicides and suicides that they have no reason to believe anything other than suicide.

Who the hell can compute a number from this? All probabilities on this case are made with a gut. Why don’t you tell me the probability instead of demanding one from me? You’re the one making a claim that professional judgment makes the probability so solid that it’s basically a suicide. So tell me about your computation. What gets me is the level of stupid you have to be to not even consider the other side. Like if a…

> Who the hell can compute a number from this?

Anyone who puts thought into the problem instead of jumping to conspiracies.

Men in that age group commit suicide at rate X. Company Y has Z employees. Over time period T there is a K % chance of a suicide. Among all R companies from which a person like you finds conspiracies at every turn the odds a finding a death is S% . Not a single value in this chain is “made with a gut.” All are extremely defensible and determined scientifically, and if really care, you can obtain them all with errorbounds and 95% confidence intervals and the works.

And you do basic math, and voila, your initial claim is nonsense.

Or simply read about the birthday paradox, wonder if it applies, realize it does, stop jumping off the wagon.

> why don’t you…..

You’re the one pulling conspiracies out of thin air despite no evidence, and you made the claim. The onus is to defend your claim when asked, especially now that you’ve been given evidence for a solid argument against it. One not pulled out of thin air.

> what gets me…

No I see the other side. And for every time someone ignores the presented evidence, ignores basic statistics, ignores a good methodology when presented one, for each such case, I have seen zero cases out of thousands of such conspiracies where it came true.

And I’ll 100% trust professionals over someone so innumerate as to be unable to do simple math, and get angry when it’s suggested super sneaky death wizards didn’t kill a minor player while ignoring dozens of more important players makes less sense than simple statistical likelihood.

The latter is rarely correct. I’ll even amend to never correct.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#473

Post by bossyTeacher »

griomnib wrote: post #422
bdcravens wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I die in the midst of whistleblowing, I hereby give permission for everyone to not ignore that fact.

Sure seems like this is happening more frequently, eg with the Boeing guy. So it’s reasonable to ask why. If you look at Aaron Schwartz for example you see they don’t have to assassinate you, they just have so many lawyers, making so many threats, with so much money/power behind them, people feel scared and powerless. I don’t think OpenAI called in a hit job, but I think they spent millions of dollars to drive him in…

If I pressure you and put you in a position that makes you want to unalive yourself, you can be sure that you will be tried under manslaughter by way of assisted suicide in the form of emotional blackmail. Chances are whatever OpenAI exec did this probably has a lots of minions between him and whoever actually unalived the whistleblower so it can't be traced back to him

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#474

Post by achrono »

griomnib wrote: post #422
bdcravens wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I die in the midst of whistleblowing, I hereby give permission for everyone to not ignore that fact.

Sure seems like this is happening more frequently, eg with the Boeing guy. So it’s reasonable to ask why. If you look at Aaron Schwartz for example you see they don’t have to assassinate you, they just have so many lawyers, making so many threats, with so much money/power behind them, people feel scared and powerless. I don’t think OpenAI called in a hit job, but I think they spent millions of dollars to drive him in…

> I don't think OpenAI called in a hit job

Why? What do you know about OpenAI beyond the cute 12 days videos or Sam Altman's modest demeanor in interviews?

On the other hand, what makes you think they spent "millions of dollars" to cause him desperation?

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#475

Post by fenomas »

shakna wrote: post #463
echoangle wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simply an illegal good. It doesn't have to serve any purpose. It cannot be bound by copyright, due to the illegal nature. The Morris Worm wasn't copyrightable content. Do you have a source that illegal works can’t be / aren’t copyrighted? https://yjolt.org/copyrighted-crimes-copyrightability-illega... Says for example: > As long as a work is original and fixed in a tangible medium of expression, it is entitled…

It isn't that an illegal good can't be copyrighted, exactly. It's that if it is illegal, to own the copyright, you have to assert your ownership. In most cases, the consequences of which may involve the state seizing said property from you - to prevent you profiting from the crimes involved.

Nothing about this is correct, at least in the US. Copyright infringement is a civil matter - the IP owner can sue over it, but it's not a crime and the state doesn't get involved (unless something else is going on beyond just infringement).

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#476

Post by potsandpans »

verisimi wrote: post #330
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.

People love to tone police for free points in the internet

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#477

Post by shakna »

fenomas wrote: post #475
shakna wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that an illegal good can't be copyrighted, exactly. It's that if it is illegal, to own the copyright, you have to assert your ownership. In most cases, the consequences of which may involve the state seizing said property from you - to prevent you profiting from the crimes involved.

Nothing about this is correct, at least in the US. Copyright infringement is a civil matter - the IP owner can sue over it, but it's not a crime and the state doesn't get involved (unless something else is going on beyond just infringement).

Piracy is not a civil matter in the US, following the thread of this particular conversation. Asserting ownership will find you liable.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#478

Post by ninetyninenine »

SideQuark wrote: post #472
ninetyninenine wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who the hell can compute a number from this? All probabilities on this case are made with a gut. Why don’t you tell me the probability instead of demanding one from me? You’re the one making a claim that professional judgment makes the probability so solid that it’s basically a suicide. So tell me about your computation. What gets me is the level of stupid you have to be to not even consider the other side. Like if a…

> Who the hell can compute a number from this? Anyone who puts thought into the problem instead of jumping to conspiracies. Men in that age group commit suicide at rate X. Company Y has Z employees. Over time period T there is a K % chance of a suicide. Among all R companies from which a person like you finds conspiracies at every turn the odds a finding a death is S% . Not a single value in this chain is “made with…

Bro where are you going to find statistics on the rate of actual suicides for someone who makes the claim that if they die it’s not a suicide? There are so many situations where there’s just no data or experimental evidence is impossible to ascertain and you have to use your gut. Where’s experimental evidence that the ground will still exist when you jump off the bed every morning? Use your gut. Tired of this data driven nonsense as if the only way to make any decision in this universe is to use numerical data. If you had basic statistical knowledge you’d know statistics is useless for this situation.

Complete bs. Use your common sense.

> You’re the one pulling conspiracies out of thin air despite no evidence, and you made the claim.

What claim? All I said is consider both possibilities because given the situation both are likely. You’re the one making the claim that a guy who told everyone if he died it wasn’t a suicide is totally and completely and utterly a suicide. And you make this claim based off of way to general experimental evidence collected for only a general situation. You’re the type of genius who if your friend died you’d just assume it was a car accident because that’s the most likely we to die. No need to investigate anything. Even if your friend was like if I die in the next couple days I was murdered you’d insist that it’s a car accident. Look at you and your data driven genius.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#479

Post by AliAbdoli »

amelius wrote: post #322
AliAbdoli wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

YouTube is the only algorithmic thing I use and I'm not getting depression content so not sure what the point is. I do constantly click not interested to get the algorithm to recommend what I actually want to though. If I was getting bad content I'd think it'd be pretty easy to stop watching YouTube and watch more Netflix or something.

Completely removing all screens would be quite hard though yes in the modern world. Tbh idk how people lived before TVs.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#480

Post by aziaziazi »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #392
bmacho wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? A fast piece of metal is different from a slow piece of metal, from a legal perspective. You can't just say that "this really bad thing that causes a lot of problems is just like this not so bad thing that haven't caused any problem, only more so". Or at least it's not a correct argument. When it is the scale that causes the harm, stating that the harmful thing is the same as the harmless except the scale, i…

So in your view, when a human does it, he causes a minute of harm so we can ignore it, but chatGPT causes a massive amount of harm, so we need to penalize it. Do you realize how radical your position is? You’re saying a human who reads free work that others put out on the internet, synthesizes that knowledge and then answers someone else’s question is a minute of evil, that we can ignore. This is beyond weird, I don’…

> This is beyond weird, I don’t think anyone on earth/history would agree with this characterization

Superlatives are a slippery slope in argumentation, especially if you invoke the whole humanity of the whole earth of the whole history. I do understand bmaco theory and while not a lawyer I’d bet what you want there’s more than one juridiction that see scale as an important factor.

Often the law is imagined as an objective cold cut indifferent knife but often there’s also a lot of "reality" aspects like common practice.

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