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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

#51

Post by lolinder »

lyu07282 wrote: post #46
lolinder wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being one of 12+ witnesses in a lawsuit where the facts are hardly in dispute is not the same as being a whistleblower. The key questions in this lawsuit are not and never were going to come down to insider information—OpenAI does not dispute that they trained on copyrighted material, they dispute that it was illegal for them to do so.

So the lawyers who said they had "possession of information that would be helpful to their case" were misleading? Your whole rationalization seems very biased. He raised public awareness (including details of) of some wrongdoing he perceived at the company and was most likely going to testify about those wrongdoings, that qualifies as a whistleblower in my book.

> "possession of information that would be helpful to their case" were misleading?

I didn't say that, but helpful comes on a very large spectrum, and lawyers have other words for people who have information that is crucial to their case.

> that qualifies as a whistleblower in my book.

I'm not trying to downplay his contribution, I'm questioning the integrity of the title of TFA. You have only to skim this comment section to see how many people have jumped to the conclusion that Sam Altman must have wanted this guy dead.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#53

Post by dang »

OutOfHere wrote: post #21
neilv wrote: post #11

Condolences to the family. It sounds like he was a very thoughtful and principled person.

[flagged]

> Not that thoughtful. Copyright law is mostly harmful. Apparently he couldn't realize this simple conclusion.

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#56

Post by ninetyninenine »

lolinder wrote: post #18

Normally 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 explana…

No. Anytime someone potentially possesses information that is damning to a company and that person is killed… the low probability of such an even being a random coincidence is quite low. It is so low such that it is extremely reasonable to consider the potential for an actual assassination while not precluding that a coincidence is a possibility.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#57

Post by aniviacat »

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.

What would that accomplish?

Are you saying they won't kill you because then the documents would be released? So you would never release the documents if they never kill you?

Or are you saying you'll do this so the documents are guaranteed to be released, even if you're killed? In that case, why not just publish them right now?

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#59

Post by anon373839 »

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…

Well, I still disagree. In reality companies still retaliate against whistleblowers even when the information is already out there. (Hence the need for Congress, federal courts and the California Supreme Court to clarify that whistleblower activity is still protected even if the information is already known.)

I, of course, am not proposing that OpenAI assassinated this person. Just pointing out that disclosures of known information can and do motivate retaliation, and are considered whistleblowing.

Re: OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

#60

Post by BillFranklin »

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 do the same.

I’m sorry for his family. He was clearly a talented engineer. On his LinkedIn he has some competitive programming prizes which are impressive too. He probably had a HN account.

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.

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