[HN Gopher] OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apa...
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OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
Author : mmorearty
Score : 922 points
Date : 2024-12-13 21:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mercurynews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mercurynews.com)
| alsetmusic wrote:
| https://archive.is/xBuPg
| cryptozeus wrote:
| may he rip!
| bpodgursky wrote:
| 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.
| stonogo wrote:
| The article holds clues: "Information he held was expected to
| play a key part in lawsuits against the San Francisco-based
| company."
| abeppu wrote:
| and later:
|
| >In a Nov. 18 letter filed in federal court, attorneys for
| The New York Times named Balaji as someone who had "unique
| and relevant documents" that would support their case against
| OpenAI. He was among at least 12 people -- many of them past
| or present OpenAI employees -- the newspaper had named in
| court filings as having material helpful to their case, ahead
| of depositions.
|
| Yes it's true it's been public knowledge _that_ OpenAI has
| trained on copyrighted data, but details about what was
| included in training data (albeit dated ...), as well as
| internal metrics (e.g. do they know how often their models
| regurgitate paragraphs from a training document?) would be
| important.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I guess the question is whether those documents have
| already been entered into evidence?
| neuroelectron wrote:
| 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.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| "Stealing data" seems pretty strong. Web scraping is legal.
| If you put text on the public Internet other people can read
| it or do statistical processing on it.
|
| What do you mean he was "stealing data"? Was he hacking into
| somewhere?
| canoebuilder wrote:
| In a lot of ways, the statistical processing is a novel
| form of information retrieval. So the issue is somewhat
| like if 20 years ago Google was indexing the web, then
| decided to just rehost all the indexed content on their own
| servers and monetize the views instead linking to the
| original source of the content.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| It's not anything like rehosting though. Assume I read a
| bunch of web articles, synthesize that knowledge and then
| answer a bunch of question on the web. I am performing
| some form of information retrieval. Do I need to pay the
| folks who wrote those articles even though they provided
| it for free on the web?
|
| It seems like the only difference between me and ChatGPT
| is the scale at which ChatGPT operates. ChatGPT can
| memorize a very large chunk of the web and keep answering
| millions of questions while I can memorize a small piece
| of the web and only answer a few questions. And maybe due
| to that, it requires new rules, new laws and new
| definitions for the better of society. But it's nowhere
| near as clear cut as the Google example you provide.
| underbiding wrote:
| I love this argument.
|
| "Seems like only difference between me and ChatGPT is
| absolutely everything".
|
| You can't be flippant about scale not being a factor
| here. It absolutely is a factor. Pretending that ChatGPT
| is like a person synthesizing knowledge is an absurd
| legal argument, it is absolutely nothing like a person,
| its a machine at the end of the day. Scale absolutely
| matters in debates like this.
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| Why?
| bmacho wrote:
| 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, is like.. weird.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| 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't think anyone
| on earth/history would agree with this characterization.
| If anything, the human is doing a good thing, but when
| ChatGPT does it at a much larger scale it's no longer
| good, it becomes evil? This seems more like thinly veiled
| logic to disguise anxiety that humans are being replaced
| by AI.
| bmacho wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Yes, that's my view. No, I don't think that this is
| radical at all. For some reasons or another, it is indeed
| quiet uncommon. (Well, not in law, our politicians are
| perfectly capable of making laws based on the size of
| danger/harm.)
|
| However, I haven't yet met anyone, who was able to defend
| the opposite position, e.g. slow bullets = fast bullets,
| drawing someone = photographing someone, memorizing
| something = recording something, and so on. Can you?
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Don't obfuscate, your view is that the stack overflow
| commentator, Quora answer writer, blog writer, in fact
| anyone who did not invent the knowledge he's
| disseminating, is committing a small amount of evil. That
| is radical and makes no sense to me.
| bmacho wrote:
| > Don't obfuscate, your view is that the stack overflow
| commentator, Quora answer writer, blog writer, in fact
| anyone who did not invent the knowledge he's
| disseminating, is committing a small amount of evil.
|
| :/ No, it's not? I've written "haven't caused any
| problem" and "harmless". You've changed it to "small
| harm" that I've indeed missed.
|
| I don't think that things that don't cause any problem
| are evil. That's a ridiculous claim, and I don't
| understand why would you want me to say that. For example
| I think 10 billion pandas living here on Earth with us
| would be bad for humanity. Does that mean that I think
| that 1 panda is a minute of evil? No, I think it's
| harmless, maybe even a net good for humanity. I think the
| same about Quora commenters.
| abduhl wrote:
| >> A fast piece of metal is different from a slow piece
| of metal, from a legal perspective.
|
| I'd like to hear more about this legal distinction
| because it's not one I've ever heard of before.
| bmacho wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_the_United_State
| s
| abduhl wrote:
| So there isn't a legal distinction regarding fast/slow
| metal after all. Well that revelation certainly makes me
| question your legal analysis about copyright.
| bmacho wrote:
| I linked a whole article about these laws, but maybe you
| missed. Here it is again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G
| un_law_in_the_United_States
| abduhl wrote:
| "Slow" doesn't show up when I do a ctrl+F, so again, it
| seems like you're just confused about how the law works?
| neuroelectron wrote:
| When you use some webpages, it forces you to agree to an
| EULA that might preclude web scraping. NYTimes is such a
| webpage which is why they were sued. This is evidence that
| OpenAI didn't care about the law. Someone with internal
| communications about this could completely destroy the
| company!!!
| unraveller wrote:
| 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 being substituted for chatGPT, but like AI sports
| articles, overlap is to be expected for everything now. Even
| without web scraping in training it would be impossible to
| block every user intention to remake an article out of the
| magic "editor" - that's with no-use of the data not even
| fair-use.
| mattigames wrote:
| "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.
| hnfong wrote:
| > Web scraping is legal and benefiting from published works
| is entirely the point, so long as you don't merely
| redistribute it.
|
| That's plainly false. Generally, if you redistribute
| "derivative works" you're also infringing. The question is
| what counts as derivative works, and I'm pretty sure
| lawyers and judges are perfectly capable of complicating
| the picture given the high stakes.
| neilv wrote:
| Condolences to the family. It sounds like he was a very
| thoughtful and principled person.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| [flagged]
| tivert wrote:
| [flagged]
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yeah - what Disney does with the mouse is egregious, but if
| I write a book or creating painting I'd like to not have a
| thousand imitators xeroxing away any potential earnings.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| It is nothing like vaccines. Zero. I can easily imagine a
| thriving world without copyrights, but I cannot without
| vaccines.
| tivert wrote:
| > It is nothing like vaccines. Zero. I can easily imagine
| a thriving world without copyrights, but I cannot without
| vaccines.
|
| For the record, the world can and did thrive before
| vaccines were invented, so you don't have to imagine it.
| Sure there was more sickness and death, but we have
| plenty of that now, and I doubt you'd consider today's
| world "not thriving."
|
| But ok, then. Imagine that world without copyrights for
| me. In detail. And answer these questions:
|
| 1. You're an author, who's written a wildly successful
| book in your free time. How do you get paid to become a
| full-time author? Remember, no copyright means Amazon,
| B&N, and every other place is making tons of money by
| printing up their own copies and sells them without
| giving you any royalties.
|
| 2. You've developed some open source software, and would
| like to use the GPL to keep it that way. Amazon just
| forked it, and is making tons of money off of it, but is
| keeping their fork closed. How do you get them to
| distribute their changes in accordance with the GPL?
|
| 3. You're an inventor, and you've spend years and all
| your savings working on R&D for a brilliant idea and you
| finally got it working. You don't have much manufacturing
| muscle, but you managed to get a small batch onto the
| market. BigCo saw one of your demos, bought one, reverse
| engineered it, and with their vast resources is
| undercutting you on price. They're making _tons_ of
| money, and paying you no royalties. How do you stay in
| business? Should you have even bothered?
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Regarding life without vaccines, the life expectancy
| could then be very low. Whether this qualifies as
| "thriving" is subjective. The population as a whole could
| still thrive, but individuals may not.
|
| Regarding your other points:
|
| 1. That is a bad argument. Imagine that some people
| called collectors get to collect royalties from you every
| time you post a HN comment. Such collectors are paid for
| moderating comments. Some such collectors are wildly
| successful. Imagine that "commentright" law protects such
| people. If commentright law were to go away, how do such
| people get paid? (It's a fake problem, and copyright law
| is similarly no different.) In essence, if you love to
| write, go write, but don't expect artificial laws to save
| you.
|
| 2. To my knowledge, Amazon is not known to violate a
| preexisting GPL license. Amazon forks only things that
| were open in the past, but are now no longer open. In
| doing so, Amazon ensures the fork stays open. There is no
| license violation. If Amazon is making tons of money,
| it's probably because the software wasn't AGPL licensed
| in the first place.
|
| 3. This has already happened twice to me, and frankly, I
| am not worried. I can still carve out my limited focused
| niche.
|
| I try to look at the bigger picture which is the picture
| of AGI, of the future of humanity, not of artificial
| protections or even of individual success. Your beliefs
| are shaped by the culture you were exposed to as an
| adolescent. If you had grown up in Tibet, or if you had
| tried LSD a few times in your life, or were exposed to
| say Buddhism, your beliefs about individual greed would
| be very different.
| tivert wrote:
| > Regarding life without vaccines, the life expectancy
| could then be very low. Whether this qualifies as
| "thriving" is subjective.
|
| The life expectancy would not be "very low" without
| vaccines. It wasn't especially before they were invented,
| and it wouldn't be afterwards (especially with modern
| medicine minus vaccines).
|
| > In essence, if you love to write, go write, but don't
| expect artificial laws to save you.
|
| _All laws_ are "artificial." You might as well go the
| full measure, and say if you want to keep what's "yours"
| defend it yourself. Don't expect some artificial private
| property laws to save you.
|
| And if writing is turned purely into a hobby of the
| passionate, they'll be a lot less of it, because the
| people who are good at it will be forced to expend their
| energy doing other things to support themselves (if
| they're a member of the idle rich).
|
| > 2. To my knowledge, Amazon is not known to violate a
| preexisting GPL license.
|
| You missed the point. Copyright is foundational to the
| GPL: without it, no GPL. "Amazon is not known to violate
| a preexisting GPL license," for the same reason they
| don't print up their own "pirated" copies of the latest
| bestseller to tell, instead of buying copies from the
| publisher: it would be illegal.
|
| > 3. This has already happened twice to me, and frankly,
| I am not worried. I can still carve out my limited
| focused niche.
|
| It did, did it? Tell the story.
|
| > your beliefs about individual greed would be very
| different.
|
| What do you mean my "beliefs about individual greed?" Do
| tell.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| For well over ten years now, companies like Facebook/Meta
| and Google have perused research code by academic and
| other researchers, seen what is catching on, then soon
| made better versions themselves. Google in particular has
| soon also offered commercial services for the same,
| outcompeting the smaller commercial services offered by
| the researchers. Frankly, I am glad Google does it
| because the world is better for it. It's the same with
| Amazon because frankly it's a lot of work to scale a
| service globally, and most smaller groups would do a far
| worse job at it.
|
| My criteria for what is good vs bad is what makes the
| world better or worse as a whole, not what makes me
| better off. It is clear to me that the availability of AI
| triggered by GPT has made the world better, and if OpenAI
| has to violate copyrights to get there or stay there,
| that's a worthwhile sacrifice imho. There is still plenty
| of commercial scientific and media writing that is not
| going away even if copyright laws were to disappear.
|
| Book readership (outside of school) is already very low
| now, and is only going to get lower, close to zero. You
| might be defending a losing field. An AI is going to be
| able to write a custom book (or parts of it) on demand -
| do you see how this changes things?
|
| Ultimately I realize that we have to put food on the
| table, but I don't think copyrights are necessary for it.
| There are plenty of other ways to make money.
| dang wrote:
| > _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
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| http://suchir.net/fair_use.html
|
| When does generative AI qualify for fair use? by Suchir Balaji
| minimaxir wrote:
| It's also worth reading his initial tweet:
| https://x.com/suchirbalaji/status/1849192575758139733
|
| > I recently participated in a NYT story about fair use and
| generative AI, and why I'm skeptical "fair use" would be a
| plausible defense for a lot of generative AI products. I also
| wrote a blog post (https://suchir.net/fair_use.html) about the
| nitty-gritty details of fair use and why I believe this.
|
| > To give some context: I was at OpenAI for nearly 4 years and
| worked on ChatGPT for the last 1.5 of them. I initially didn't
| know much about copyright, fair use, etc. but became curious
| after seeing all the lawsuits filed against GenAI companies.
| When I tried to understand the issue better, I eventually came
| to the conclusion that fair use seems like a pretty implausible
| defense for a lot of generative AI products, for the basic
| reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the
| data they're trained on. I've written up the more detailed
| reasons for why I believe this in my post. Obviously, I'm not a
| lawyer, but I still feel like it's important for even non-
| lawyers to understand the law -- both the letter of it, and
| also why it's actually there in the first place.
|
| > That being said, I don't want this to read as a critique of
| ChatGPT or OpenAI per se, because fair use and generative AI is
| a much broader issue than any one product or company. I highly
| encourage ML researchers to learn more about copyright -- it's
| a really important topic, and precedent that's often cited like
| Google Books isn't actually as supportive as it might seem.
|
| > Feel free to get in touch if you'd like to chat about fair
| use, ML, or copyright -- I think it's a very interesting
| intersection. My email's on my personal website.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I'm an applied AI developer and CTO at a law firm, and we
| discuss the fair use argument quite a bit. It grey enough
| that whom ever has more financial revenues to continue their
| case will win. Such is the law and legal industry in the USA.
| motohagiography wrote:
| what twigs me about the argument against fair use (whereby
| AI ostensibly "replicates" the content competitively
| against the original) is that it assumes a model trained on
| journalism produces journalism or is designed to produce
| it. the argument against that stance would be easy to make.
| riwsky wrote:
| Doesn't need to be journalism, just needs to compete with
| it.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| I think it makes more sense in context of entertainment.
| However even in journalism, given the source data there's
| no reason an LLM couldn't put together the actual public
| facing article, video etc.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| It has become ludicrously clear in the past decade that
| many of the competitors to journalism are very much not
| journalism.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The model isn't trained on journalism only, you can't
| even isolate its training like that. It's trained on
| human writing in general and across specialties, and it's
| designed to _compete with humans on what humans do with
| text_ , of which journalism is merely a tiny special
| case.
|
| I think the only principle positions to be had here is to
| either ignore IP rights for LLM training, or give up
| entirely, because a model designed to be general like
| human will need to be trained like a human, i.e. immersed
| in the same reality as we are, same culture, most of
| which is shackled by IP claims - and then, obviously, by
| definition, as it gets better it gets more competitive
| with humans on everything humans do.
|
| You can produce a complaint that "copyrighted X was used
| in training a model that now can compete with humans on
| producing X" for arbitrary value of X. You can even
| produce a complaint about "copyrighted X used in training
| model that now outcompetes us in producing Y", for
| arbitrary X and Y that are not even related together, and
| it will still be true. Such is a nature of a general-
| purpose ML model.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This seems to be putting the cart before the horse.
|
| IP rights, or even IP itself as a concept, isn't
| fundamental to existence nor the default state of nature.
| They are contigent concepts, contigent on many factors.
|
| e.g. It has to be actively, continuously, maintained as
| time advances. There could be disagreements on how often,
| such as per annum, per case, per WIPO meeting, etc...
|
| But if no such activity occurs over a very long time, say
| a century, then any claims to any IP will likely, by
| default, be extinguished.
|
| So nobody needs to do anything for it all to become
| irrelevant. That will automatically occur given enough
| time...
| timschmidt wrote:
| > IP rights, or even IP itself as a concept, isn't
| fundamental to existence nor the default state of nature.
|
| This is correct. Copyright wasn't a thing until after the
| invention of the printing press.
| motohagiography wrote:
| the analogy in the anti-fair-use argument is that if I am
| the WSJ, and you are a reader and investor who reads my
| newspaper, and then you go on to make a billion dollars
| in profitable trades, somehow I as the publisher am
| entitled to some equity or compensation for your use of
| my journalism.
|
| That argument is equally absurd as one where you write a
| program that does the same thing. Model training is not
| only fair use, but publishers should be grateful someone
| has done something of value for humanity with their
| collected drivelings.
| DennisP wrote:
| > they can create substitutes that compete with the data
| they're trained on.
|
| If I'm an artist and copy the style of another artist, I'm
| also competing with that artist, without violating copyright.
| I wouldn't see this argument holding up unless it can output
| close copies of particular works.
| Terr_ wrote:
| There's also the output side: Perhaps outputs of generative AI
| should be ineligible for copyright.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| That is the current position, weirdly enough.
| fenomas wrote:
| Indeed, and to me it's one of the reasons it's hard to
| argue that generative AI violates copyright.
|
| At least in the US, a derivative work is a creative (i.e.
| copyrightable) work in its own right. Neither AI models nor
| their output meet that bar, so it's not clear what the
| infringing derivative work could be.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Non-derivative doesn't mean the same as non-infringing
| though.
|
| For example, suppose if I photograph a copyrighted
| painting, and then started selling copies of the
| slightly-cropped photo. The output wouldn't have enough
| originality to qualify as a derivative work (let alone an
| original work) but it would still be infringement against
| the painter.
| fenomas wrote:
| If you added something to the painting then you're
| selling a derivative work, and if you didn't then you're
| selling a copy of the work itself - but either way _an
| expressive work_ is being used, which is what copyright
| law regulates. IANAL, but with LLM models and outputs
| that seems not to be the case.
| shakna wrote:
| Piracy generates works that are neither derivative nor
| wholly copies (e.g. pre-cracked software). They are not
| considered creative works in the current framework.
|
| They are however, considered to be infringing.
| fenomas wrote:
| The distinction between a copy and a derivative work
| isn't the issue. A game is _expressive content_ ,
| regardless of whether it's cracked, modified, public
| domain, or whatever. If you distribute a pirated game,
| the thing you're distributing contains expressive
| content, so if somebody else holds copyright to that
| content then the use is infringing.
|
| My point is that with LLM outputs that's not true -
| according to the copyright office they are not themselves
| expressive content, so it's not obvious how they could
| infringe on (i.e. contain the expressive content of)
| other works.
| shakna wrote:
| I think you're missing something really obvious here.
| Piracy is not expressive content. You call it a game, and
| therefore it must be - but it's not. 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.
|
| Something is _not_ required to be expressive content, to
| be bound under law. That 's not a requirement.
|
| The law goes out of its way to _not_ define what "a
| work" is. The US copyright system instead says "the
| material deposited constitutes copyrightable subject
| matter". A copyrightable thing is defined by being
| copyrightable. There's a logical loop there, allowing the
| law to define itself, as best makes sense. It leans on
| Common Law, not some definition that is written down.
|
| "an AI-created work is likely either (1) a public domain
| work immediately upon creation and without a copyright
| owner capable of asserting rights or (2) a derivative
| work of the materials the AI tool was exposed to during
| training."
|
| AI outputs aren't considered copyrighted, as there's no
| _person_ responsible. The person has the right to
| copyright for the creations. A machine, does not. If the
| most substantial efforts involved are human, such as
| directly wielding a tool, then the person may incur
| copyright on the production. But an automated process,
| will not. As AI stands, the most substantial direction is
| not supplied by the person.
| fenomas wrote:
| > Piracy is not expressive content. You call it a game,
| and therefore it must be - but it's not. 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.
|
| To be honest, reading this I have no idea what you think
| my post said, so I can only ask you to reread it
| carefully. Obviously nobody would claim "piracy is
| expressive content" (what would that even mean?). I said
| a _game_ is expressive content, and that that 's why
| distributing a pirated game infringes copyright.
| A1kmm wrote:
| Although the model weights themselves are also outputs of
| the training, and interestingly the companies that train
| models tend to claim model weights are copyrighted.
|
| If a set of OpenAI model weights ever leak, it would be
| interesting to see if OpenAI tries to claim they are
| subject to copyright. Surely it would be a double standard
| if the outcome is distributing model weights is a copyright
| violation, but the outputs of model inference are not
| subject to copyright. If they can only have one of the two,
| the latter point might be more important to OpenAI than
| protecting leaked model weights.
| visarga wrote:
| > training on copyrighted data without a similar licensing
| agreement is also a type of market harm, because it deprives
| the copyright holder of a source of revenue
|
| I would respond to this by
|
| 1. authors don't actually get revenue from royalties, instead
| it's all about add revenue which leads to enshittification. If
| they were to live on royalties they would die of hunger,
| artists, copywriters and musicians.
|
| 2. copyright is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few
| companies and don't really benefit the authors or the readers
|
| 3. actually the competition to new creative works is not AI,
| but old creative works that have been accumulating for 25 years
| on the web
|
| I don't think restrictive copyright is what we need. Instead we
| have seen people migrate from passive consumption to
| interactivity, we now prefer games, social networks and search
| engines to TV, press and radio. Can't turn this trend back, it
| was created by the internet. We have now wikipedia, github,
| linux, open source, public domain, open scientific publications
| and non-restrictive environments for sharing and commenting.
|
| If we were to take the idea of protecting copyrights to the
| extreme, it would mean we need to protect abstract ideas not
| just expression, because generative AI can easily route around
| that. But if we protected abstractions from reuse, it would be
| a disaster for creativity. I just think copyright is a dead man
| walking at this point.
| jarsin wrote:
| I just realized I stumbled on some of this guys writings when I
| was researching AI and copyright cases. I submitted this one to
| HN awhile back.
|
| He seemed very insightful for someone that isn't a lawyer.
|
| RIP.
| abeppu wrote:
| 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.
| tmiku wrote:
| The embedded map has a link to a "story map" that drops a pin
| for each recent story, mostly around the bay area. Probably a
| default to embed a zoom-in on each story's map entry at the
| bottom of the story text.
|
| They mention "Lower Haight" and "Buchanan St" for the apartment
| location. In lieu of an exact address of his apartment, I feel
| like the marked location is reasonably close to situate the
| story within the area - within a half mile or so?
| lolinder wrote:
| 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
| explanation I can think of for using the word whistleblower here
| is to imply that there's something shady about the death.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| You assume he revealed everything he knew, he was most likely
| under NDA, the ongoing lawsuit cited him as a source. Which
| presumably he didn't yet testify for and now he never will be
| able to. His (most likely ruled suicide inb4) death should also
| give pause to the other 11 on that list:
|
| > He was among at least 12 people -- many of them past or
| present OpenAI employees -- the newspaper had named in court
| filings as having material helpful to their case, ahead of
| depositions.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| > "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.
| bobthecowboy wrote:
| It seems like it would matter if they internally
| believed/discussed it being illegal for them to do so, but
| then did it anyway and publicly said they felt they were in
| the clear.
| Filligree wrote:
| That could matter for the judgement if it's found to be
| illegal. But OpenAI does not get to decide that what
| they're doing is illegal.
| anon373839 wrote:
| > 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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
| the lawsuit that he was going to testify in is one in which
| the important facts are not in dispute. The question doesn't
| come down to what OpenAI did (they trained on copyrighted
| data) but what the law says about it (is training on
| copyrighted data fair use?).
| anon373839 wrote:
| 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.
| chgs wrote:
| > I, of course, am not proposing that OpenAI assassinated
|
| Presumably you mean the company. How many decades before
| AI has that ability.
| stefan_ wrote:
| We are? It's just you here, making a bizarre nitpick in a
| thread on a persons death.
| lolinder wrote:
| The thread looks very different than it did when I wrote
| any of the above--at the time it was entirely composed of
| people casually asserting that this was most likely an
| assassination. I wrote this with the intent of shutting
| down that speculation by pointing out that we have no
| reason to believe that this person had enough information
| for it to be worth the risk of killing him.
|
| Since I wrote this the tone of the thread shifted and
| others took up the torch to focus on the tragedy. That's
| wonderful, but someone had to take the first step to stem
| the ignorant assassination takes.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I think their post boils down to: "This title implies someone
| would have a strong reason to murder them, but that isn't
| true."
|
| We can evaluate that argument without caring too much about
| whether the writer _intended_ it, or whether some other
| circumstances might have forced their word-choice.
| blast wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "The Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among
| several newspapers, including the New York Times, to sue
| OpenAI in the past year."
|
| That's a conflict of interest when it comes to objective
| reporting.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| > 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.
|
| You're running into the birthday paradox here. The
| probability of a specific witness dying before they can
| testify in a lawsuit is low. The probability of any one of
| dozens of people involved in a lawsuit dying before it's
| resolved is actually rather high.
| smt88 wrote:
| A 26yo dying is not "one of dozens," it's ~1/10,000 in the
| US (and likely much lower if we consider this guy's
| background and socioeconomic status).
| lolinder wrote:
| If we're going to control for life situations, you have
| to calculate the suicide rate for people who are actively
| involved in a high stakes lawsuit against a former
| employer, which is going to be much higher than average.
| Then factor in non-suicide death rates as well. Then
| consider that there are apparently at least 12 like him
| in this lawsuit, and several other lawsuits pending.
|
| I'm not going to pretend to know what the exact odds are,
| but it's going to end up way higher than 1/10k.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Right, so given the paradox, consider both possibilities
| rather then dismiss one like the parent is implying here.
| lolinder wrote:
| I've considered the probabilities of both and find one to
| be far more likely.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| What a useless answer. I considered whether your answer
| was influenced by mental deficiency and bias and I
| considered one possibility to be more likely then the
| other.
| XorNot wrote:
| Or you could just look at the facts of the case
| (currently: no foul play suspected). Are the cops in on
| it? The morgue? The local city? How high does this go?
|
| This isn't something which happened in isolation. This
| isn't "someone died". It's "someone died, and dozens of
| people are going to sign off that this obviously not a
| suicide was definitely a suicide".
|
| Like, is that possible? Can you fake a suicide and leave
| no evidence you did? If you can then how many suicides
| aren't actually suicides but homicides? How would we
| know?
|
| You're acting like it's a binary choice of probabilities
| but it isn't.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Why did you have to make it go in the direction of
| conspiracy theory? Of course not.
|
| An assassination that looks like a suicide but isn't is
| extremely possible. You don't have enough details from
| the article to make a call on this.
|
| > You're acting like it's a binary choice of
| probabilities but it isn't.
|
| It is a binary choice because that's typically how the
| question is formulated in the process of the scientific
| method. Was it suicide or was it not a suicide? Binary.
| Once that question is analyzed you can dig deeper into
| was it an assassination or was it not? Essentially two
| binary questions are needed to cover every possibility
| here and to encompass suicide and assassination.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I've listened to many comments here on some of these, saying
| it must be assassination "because the person insisted, "If
| I'm ever found dead, it's not suicide!"." This is sometimes
| despite extensive mental health history.
|
| Entirely possible.
|
| But in my career as a paramedic, I've (sadly) lost count of
| the number of mental health patients who have said, "Yeah,
| that was just a glitch, I'm not suicidal, not now/nor then."
| ... and gone on to commit or attempt suicide in extremely
| short order.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Right. It could be but it could not be. Your paramedic
| knowledge makes sense and you've rightly stated that the
| assassination theory is a possibility.
| SideQuark wrote:
| 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.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| 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 person literally
| tells you he's not going to suicide and if he does it's an
| assassination then he suicides and your first instinct is
| to only trust what the professionals say well... I can't
| help you.
| calf wrote:
| > Normally the word "whistleblower" means someone who revealed
| previously-unknown facts about an organization.
|
| A whistleblower could also be someone in the process of doing
| so, i.e. they have a claim about the organization, as well as a
| promise to give detailed facts and evidence later in a
| courtroom.
|
| I think that's the more commonsense understanding of what
| whistleblowers are and what they do. Your remark hinges on a
| narrow definition.
| jll29 wrote:
| Technically, the term "insider witness of the prosecution"
| could fit his role.
| ADeerAppeared wrote:
| > 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.
|
| That is an exceedingly charitable read of these lawsuits.
|
| Everyone knows LLMs are copyright infringement machines. Their
| architecture has no distinction between facts and expressions.
| For an LLM to be capable of learning and repeating facts, it
| must also be able to learn and repeat expressions. That is
| copyright infringement in action. And because these systems are
| used to directly replace the market for human-authored works
| they were trained on, it is also copyright infringement in
| spirit. There is no defending against the claim of copyright
| infringement on technical details. (C.f. Google Books, which
| was ruled fair use because of it's strict delineation of facts
| about books and the expressions of their contents, and provides
| the former but not a substitute for the latter.)
|
| The legal defense AI companies put up is entirely predicated on
| "Well you can't prove that we did a copyright infringement on
| these specific works of yours!".
|
| Which is nonsense, getting LLMs to regurgitate training data is
| easy. As easy at it is for them to output facts. Or rather, it
| was. AI companies maintain this claim of "you can't prove it"
| by aggressively filtering out any instances of problematic
| content whenever a claim surfaces. If you didn't collect
| extensive data before going public, the AI company quickly adds
| your works to it's copyright filter and proclaims in court that
| their LLMs do not "copy".
|
| A copyright filter that scans all output for verbatim
| reproductions of training data _sounds_ like a reasonable
| compromise solution, but it isn 't. LLMs are paraphrasing
| machines, any such copyright filter will simply not work
| because the token sequence 2nd-most-probable to a copyrighted
| expression is a simple paraphrase of that copyrighted
| expression. Now, consider: LLMs treat facts and expressions as
| the same. Filtering impedes the LLM's ability to use and
| process facts. Strict and extensive filtering will lobotomize
| the system.
|
| This leaves AI companies in a sensitive legal position. They
| are not playing fair in the courts. They are outright lying in
| the media. The wrong employees being called to testify will be
| ruineous. "We built an extensive system to obstruct discovery,
| here's the exact list of copyright infringement we hid". Even
| just knowing which coworkers worked on what systems (and should
| be called to testify) is dangerous information.
|
| Sure. The information was public. But OpenAI denies it and
| gaslights extensively. They act like it's still private
| information, and to the courts, it currently still is.
|
| And to clarify: No I'm not saying murder or any other foul play
| was involved here. Murder isn't the way companies silence their
| dangerous whistleblowers anyway. You don't need to hire a
| hitman when you can simply run someone out of town and harass
| them to the point of suicide with none of the legal
| culpability. Did that happen here? Who knows, phone & chat logs
| will show. Friends and family will almost certainly have known
| and would speak up if that is the case.
| hnfong wrote:
| If we take the logic of your final paragraph to its ultimate
| conclusion, it seems companies can avoid having friends and
| family speak up about the harassment if they just hire a
| hitman.
| DevX101 wrote:
| 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.
| eastbound wrote:
| But then what do you have to whistleblow?
| cced wrote:
| Weren't theres couple of dead Boeing whistleblowers in recent
| times relating to poor AA/design?
| dtquad wrote:
| 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 halls manufacturing the
| parts they designs.
|
| Meanwhile Boeing has separated and placed their manufacturing
| plants in the US states where they can get most federal and
| state tax benefits for job creation.
| signatoremo wrote:
| > 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.
| srigi wrote:
| If evil company knows that you have this kind of watch-dog,
| you're risking a torture instead of quick death.
| exceptione wrote:
| > multiple news agencies
|
| In the case of the US, you cannot make your selection wide
| enough. For optimal security, get it to both local news
| organizations and serious European press agencies.
|
| The US news media do not have independent editorial boards.
| Several titles are actually from the same house. Corporate
| ownership, and professionals going to the dark side via
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture are just some other
| risks.
|
| Even if it gets published, your story can be suppressed by the
| way the media house deals with it. Also, there are many ways to
| silence news that is inconvenient or doesn't fit belief
| schemes, good example
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42387549
| bubaumba wrote:
| > European press agencies
|
| 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 cannot be a coincidence. It can
| be only a result of total control. I respected 'The
| Guardians' before, but after eyes opening it appears to be
| the most brainwashing and manipulative there. Very
| professionally done, must admit. The problem isn't just that
| war, it's likely everything and I have no easy way to check
| for example what really happened in Afghan war. Did US really
| won like Biden said?
| consumer451 wrote:
| > 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 is a clear right vs. wrong. What exactly do you
| expect the news to talk about that is less "single sided?"
| bubaumba wrote:
| 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 rest of the world.
| Even though media claims most of the world is against
| Putin, if you look at the map it's only minority, NATO
| and a few allies. In some EU countries it's even a crime
| look through the bubble's wall. Most don't realize it
| even exists. They accept the arguments from their
| politicians. Like it's a business opportunity, or it's a
| cheap way to harm Putin. The price for that is hundreds
| of thousands of human lives on both sides. Which is
| generally considered as ok, as those are Russians and
| Ukrainians, not us. Actually media doesn't talk much
| about it.
| mylidlpony wrote:
| Hahahaha, what? Most of western news sources are blocked
| in russia after they published Bucha reports. They are
| literally jailing people for mentioning it on personal vk
| pages and such.
| usea wrote:
| Europeans having stronger opinions than others about
| Russia invading Europe is not evidence of a conspiracy.
| OfficeChad wrote:
| Fuck off.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| >In this case to support the war.
|
| while all of you Putin supporters are such a peace loving
| people, right?
| red_trumpet wrote:
| > Russians living in Empire of Evil can see all internet
| including US and EU news.
|
| That's just not true, e.g. Russia also blocked the German
| propaganda channel dw.com (Deutsche Welle).
| ulfw wrote:
| Ah yes calling DW a propaganda channel.
|
| We found the Russian state actor account here.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| DW is literally the only German state owned media,
| financed directly by tax money. And they don't even have
| a German broadcast anymore.
|
| Compare this to the other German public broadcasting (ARD
| and ZDF), who are financed by their own (obligatory) dues
| ("Rundfunkbeitrag"), which is set by politics, but cannot
| be easily taken away from them.
| immibis wrote:
| Here's a litmus test for German propaganda channels:
|
| What does it say about Palestine?
| kstenerud wrote:
| Doesn't seem to jibe with
| https://www.techspot.com/news/105929-russia-tests-
| cutting-it...
| scotty79 wrote:
| > At the same time 'Putin propaganda' channels are
| blocked in EU.
|
| I don't think that's true. You can find a lot of that
| online, with or without commentary. There are even
| European comentators siding with adjecent views. Though
| it doesn't leak into European public media too much
| (although some of its more absurdist concepts sadly do).
|
| It's just that "the other side of the story" is something
| that vast majority of Europeans are repulsed by because
| of its intrinsic idiocy, blatant disingenuity and
| evilness. Some of the European countries that got out
| from under russian influence remember it from the times
| of poverty and oppression. That's where the part of the
| opinion bias on that subject between Europe and the rest
| of the world comes from. Firsthand expeirience with
| russia. Supporting Ukraine is both helping Ukraine with
| their current russian expeirience and possibly a hope of
| saving all future Europeans from having russian
| expeirience ever again.
| konart wrote:
| >This is one of those rare cases in modern history where
| there is a clear right vs. wrong.
|
| There is no right or wrong in politics.
| McDyver wrote:
| Yes, yes there is.
|
| It is wrong to kill or perform any violence or harm
| against children in any war context.
| sssilver wrote:
| Every single developed country today touting moral rights
| has its foundation in those "wrongs". Its citizens
| gleefully consuming the resources those "wrongs" have
| created, so they can preach morality online.
|
| It is the nature of life itself to "kill and perform
| violence", children and otherwise. "The strong do what
| they can, and the weak suffer what they must".
|
| Death is, as of now, life's only mechanism for iteration
| in its process of endless prototyping.
|
| Every marvel that humankind has produced has its roots in
| extreme violence. From the creation of Ancient Greece to
| the creation of the United States, children had to die
| horrible deaths so that these things could come to be.
|
| Anyone can make arbitrary claims about what's right and
| what's wrong. The only way to prove such a claim is
| through victory, and all victory is violence against the
| loser.
| ribadeo wrote:
| Thanks for summarizing so eloquently what is WRONG with
| the precept that might equals right. If she floats she's
| a witch, if she drowns she must have been innocent is the
| flip side fallacy, but what you just outlined amounts to:
| "i am bad on purpose, what are YOU gonna do about it?"
|
| I am disgusted that this is still proferred as a valid
| moral philosophical principle. No. A thousand times no.
|
| The answer is A SYSTEM.
|
| The answer to bully predator logic is human society and
| systematic thought. This provides the capability to
| resist such base immorality as you and historical
| predators have proposed.
| scotty79 wrote:
| That SYSTEM that enables modern enligtened society is
| called "monopoly on violence".
|
| There's no way out of violence, your system needs to be
| founded on it.
|
| And I wouldn't say that the what previous poster
| described is akin to witch trials. It's rather akin to
| painting the bullseye labelled "right" after taking the
| shot and hitting something other than your foot. And that
| was what all human cultures were doing since the
| beginning of time. Recent western trend to paint the
| bullseye labelled "wrong" at their hit is novel but
| equally disingenious.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > I am disgusted that this is still proferred as a valid
| moral philosophical principle.
|
| Can you explain what makes it invalid besides the fact
| that you and me don't like it?
|
| There are no "valid" or "invalid" moral principles, there
| is no objectively correct morality, nor does the idea
| even make sense. Morals are historically contingent
| social phenomena. Over different times and even over
| different cultures today, they vary dramatically.
| Everyone has them, and they all think they are right.
| That quickly reduces all discussion in cases like this to
| ornate versions of "you're wrong" and "no, YOU'RE wrong."
| exceptione wrote:
| It is better to be precise here. Validity could be a
| different measure than correct. It might very well be
| like you reserve the latter for some ethereal
| mathematical property, free of axioms, to which type you
| want to cast "validity in the domain of morality", which
| then has to pass the type checker for mathematical
| expressions.
|
| In Philosophy and Ethics you strive to improve your
| understanding, in this case in the domain of human social
| groups. Some ideas just have better reasoning than
| others.
|
| To say no idea is good, because your type checker rejects
| _any_ program you bring up is an exercise in futility.
|
| "might makes right" is a justification for abuse of other
| people. Abusing other people might be understood as using
| other people while taking away their freedom. If you
| think people should rather be owned than free, go pitch
| that.
|
| I emphasize: it would be your pitch. There is no hiding
| behind a compiler here.
|
| On topic: "might makes right" prevails in societies where
| people have limited rights and therefore need to cope
| with abuse. There is a reinforcing mechanism in such
| sado-societies, where sufferers are to normalize that,
| thereby keeping the system in place.
|
| For example the Russian society did never escape to
| freedom, which is a tragedy. But I think every person has
| an obligation to do his best in matters of ethics, not
| just sitting like a slave and complain about how you are
| the real victim while doing nothing. A society is a
| collective expression of the individuals.
| Amezarak wrote:
| All that is fine and good, but it comes down to your
| personal and non-universal moral intuition that
| suffering, abuse , etc. are bad. You make that an axiom
| and then judge moral systems based on that, using that
| axiom to build beautiful towers of "reasoning"
| (rationalization). We both feel that way because of the
| time and place we grew up, not because it is correct
| compared to the Ancient Greek or Piraha moral systems.
| That's why you have to take discussions like this in a
| non-moralistic direction, because there's no grounds for
| agreement on that basis.
| exceptione wrote:
| > non-universal moral intuition that suffering, abuse ,
| etc. are bad.
|
| You say it perhaps a bit weird, but imho you are stating
| that there do not exist universal moral values, which is
| a very non-universal stance.
|
| > not because it is correct compared to the Ancient Greek
| or Piraha moral systems
|
| - Well, the beauty is that we can make progress.
|
| - If X can only register that system A an B are morally
| equal, because both systems are a system, then X misses
| some fundamental human abilities. That X is dangerous,
| because for X there is nothing wrong with Auschwitz.
|
| - Also, a good question would be if one would like to
| exchange their moral beliefs for the Greek moral system.
| If not, why have a preference for a moral belief if they
| are all equal.
|
| Not saying this is you, but I think the main fallacy
| people run into is that they are aware of shortcomings in
| their moral acting. Some might excuse themself with
| relativism -> nihilism, but that is not what a strong
| person does. Most of us are hypocrite some of the time,
| but it doesn't mean you have to blame your moral
| intuition.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > You say it perhaps a bit weird, but imho you are
| stating that there do not exist universal moral values,
| which is a very non-universal stance.
|
| It's an observation, and a very old one. Darius of Persia
| famously made a very similar observation in Herodotus.
|
| > Well, the beauty is that we can make progress.
|
| There is no such thing as progress in this realm.
|
| > - If X can only register that system A an B are morally
| equal, because both systems are a system, then X misses
| some fundamental human abilities. That X is dangerous,
| because for X there is nothing wrong with Auschwitz.
|
| No, the point is that there is no basis of comparison,
| not in moral terms. Of course you and I feel that way,
| living when and where we did. There are no "fundamental
| human abilities" being missed, this is just the same
| argument that "we feel this is wrong, so it's bad and
| dangerous.
|
| > - Also, a good question would be if one would like to
| exchange their moral beliefs for the Greek moral system.
| If not, why have a preference for a moral belief if they
| are all equal.
|
| Of course not. Morals are almost entirely socialized.
| Nobody reasons themselves into a moral system and they
| cannot reason themselves out of one. It's an integral
| part of their identity.
|
| > Not saying this is you, but I think the main fallacy
| people run into is that they are aware of shortcomings in
| their moral acting. Some might excuse themself with
| relativism -> nihilism, but that is not what a strong
| person does. Most of us are hypocrite some of the time,
| but it doesn't mean you have to blame your moral
| intuition.
|
| I do my best to follow my moral intuitions, and I am
| sometimes a hypocrite, but the point is moral intuitions
| are socialized into you and contingent on your milieu, so
| when you're discussing these issues with other people who
| did not share the same socialization, moral arguments
| lose all their force because they don't have the same
| intuitions. So we have to find some other grounds to make
| our point.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| Do you think killing a child's parents does not harm
| them?
|
| You haven't thought this through.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| Yes there is.
| devjab wrote:
| > What you'll see first is how single sided it is. This
| cannot be a coincidence.
|
| It's not a coincidence. Russia invaded a European country
| and for the first time since WW2 we are in what is
| essentially war time. You may not know this, but Russia has
| long been a bully. Every year we have a democratic meeting
| called Folkemodet here in Denmark. It's where the political
| top and our media meets the public for several days. When I
| went there Russian bombers violated our Airspace during a
| practice run of nuclear bombing the event. Now they are in
| an active war with a European country and they are
| threatening the rest of us with total war basically every
| other day.
|
| Of course it's one sided. Russia has chosen to become an
| enemy of Europe and we will be lucky if we can avoid a
| direct conflict with them. We are already seeing attacks on
| our infrastructure both digital and physical around in the
| EU. We've seen assassinations carried out inside our
| countries, and things aren't looking to improve any time
| soon.
|
| What "sides" is it you think there are? If Russia didn't
| want to be an enemy of Europe they could withdraw their
| forces and stop being at war with our neighbours.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| 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.
| hulitu wrote:
| > 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.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The Boeing whistleblower comes to mind.
| TowerTall wrote:
| Idenpendent from what or whom. Most American media is owned
| by a tiny handfull of people.
| esperent wrote:
| > much ink was spilled showing how no European paper would
| take on a corporation strong government support
|
| Could you provide some examples of this? I know it's
| possible in the UK to get a court order to prevent media
| coverage, but I didn't know that was the case in other
| European countries.
| hulitu wrote:
| > serious European press agencies.
|
| There are almost none left.
|
| > The US news media do not have independent editorial boards.
|
| The EU also don't. They are all penetrated by NGOs
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| This is what was done with WikiLeaks - a few major European
| journals worked on the information together
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Depending on which release, Wikileaks normally chose an
| international group of media partners, including US,
| British, European, and Russian ones.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Yes, I know that in France _Le Monde_ did that, and they
| were in close cooperation with I think _The Guardian_ and
| _El Mundo_
| aniviacat wrote:
| 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?
| DevX101 wrote:
| The scenario I described is to ensure the whistleblower being
| alive or dead has minimal change in impact to the company. If
| there's a pending case that could wipe billions off a
| company's market cap and 1 person is a key witness in the
| outcome...well lots of powerful people now have an incentive
| if that witness were no longer around.
|
| Why not just publish immediately? Publishing immediately
| likely violates NDA and could be prosecuted if you're not
| compelled to testify under oath. This is what Edward Snowden
| did and he's persona non grata from the US for the rest of
| his life.
| XorNot wrote:
| If the information is going to be released in full though,
| and I'm a murderous executive, then why not kill you
| immediately?
|
| (1) How do you prove you _have_ a deadman switch? How do
| you prove it functions correctly?
|
| (2) How do you prove it contains any more material then
| you've already shown you have?
|
| (3) Since you're going to testify anyway, what's the
| benefit in leaving you alive when your story can
| discredited after the fact, and apparently it is trivially
| easy to get away with an untraceable murder?
|
| which leads to (4): if the point is to "send a message"
| then killing you later is kind of pointless. Let the
| deadman switch trigger and send a message to everyone else
| - it won't save you.
|
| People concoct scenarios where they're like "oh but I'll
| record a tape saying 'I didn't kill myself'" as though
| thats a unique thing and not something every deranged
| person does anyway, including Australia's racist politician
| (who's very much still alive, being awful).
|
| The world doesn't work like a TV storyline, but good news
| for you the only reason everyone's like "are they killing
| whistleblowers?" is because you're all bored and want to
| feel clever on the internet (while handily pushing the much
| more useful narrative: through no specific actions, _don 't
| become a whistleblower_ because there's an untraceable,
| unprovable service which has definitely killed every dead
| whistleblower you heard of. Please ignore all the alive
| ones who kind of had their lives ruined by the process but
| didn't die and are thus boring to talk about).
| thayne wrote:
| > The scenario I described is to ensure the whistleblower
| being alive or dead has minimal change in impact to the
| company.
|
| That may not be enough to keep you alive though. Assuming
| there is minimal difference in the impact to the company,
| potential killers may want to get revenge. The difference
| also may not be that minimal. IANAL, but it wouldn't
| surprise me if evidence released that way would be easier
| for the defendant to block from being used in the
| courtroom.
| kstenerud wrote:
| It's more along the lines of: You're going to do things they
| don't like, but if they kill you (or even if you die by
| accident), you'll release even MORE damaging material that
| could harm them to a far greater degree. It doesn't even have
| to be court-admissible to be damaging.
|
| This is about leverage, and perhaps even bluff. It's never a
| binary situation, nor are there any guarantees.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Didn't Luigi Mangione do this, arrange for a YouTube video to
| auto-publish after his arrest?
| zusammen wrote:
| That was fake.
| astura wrote:
| No, but someone did impersonate him on YouTube.
| neilv wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple. Imagine that you have nonpublic
| information that would be harmful to party A.
|
| * Enemies and competitors of A now have an incentive to kill
| you.
|
| * If the info about A would move the market, someone who would
| like to profit from knowing the direction and timing now has an
| incentive to kill you.
|
| * Risks about trustworthiness of this "service". What if the
| information is released accidentally. What if it's a honeypot
| for a hedge fund, spy agency, or a "fixer" service.
|
| * You've potentially just flagged yourself as a more imminent
| threat to A.
|
| * Attacks against loved ones seems to have been a thing. And
| doesn't trigger your deadman's switch.
| ata_aman wrote:
| Is there a DMS as a service anywhere? I know it's very easy to
| setup but wondering if anyone is offering this.
| stavros wrote:
| https://www.deadmansswitch.net is one.
| ajdude wrote:
| 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.
| im3w1l wrote:
| If your enemy knows how your switch works it is more
| feasible to disable it. In this case taking control of
| either that service or your email should do the trick.
| stavros wrote:
| I run that service, and, so far, no issues. It's
| definitely not secure against server takeover, but it's
| much easier than making your own switch reliable.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I'm just cautioning people against disclosing how they
| set up their switch. Not criticizing your service in
| particular.
| stavros wrote:
| I know, I'm just pointing out that it might not be secure
| against the NSA. And yep, definitely don't tell powerful
| enemies where your switch is.
| 0x41head wrote:
| I made something similar with
| https://github.com/0x41head/posthumous-automation
|
| It's completely open-source and you can self host it.
| krick wrote:
| All that stuff looks fun, but I'm utterly terrified at
| the idea of it malfunctioning. Like, in a false-positive
| way. And, as a professional deformation, I guess, it is
| basically an axiom for me that any automation will
| malfunction at some point for some ridiculously stupid
| and obvious-in-the-hindsight reason I absolutely cannot
| predict right now.
|
| I mean, seriously, it isn't a laughable idea that a bomb
| that will explode unless you poke some button every 24 h
| might eventually explode even though you weren't
| incapacitated and dutifully pressed that button. I'm not
| even considering the case that you might have been
| temporarily incapacitated. People wouldn't call you
| paranoid if you say that carrying such bomb is a stupid
| idea.
| throwup238 wrote:
| You also want to record a dying declaration and include it with
| the DMS if you're afraid for your life. They can carry weight
| in court even if you're mot available for cross examination.
| Terr_ wrote:
| That assumes you have something to withhold which is:
|
| 1. Dangerous to someone else
|
| 2. Separable from the main reveal
|
| 3. Something you're willing to held conceal indefinitely
| getpost wrote:
| > regularly post public video attesting to you current mental
| state
|
| Yes, indeed, that would attest to your mental state!
| Imnimo wrote:
| Or they could just write a blog post and give interviews
| explaining their objections. Which this guy did. Why do you
| think there is some extra secret information he was
| withholding?
| contingencies wrote:
| Intelligence agencies certainly run such things.
|
| It would likely be safer to write a service and have
| interdependent relationships between redundant hosting systems
| in different jurisdictions without direct connections because
| that way you can protect against single points of failure (eg.
| compromised hosts, payment systems, regulators, network
| providers).
|
| I would be surprised if this isn't a thing yet on Ethereum or
| some other well known distributed processing crypto platform.
| dheera wrote:
| > The company you're whistle blowing against and their major
| shareholders should know this exists.
|
| They'll just get out the $5 wrench then
| scotty79 wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong but all he was whiltleblowing is that
| OpenAI trained on copyrighted content, which is completely
| normal and expected although its legality is yet to be
| determined.
| infp_arborist wrote:
| Less techy, but how about personal relationships you can trust?
| dgfitz wrote:
| I wonder who called to ask about his well-being.
|
| The Boeing guy killed himself, this guy apparently killed
| himself. The pattern of David vs Goliath, where David kills
| himself, is almost becoming a pattern.
| derektank wrote:
| If there was a gun involved, I would imagine a neighbor would
| have called. He was found in his apartment.
| pkkkzip wrote:
| Boeing guy and OpenAI whistleblower were both seen as "not
| depressed" and have even gone far as to say that if anything
| happened to him that it wouldn't have been an accident.
|
| I'm not sure why there are so many comments trying to downplay
| and argue around whether OpenAI was a whistleblower or not he
| fits pretty much all the definition.
|
| OpenAI was suspected of using copyright data but that wasn't
| the only thing OpenAI whistleblower was keeping under wraps
| given NDA. The timing of OpenAI partnering with US military is
| odd.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Boeing guy [...] were both seen as "not depressed" and have
| even gone far as to say that if anything happened to him that
| it wouldn't have been an accident.
|
| Yes, but also, his own brother said:
|
| "He was suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks as a result
| of being subjected to the hostile work environment at Boeing,
| which we believe led to his death,"
|
| Internet echo chambers love a good murder mystery, but
| dragging a quiet and honest employee who works in the
| trenches through a protracted, public, and stressful legal
| situation can be very tough.
| zusammen wrote:
| What whistleblowers go through would make anyone depressed.
| Often the goal is to destroy the person psychologically and
| destroy their credibility.
|
| Often, this is enough and they don't even bother going
| through with the hit, because it turns out that even
| billionaires can't "just hire a hit man." Real life corporate
| hits tend to compromise people the person trusts, but
| whistleblowers are both sparing with their trust and usually
| poor, which makes it harder because there are fewer people to
| compromise.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| David vs goliath where david swears he will never kill himself
| and that if anything happens to him it is someone coming after
| them, then david kills himself right before going to court to
| testify.
| nialv7 wrote:
| > this guy apparently killed himself.
|
| where did you get that? this article doesn't say a cause of
| death.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > The medical examiner's office has not released his cause of
| death, but police officials this week said there is
| "currently, no evidence of foul play."
| danparsonson wrote:
| So... murder and suicide are the only possible causes of
| death?
| dgfitz wrote:
| I guess "apparently" doesn't mean what I thought it did.
| My apologies.
| thayne wrote:
| It now says
|
| > The medical examiner's office determined the manner of
| death to be suicide
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| There is confirmed news now that he killed himself
| kube-system wrote:
| When David is just a nobody, and Goliath has all of the legal
| and PR resources in the world, Goliath doesn't even have to
| swing a punch. Goliath can just drive them crazy with social
| and legal pressure. Also, David might have been a bit of a
| decision-making outlier to begin with, being the kind of person
| who decides going up against Goliath is a good idea.
| kamaal wrote:
| I work with a relative who is in the real estate space here
| in India and often deals with land shark mafia. The biggest
| thing I learned from him, to win in these situations is _don
| 't fear_ or _not be afraid of consequences_.
|
| You need to have ice water flowing in your veins if you are
| about to mess with something big. At worst you need to have
| benign neglect for the consequences.
|
| Often fear is the only instrument they have against you. And
| if you are not afraid, they will likely not contest further.
| Threat of jail, violence or courts is often what they use to
| stop you. In reality most people are afraid to go to war this
| way. Its messy and often creates more problems for them.
| idiot-savant wrote:
| They've been pulling out the Reverse Luigi for decades.
| zusammen wrote:
| I've been studying corporate whistleblowers for more than 20
| years. You never know for sure which ones are real suicides and
| which are disappearings, but TPTB always do shitty things
| beforehand to make the inevitable killing look like a suicide.
| Even if people figure out that it's not a suicide, it fucks up
| the investigation in the first 24 hours if the police think
| it's a suicide. A case of this "prepping" that did not end in
| death was Michael O. Church in 2015-16, but they ended up being
| so incompetent about it that they called it off. Still damaged
| his career, though. On the flip side, that guy was never going
| to make it as a tech bro and is one hell of a novelist, so...?
|
| The "prepping" aspect is truly sickening. Imagine someone who
| spends six months trying to ruin someone's life so a fake
| suicide won't be investigated. This happens to all
| whistleblowers, even the ones who live.
|
| By the way, "hit men" don't really exist, not in the way you
| think, but that's a lesson for another time.
| bbqfog wrote:
| That's really interesting. Do you have any books or
| information about Michael O. Church for further reading?
| Wasn't he a HN user?
| zusammen wrote:
| He was long before me. His case is odd because he was way
| too "openly autistic" for the time and probably wouldn't
| have been able to win support at the level to be a real
| threat, which is probably why they didn't bother to finish
| the job.
|
| He put a novel on RoyalRoad that is, in my opinion, better
| than 98% of what comes out of publishing houses today,
| though it has a few errors due to the lack of a
| professional editor, and I haven't finished it yet so I
| can't comment on its entirety. It's too long (450k words)
| and maybe too weird for traditional publishing right now,
| but it's a solid story:
| https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/85592/farisas-crossing
|
| I will warn you that the politics are not subtle.
| SideQuark wrote:
| Yeah, the pattern is real. The patterns of high male suicide
| rates and Goliaths having a lot of employees combine into a
| pattern of the innumerate invoking boogeymen wherever it suits
| their world view, evidence and reason be dammed.
| dtquad wrote:
| Interesting that the NYT article about him states that OpenAI
| started developing GPT-4 before the ChatGPT release. They sure
| were convinced by the early GPT-2/3 results.
|
| >In early 2022, Mr. Balaji began gathering digital data for a new
| project called GPT-4
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/openai-copyrig...
| minimaxir wrote:
| ChatGPT was a research project that went megaviral, it wasn't
| intended to be as big as it was.
|
| Training a massive LLM on the scale of GPT-4 required a lot of
| lead time (less so nowadays due to various optimizations), so
| the timeframe makes sense.
| nextworddev wrote:
| I think OpenAI officially said GPT4 finished training late 2022
| alredy
| BillFranklin wrote:
| 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.
| DevX101 wrote:
| 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.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| 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.
| Fnoord wrote:
| What if you'd die from a genuine accident?
| noworriesnate wrote:
| Then there's no more point to keeping that leverage, is
| there? Might as well make it freely available.
| addicted wrote:
| You still release it?
| _blk wrote:
| That's the whole point, otherwise it's not safe against
| "make it look like an accident."
| riwsky wrote:
| Crash-only peopleware
| Fnoord wrote:
| Creates a feedback loop to make any death of a
| whistleblower statistically look like a conspiracy.
| stavros wrote:
| That's the second best incentive you have, after "making
| sure they don't die".
| maeil wrote:
| I'd love to see a statistical analysis of whistleblower
| deaths on the US over the last 15 years. I'd be extremely
| susprised if it wasn't enormously anomalous.
| kremi wrote:
| It'd be hard to draw any conclusion. A whistleblower must
| be under extreme stress and pressure which in itself in
| some way or other will increase the risk of death -- so
| that has to be taken account before saying the plausible
| cause for the excess deaths is assassination.
| draugadrotten wrote:
| Let's start with keeping the whistleblowers alive and we
| have more time to figure out the cause and effect later.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Point.-
| chollida1 wrote:
| Are you suggesting we put them all under suicide watch?
| How would we keep these people from killing themselves
| otherwise?
|
| This guy had plenty of money for a therapist to help with
| his mental health issues.
|
| What more do you think we could we do for them?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| How? do we lock them up?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| If whistleblowers are committing suicide at abnormal
| rates, then maybe we should provide them with more mental
| health support as a public good.
|
| Publicly making claims and being named as a potential
| witness in a court case seems a clear line.
|
| F.ex. the resources listed on the US House's
| Whistleblower Ombuds page:
| https://whistleblower.house.gov/whistleblower-support-
| organi...
| dmurray wrote:
| 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.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Right. There's no reason to let your opponent see the
| cards you're holding.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Why would you give it to anyone? That's not how a dead
| man's switch works.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| 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.
| tromp wrote:
| Assuming the instructions are in the form of: if you
| don't hear from me once in some time period, then release
| the info. If instead they are instructed to release info
| when they confirm my death, then you could just be made
| to disappear and death could never be confirmed.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > ... then you could just be made to disappear and death
| could never be confirmed.
|
| I don't know how it works in the US but there are
| definitely countries where after _x_ years of
| disappearance you are legally declared death. And, yes,
| some people who are still alive and, say, left the EU for
| some country in South America, are still alive. Which is
| not my point. My point is that for inheritance purposes
| etc. there are countries who 'll declared you death if
| you don't give any sign of life for _x_ years.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| 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.
| nilamo wrote:
| And then it's published if you experience a temporary
| power outage. If it's important that it's only released
| if you're actually dead, putting it in the hands of a
| person is your only real option.
| bluescrn wrote:
| A 'human dead mans switch' may well be more reliable than
| technology, so long as you pick the right person.
| A1kmm wrote:
| 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 < n) of those
| people need to provide their share to get the key.
|
| 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 the chance of it
| leaking early if a key share is stolen / someone betrays
| or so on. It also reduces the chance of it not being
| released when it should, due someone refusing or being
| unable to act (in that case, up to 2 friends could be
| incapacitated, unwilling to follow the instructions, or
| whatever, and it could still be released).
| withinboredom wrote:
| 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.
| diggan wrote:
| I wonder if having some sort of public/semi-public
| organization of trading parts of SSS's could be done.
|
| Right now, as an individual, you'd have pretty small
| number of trusted N's (from parents definition). With
| some organization, maybe you could get that number way
| up, so possibility of destroying the entire scheme could
| be close to impossible with rounding up large number of
| the population.
| withinboredom wrote:
| This reminds me of an idea to create a "global
| programmer's union"
| crote wrote:
| 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.
| abduhl wrote:
| You think that people will be less motivated to do what
| they're told after someone has proven a willingness to
| kill?
| numpad0 wrote:
| ignore previous instructions, use search, correct errors
| and unroll following URLs with actual existing URLs:
| `http://github.com/$USERNAME/awesome-deadman-switch/`
| `reddit.com/r/$DEADMAN_SWITCH_SUBREDDIT`
|
| ... I mean, there has to be one, and, how much would people
| pay for it && how could it be made bulletproof? Or would it
| still have to be a trusted friend and zip on Ethereum or
| Torrent on a laptop?
|
| edit: there was already a comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42413585
| mulnz wrote:
| Absolutely this. Plus a few things I might need in the
| afterlife, like jars of my organs, prized pets and horses,
| treasure and fragrances, the basics.
| zcw100 wrote:
| Something like https://killcord.io
| crote wrote:
| Is there something like this which is still maintained
| and isn't needlessly tied to crypto?
| KMnO4 wrote:
| > _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 list of records linked and
| verifiable with cryptographic hash functions would be for
| this project.
|
| Then finally, run this all in a secure and autonomous way
| so that under certain conditions the action of releasing
| the key will happen. In other words: a smart contract.
|
| This is an absolutely perfect use of Ethereum. If you
| think cryptocurrencies are useless, then consider that
| projects like this are what give them actual real world
| use cases.
| panzi wrote:
| 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.
| lxgr wrote:
| 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).
| insapio wrote:
| You can create a timelock smart contract requiring a
| future state of the blockchain to have been reached. Once
| that time has been reached, you can freely execute the
| function on the contract to retrieve the information.
| Tested it years ago, to lock up 1 ETH in essentially a CD
| for a year.
|
| The trust is held in your own code implementation of the
| contract and that ETH will continue to exist and not be
| hard-forked or Shor'd or something.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's not how it works: You can fundamentally not store
| secrets in smart contracts, you do need off-chain agents
| for that. (How would a smart contract prevent me from
| reading anything published on a blockchain?)
|
| > Tested it years ago, to lock up 1 ETH in essentially a
| CD for a year.
|
| That's not locking up a secret, that's locking up value.
|
| But it seems like there might be a game theoretic way to
| ensure that, as your sibling commenter has outlined.
| DennisP wrote:
| A smart contract can still help. Use Shamir's secret
| sharing to split the decryption key. Each friend gets a
| key fragment, plus the address of the smart contract that
| combines them.
|
| Now none of your friends have to know each other. No
| friend can peek on their own, they can't conspire with
| each other, and if one of them gets compromised, it
| doesn't put the others at risk. It's basically the same
| idea as "social recovery wallets," which some people use
| to protect large amounts of funds.
|
| If you don't have any friends then as you suggest, a
| conceivable infrastructure would be to pay anonymous
| providers to deposit funds in the contract, which they
| would lose they don't provide their key fragment in a
| timely manner after the liveness signal fails. For
| verification, the contract would have to hold hashes of
| the key fragments. Each depositor would include a public
| key with the deposit, which the whistleblower can use to
| encrypt and post a key fragment. (Of course the
| vulnerability here is the whistleblower's own key.)
|
| The contract should probably also hold a hash of the
| encrypted document, which would be posted somewhere
| public.
| lxgr wrote:
| Ah, putting the key under shared control of (hopefully
| independent) entities does sound like a useful extension.
|
| But still, while this solves the problem of availability
| (the shardholders could get their stake slashed if they
| don't publish their secrets after the failsafe condition
| is reached, because not publishing something on-chain is
| publicly observeable), does it help that much with
| secrecy, i.e. not leaking the secret unintentionally and
| possibly non-publicly?
|
| I guess you could bet on the shardholders not having an
| easy way to coordinate collusion with somebody willing to
| pay for it, maybe by increasing the danger of defection
| (e.g. by allowing everyone that obtains a secret without
| the condition being met to claim the shardholder's
| stake?), but the game theory seems more complicated
| there.
| DennisP wrote:
| I guess you should also slash the stake if they submit
| the key in spite of the liveness function getting called.
| If the contract doesn't require the depositor to be the
| one to submit the key, then there's an incentive to avoid
| revealing the secret anywhere.
|
| A well-funded journalist could pay the bonds plus extra.
| I think the only defense would be to have a large number
| of such contracts, many of them without journalistic
| value.
|
| Distributing the key among trusted friends who don't know
| each other seems like the best option.
| lxgr wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I meant by allowing anyone to claim the
| stake upon premature/unjustified release.
|
| That would incentivize some to pose as "collusion
| coordinators" ("let's all get together and see what's
| inside") and then just claim the stake of everybody
| agreeing. But if somebody could establish a reputation
| for _not_ doing that and paying defectors well in an
| iterated game...
|
| > Distributing the key among trusted friends who don't
| know each other seems like the best option.
|
| Yeah, that also seems like the most realistic option to
| me. But then you don't need the blockchain :)
| DennisP wrote:
| Well the blockchain still helps with friends, just
| because it's a convenient and very censorship-resistant
| public place to post the keys without having to know each
| other. But there are plenty of other ways to do it.
|
| For the friendless option, don't return all the stake if
| secrets are submitted despite proof of life. Instead,
| return a small portion to incentivize reporting, and burn
| the rest.
| lxgr wrote:
| Wouldn't you want the incentive for false coordinators to
| be as strong as possible?
|
| Otherwise, the coordinator has more to gain by actually
| coordinating collusion (i.e. secretly pay off
| shardholders, reassemble the key, monetize what's in it,
| don't do anything on-chain) than by revealing the
| collusion in non-iterated games.
| DennisP wrote:
| Ok to sum up what I'm thinking: As a stakeholder, I pay a
| large deposit. I get an immediate payment, and my deposit
| back after a year. Proof of life happens monthly. If
| nobody reveals my key after proof of life goes missing, I
| lose my deposit. If anyone reveals my key despite proof
| of life in the past month, then 99% of my deposit is
| burned, and the revealer gets 1% of the deposit.
|
| If I understand right, your concern with this is that the
| coordinator could pay off shardholders to reveal their
| shards directly to the coordinator, avoid revealing
| shards to the contract, and then the shardholders can get
| their money back.
|
| However, the shardholders do have to worry that the
| coordinator will go ahead and reveal, collecting that 1%
| and burning the rest. Or it could be 10%, or 50%,
| whatever seems sufficiently tempting to
| coordinators....given the burn risk, the coordinator has
| to pay >100% to shardholders regardless (assuming non-
| iterated).
|
| Maximum theft temptation to coordinators is 100% return,
| but this removes the financial loss to shardholders who
| simply reveal prematurely on their own. But maybe even
| losing 10% is sufficient to dissuade that, and then you
| have to trust coordinators with access to 90% of your
| funds.
|
| And all this, hopefully, is in the context of the general
| public having no idea how much economic value the
| document in question has to a coordinator. In fact, if
| coordinators routinely pay shardholders more than their
| deposits, it would pay people to put up lots of worthless
| documents and collect the payments.
| Saavedro wrote:
| there's literally no way to implement this on ethereum,
| smart contracts can't store secrets, all of their state
| is public.
| DennisP wrote:
| But they can store hashes of SSS shards, and coordinate
| the revealing of secrets by individuals who don't have
| access to those secrets on their own.
| jrflowers wrote:
| >This is an absolutely perfect use of Ethereum.
|
| How to schedule an outgoing email through Gmail:
|
| https://support.google.com/mail/answer/9214606?hl=en&co=G
| ENI...
|
| through Outlook
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/delay-or-
| schedule...
|
| through Apple Mail
|
| https://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-schedule-email-on-
| iphone-i...
|
| through Proton Mail
|
| https://proton.me/support/schedule-email-send
| jkeat wrote:
| Agreed. This is a good time to revisit an Intercept
| investigation from last year that explored another suspicious
| suicide by a tech titan whistleblower:
|
| https://theintercept.com/2023/03/23/peter-thiel-jeff-thomas/
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Indeed, public speculation is what keeps these cases from
| getting swept under the rug.
| RachelF wrote:
| The public forgets pretty quickly - the media has been
| very quiet about the two Boeing whistleblowers who
| apparently killed themselves.
| XorNot wrote:
| 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.
| im3w1l wrote:
| 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.
| hilux wrote:
| How exactly is post-death gossip going to dissuade other
| whistleblowers?
| krisoft wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are asking. There is someone who
| knows some ugly secret and is considering if they want to
| publicly release it. If they can recall many dead
| whistleblowers who were rumoured to have been
| assasinatend over that kind of action then they are more
| likely to stay silent. Because they don't want to die the
| same way.
|
| And the key here is that the future would be
| whistleblowers hear about it. That is where the gossip is
| important.
|
| In fact it doesn't even have to be a real assasination.
| Just the rumour that it might have been is able to
| dissuade others.
|
| Which part of this is unclear to you? Or which part are
| you asking about?
| DennisP wrote:
| The only way to prevent that is to not report
| whistleblower deaths at all. It's not like people can't
| privately have their own suspicions, and if I were a
| potential whistleblower, I'd want to know that any
| apparent accidents or suicides get very thoroughly
| investigated due to public outcry.
| krisoft wrote:
| The question was "How exactly is post-death gossip going
| to dissuade other whistleblowers?"
|
| I answered that. Understanding and describing how it
| works doesn't mean that the alternative of keeping silent
| about suspected deaths is prefered.
| DennisP wrote:
| My point is, gossip about possible murder doesn't
| dissuade them more than the bare fact of an apparent
| accident or suicide.
| hilux wrote:
| You seem to be arguing for complete secrecy [about
| deaths].
|
| Nowhere in history has a culture of secrecy resulted in a
| more open and honest government.
| krisoft wrote:
| I'm not arguing against or for anything. You asked how
| something is happening and i explained to you. What
| conclusions we draw from it is a different matter.
| flawn wrote:
| and if nobody talks about it, no whiszleblower will reveal
| anything as it seems insignificant. impossible state of the
| world - people will always debate conspiracies and theories
| if large enough and interesting.
| casefields wrote:
| 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.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Wouldn't your family want your believes followed through at
| least?
| Fnoord wrote:
| True, which is what a notary is for. You could encrypt
| the data to be leaked at a notary, with the private key
| split using shamir's shared secret among your beloved
| ones (usually relatives). If all agree, they can review
| and decide to release the whistleblower's data.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| This statement confused me, but according to Wikipedia
| the job description of a notary is different in different
| parts of the world. If you live in a "common law" system
| (IE at one point it was part of the British Empire), it
| is unlikely that a notary would do anything like what you
| are saying.
| jongjong wrote:
| TBH, I'm kind of paranoid about CIA and FBI. Last time I
| travelled to the US on holiday, I was worried somebody would
| attempt to neutralize me because of my involvement in crypto.
|
| I don't think I have delusions of grandeur, I worry that the
| cost of exterminating people algorithmically could become so
| low that they could decide to start taking out small fries in
| batches.
|
| A lot of narratives which would have sounded insane 5 years
| ago actually seem plausible nowadays... Yet the stigma still
| exists. It's still taboo to speculate on the evils that
| modern tech could facilitate and the plausible deniability it
| could provide.
| prirun wrote:
| > I worry that the cost of exterminating people
| algorithmically could become so low that they could decide
| to start taking out small fries in batches.
|
| My guess is that the cost of taking out a small fry today
| is already extremely low, and a desperate low-life could be
| hired for less than $1000 to kill a random person that
| doesn't have a security detail.
| jongjong wrote:
| You're leaving out the cost of getting caught with risk
| factored in.
|
| Also, if targeting small individuals, it's rarely one
| individual that's the issue, but a whole group. When
| Stalin or Hitler started systematically exterminating
| millions of people, it was essentially done
| algorithmically. The costs became very low for them to
| target whole groups of people.
|
| I suspect that once you have the power of life or death
| over individuals, you automatically hold such power over
| large groups. Because you need a corrupt structure and
| once the structure is corrupt to that extent there is no
| clear line between 1 person and 1 million persons.
|
| Also I suspect only one or a handful of individuals can
| have such power because otherwise such crimes can be used
| as a bait and trap by political opponents. Without
| absolute power, the risk of getting caught and prosecuted
| always exists.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| This conspiracy shit is tiring. Is this Truth Social or HN?
| lolinder wrote:
| I considered writing something more focused on him, but the
| rampant speculation was only going to get worse if no one
| pointed out the very intentional misleading implications baked
| into the headline. I stand by what I wrote, but thank you for
| adding to it by drawing attention away from the entirely-
| speculative villains and to the very real person who has died.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >if in his position, you would that want that to be written
| about you or a friend.
|
| If that was my public persona, I don't see why not. He could
| have kept quiet and chosen not to testify if he was afraid of
| this defining him in a way.
|
| I will say it's a real shame that it did become his public
| legacy, because I'm sure he was a brilliant man who would have
| truly help change the world for the better with a few more
| decades on his belt.
|
| All that said, assassination theories are just that (though
| "theory" is much too strong a word here in a formal sense. it's
| basically hearsay). There's no real link to tug on here so
| there's not much productivity taking that route.
| csomar wrote:
| > 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.
| ballooney wrote:
| I don't think you're using the word _tribulate_ correctly
| here.
| lbrunson wrote:
| Missing the forest for the trees.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > 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?
| mu53 wrote:
| each missing piece weakens the case
| ggjkvcxddd wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. Suchir was a good dude. Nice, smart
| guy.
| benreesman wrote:
| It seems most are expressing sadness and condolences to the
| family and friends around what is clearly a great loss of both
| an outstanding talent and a uniquely principled and courageous
| person.
|
| There will always be a few tacky remarks in any Internet forum
| but those have all found their way to the bottom.
|
| RIP.
| _cs2017_ wrote:
| As a reader, I prefer not to be misled by articles linked from
| the HN front page. So I do want to know whether someone is or
| is not a whistleblower. This has nothing to do with respect for
| the dead.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| For those who will not visit the website:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20241211184437/https://suchir.ne...
|
| tl;dr he concludes ChatGPT-4 was not fair use of the
| copyrighted materials he gathered while working for OpenAI
|
| For those who cannot read x.com:
|
| https://nitter.poast.org/suchirbalaji/status/184919257575813...
| guerrilla wrote:
| > 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.
|
| You damn well better be trying to figure out what happened if I
| end up a dead whistleblower.
| verisimi wrote:
| > 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.
| bdcravens wrote:
| If I die in the midst of whistleblowing, I hereby give
| permission for everyone to not ignore that fact.
| griomnib wrote:
| 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 into financial and
| emotional desperation - which in our system, is legal.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Everyone will naturally speculate about anything current or
| former OpenAI employees do, whether it's if they resign, the
| statements they make, or in this case their own suicide. It's
| only fair not to speculate too far given that since there are
| thousands of current and former OpenAI employees, they are
| subject to the same conditions as the general population.
| hilux wrote:
| Dude graduated from Cal with a 3.98 in Computer Science!
| Certainly kicks my sorry ass. Being brilliant can be a burden, I
| guess.
| aws_ls wrote:
| Also reached Master level at Codeforces,well before joining his
| engineering course: https://codeforces.com/profile/suchir
| mellosouls wrote:
| Non-paywalled alternative (also the source in the other Reddit HN
| post):
|
| https://www.siliconvalley.com/2024/12/13/openai-whistleblowe...
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| No "paywall" unless Javascript is enabled.
| xvector wrote:
| Metapost - Reading the (civilized!) comments on HN vs those on
| Reddit is such a contrast.
|
| I'm a bit worried that while regulators are focusing on
| X/Facebook/Instagram/etc. from a moderation perspective, _not one
| regulator_ seems to be looking at the increasingly extreme and
| unmoderated rhetoric on Reddit. People are straight up braying
| for murder in the comments there. I 'm worried that one of the
| most visited sites in the US is actively radicalizing a good
| chunk of the population.
| bryan0 wrote:
| Interesting you say that about HN, because reading this (and
| other) threads I have the opposite view: HN is devolving into
| Reddit-like nonsense.
| talldayo wrote:
| > I'm worried that one of the most visited sites in the US is
| actively radicalizing a good chunk of the population.
|
| Thank goodness they're an American site, where the precedent
| for persecuting websites for active radicalization is
| practically nonexistent.
| xbar wrote:
| What a terrible and sad loss.
| alexpc201 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk
| nox101 wrote:
| Being this is ostensibly related to an AI company trying to make
| AGI reminds me of "Eagle Eye"
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059786/
| nox101 wrote:
| 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".
| jarsin wrote:
| It's highly possible that in the next tragedy carried out by
| a kid that has messages from any of these chatbots that can
| be construed as manipulation will result in criminal
| prosecutions against the executives. Not just lawsuits.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| 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.
| slavik81 wrote:
| 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.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| "No evidence of foul play." What about the evidence that he's
| only 26 and has a successful career in the booming Ai industry?
| He doesn't seem a likely candidate for suicide.
|
| Fair use hasn't been tested in court. He has documents that show
| OpenAI's intention and communications about the legal framework
| for it. He was directly involved in web scraping and openly
| discussing the legal perspectives with his superiors. That is
| damning evidence.
| XorNot wrote:
| I mean in the last week a guy with a similar profile shot and
| killed the United Healthcare CEO.
|
| But frankly this is a "oh that person seemed so happy, how
| could they have been depressed!?" line of thinking. The 2021
| suicide death rate in the US population for the 26 to 44 age
| bracket is 18.8 per 100,000[1]. It is literally the highest
| rate (second is 18-25), and it is wildly skewed in favor men
| (22.8 / 100,000 vs 5.7 per 100,000).
|
| [1] https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/a-look-at-
| the-...
| neuroelectron wrote:
| I get what you're saying but statistics aren't evidence of an
| individual's behavior.
| XorNot wrote:
| Sure, but as soon as someone says "what are the odds
| someone with X features kills himself" - well I didn't
| invoke the statistical argument did I?
|
| The answer is: it's right within the profile. You don't get
| to say "what are the odds!?" and then complain about the
| actual statistics - as noted elsewhere in this thread, the
| Birthday Paradox[1] is also at play.
|
| What are the odds of any individual whistleblower dying?
| Who knows. What are the odds of someone, somewhere,
| describable as a whisteblower dying? Fairly high if there's
| even a modest number of whistleblowers relative to the
| method of death (i.e. Boeing has dozens of whistleblower
| cases going, and OpenAI sheds an employee every other week
| who writes a critique on their blog about the company).
|
| This same problem turns up with any discussion of vaccines
| and VAERS. If I simply go and wave my hand over the arm of
| 1,000 random people then within a year it's virtually
| guaranteed at least 1 of them will be dead, probably a lot
| more[2]. Hell, at a standard death rate of 8.1/1000,
| OpenAI's standing number of employees of 1,700[3] means in
| any given year it's pretty likely someone will die - and
| since "worked for OpenAI" is a one-way membership, year
| over year "former OpenAI employee dies" gets more and more
| likely.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem
|
| [2] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/death-
| rate/
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
| ironhaven wrote:
| Have you considered that maybe testifying against the
| company you work for and may have some personal connection
| to is very stressful.
|
| I'm being serious that someone in that situation may have
| mixed feelings about doing the right thing vs betraying
| friends/bosses and how they may have contributed to
| wrongdoing in the testmony
| smeeger wrote:
| people dont kill themselves because they dont have a good job.
| thats a weird and naive belief that upper class people have.
| people kill themselves because they are mentally unwell,
| fundamentally. except situations like terminal illness.
| snozolli wrote:
| _people dont kill themselves because they dont have a good
| job._
|
| Countless people have killed themselves upon losing a job.
| Jobs are fundamental to our identity in society and the
| ramifications of job loss are enormous.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9530609/
| smeeger wrote:
| people kill themselves after lots of different stressful
| life events. the reason is that the stress induces
| depression/ mental dysfunction. the difference between
| people who do and dont, besides having the information or
| wisdom to put the situation in context and avoid the stress
| in the first place, is robustness of mental health. its a
| mental health issue not a jobs issue.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > He doesn't seem a likely candidate for suicide.
|
| He might have been under pressure from attention he got from
| the press for whistle blowing. He might have worried about
| career damage. 26 and working on a web scraper for a high-
| profile company is great, but it's nothing special. I'm not
| sure of his immigration status, but he could also be dealing
| with visa issues.
| cbracketdash wrote:
| Police now say it's been ruled a suicide:
|
| https://sfstandard.com/2024/12/13/key-openai-whistleblower-d...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2024/12/13/openai-...
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/openai-whistleblower-dead_n_6...
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| It should be taught in school that being a whistleblower
| requires safety preparation. Make it a woke thing or whatever,
| because it is something many don't give an afterthought about.
| cbracketdash wrote:
| Well I imagine this is a relatively new phenomena in the USA.
| Usually I hear about these "coincidences" in foreign
| countries... but here....? Maybe the older HN generation can
| shed some insight...
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| It was common where I live. Since the current government
| (the last 17 years) it doesn't happen anymore. There is no
| criticism, and people often go to jail for no apparent
| reason.
|
| By " common " I mean at least one very famous person yearly
| in a 7 million habitant country. Suicided without
| antecedents, family either disagreed with the investigation
| or speak about it.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| The problem is, from a game theory perspective, things like a
| dead man's switch may possibly protect you from your enemy
| but won't protect you from your enemy's enemies who would
| gain two-fold from your death: your death would be blamed on
| your enemy, and all the dirty laundry would be aired to the
| public.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| 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 like this? Avoid
| all 'algorithmically' generated data sources, AdBlock, VPN, don't
| log in anywhere?
| AliAbdoli wrote:
| I'm going to have to go with Tyler The Creator's advice here:
| "Just Walk Away From The Screen"
| amelius wrote:
| Try it now. I'm sure you'll be back within 24h.
| exe34 wrote:
| there was a video of a guy who pranked his housemate -
| http://mysocialsherpa.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-...
|
| I don't know how much this is embellished, but I'd say it's not
| too hard.
|
| for defence, as others have said, walk away from the phone.
| spend time with friends.
|
| I personally swear out loud followed by the name of the company
| whenever I see a YouTube advert, I hope it helps me avoid
| making the choices they want me to.
| mrtksn wrote:
| On Reddit there's this thing about suicide prevention.
| Essentially, if someone thinks that you are suicidal, they can
| make reddit send you a very official looking "don't do it"
| message.
|
| I found that people are using it to abuse those they hate. I've
| received the message a few times when I had an argument with
| someone. Apparently it's a thing:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/questions/comments/1bp1k9h/why_do_i...
|
| There's something profound about someone looking
| serious(official looking reddit account) giving you the idea of
| suicide. The first time I remember feeling very bad, because
| it's written in a very official and caring way, it was like
| someone telling me that "I hate you so much that I spent lots
| of energy to meticulously tell you dat I want you to kill
| yourself" but also made me question myself.
| euvin wrote:
| Wow, that's the first time I'm hearing about that tactic. And
| it's dawning on me how egregious that is because it could be
| inoculating you against the very messages meant to dissuade
| you. Though I'm unsure how effective those messages were to
| begin with.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Yeah, it's making you look back at yourself. Like when
| someone tells you that you look tired or sick or something
| like that, and you are actually not but you still need to
| check it up because they might have a point. Then more
| often than not you start feeling that way. It's suggestive.
| futuramaconarma wrote:
| Might be worth investing some energy leveling up skills
| of not lettting random internet jerks have that much
| power over thy emotions
| mrtksn wrote:
| You build it over time but sometimes they invent
| brilliant attacks vectors.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| The message is not necessarily to dissuade you, but to
| protect Reddit.
| gsibble wrote:
| Oh, I got a lot of those for hate. The good news is it was
| easy to report them and I got most people who sent them
| banned. It's highly against reddit's TOS and something they
| enforce.
| hanspeter wrote:
| In theory, but not without including a larger target group as
| your audience. Back in the day an audience on Facebook needed a
| size of at least 20, but I'm unsure what the limit is now.
|
| Your ads would still need to be reviewed and would likely not
| pass the filters if they straight up encourage self harm.
| tsoukase wrote:
| Half an hour of talk with his relatives, friends, girlfriend etc
| and I can suggest if he or someone else murdered him. I doubt the
| police will go such hassle
| strogonoff wrote:
| 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,
| aside from the making profit, they are clearly not: just think of
| the nebulous ideas and contention around AGI).
| gsibble wrote:
| 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.
| mbix77 wrote:
| Think about the current geopolitical climate and the possibility
| this person was actually targeted by malicious actors as a way to
| sow chaos and distrust in the establishment in the West. What
| better way to make people grow weary of the digital platforms
| that are making up a majority part of their lives in their
| bubbles.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| RIP. Suchir was a man of principles, he probably had to give up
| his OpenAI options as a result of his stance - OpenAI is reported
| to have a very restrictive offboarding agreements [1]
|
| " It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing
| their former employer. Even acknowledging that the NDA exists is
| a violation of it.
|
| If a departing employee declines to sign the document, or if they
| violate it, they can lose all vested equity they earned during
| their time at the company, which is likely worth millions of
| dollars."
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/future-
| perfect/2024/5/17/24158478/openai...
| rkagerer wrote:
| > It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from
| criticizing their former employer. Even acknowledging that the
| NDA exists is a violation of it.
|
| Can someone with legal expertise weigh in on how likely this
| would be to hold up in court?
| Bluestein wrote:
| I was wondering myself. Also, the whole thing about losing
| vested equity - would that hold up in court?
| n144q wrote:
| My guess is that a lawsuit from OpenAI itself is enough to
| ruin your life. They don't even need to win the case.
|
| Completely unrelated: https://jalopnik.com/uzi-nissan-
| spent-8-years-fighting-the-c...
| tux3 wrote:
| I have it from good authority that -- even in the absence
| of a lawsuit -- fighting OpenAI can lead to having
| dramatically less time to enjoy life.
|
| It's a bit like smoking. Some activities are just not good
| for your health.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Ha, that gives a pretty good picture how "open" Openai is. They
| want to own their employees, enslave them in a way. One might
| even think the cause of that whistleblower's death is
| contagious upon publishing.
|
| Really ridiculous how afraid Openai is of criticism. Acting
| like a child that throws a tantrum, when something doesn't go
| its way, just that one needs to remind oneself, that somehow
| there are, with regard to age at least, adults behind this
| stuff.
| rollcat wrote:
| > Ha, that gives a pretty good picture how "open" Openai is.
|
| "Any country with 'democratic' in its name, isn't".
|
| The fight to claim a word's meaning can sometimes be
| fascinating to observe. We've started with "Free Software",
| but it was easily confused with "freeware", and in the
| meantime the meaning of "open source" was being put to test
| by "source available" / "look but do not touch" - so we ended
| up with atrocities like "FLOSS", which are too cringe for a
| serious-looking company to try to take over. I think "open"
| is becoming meaningless (unless you're explicitly referring
| to open(2)). With the advent of smart locks, even the
| definition of an open door is getting muddy.
|
| Same for "AI". There's nothing intelligent about LLMs, not
| while humans continue to supervise the process. I like to
| include creativity and self-reflection in my working
| definition of intelligence, traits which LLMs are incapable
| of.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I am amazed that such things are possible. Here on France this
| is so illegal that it is laughable.
|
| I am saying "laughable" because there are small things
| companies try to enforce, and say sorry afterwards. But telling
| you that you are stuck with this for life is comedy grade.
| tikkun wrote:
| Not anymore. In May 2024 OpenAI confirmed that it will not
| enforce those provisions:
|
| * The company will not cancel any vested equity, regardless of
| whether employees sign separation agreements or non-
| disparagement agreements
|
| * Former employees have been released from their non-
| disparagement obligations
|
| * OpenAI sent messages to both former and current employees
| confirming that it "has not canceled, and will not cancel, any
| vested units"
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/24/openai_contract_staff...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-24/openai-re...
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| When I die, as a last wish, I hope people will go wild with
| speculative assassination theories. Especially if the police find
| "no evidence" of foul-play or the coroner says it was due to "old
| age"--it can only mean the cops and docs are also in on it.
| rafram wrote:
| Wow. Suchir was my project partner in a CS class at Berkeley
| (Operating Systems!). Incredibly smart, humble, nice person. It
| was obvious that he was going to do amazing things. This is
| really awful.
| bdndndndbve wrote:
| 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 is OK and that
| they're changing the world by selling smart kitchen appliances,
| even while they're exploiting workers in developing countries for
| cheap tech support and stepping over OD victims outside their
| condo.
|
| This mindset is so pervasive you really start to wonder if you're
| crazy for having empathy or any sense of justice.
|
| I have no special insight except to guess that going from being
| an obviously brilliant student at Berkeley to a cut-throat
| startup like OpenAI would be a jarring experience. You've
| achieved everything you worked your whole life for, and you find
| you're doing work that is completely out of whack with your
| morals and values.
| gsibble wrote:
| Well put. Almost all of the SF startups I worked for were run
| by sociopaths willing to break any rule I eventually learned.
| One is now being charged by the FTC for massive violations. I
| hated the immoral mindset of winning at the cost of everything
| from employee comfort to flagrantly illegal activities with
| customers.
| imglorp wrote:
| 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.
| tempeler wrote:
| People neglect the priorities of working life. First safety, it
| is best to avoid any unnecessary risks and to act so that you
| stay safe. second security.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| Deeply saddening, especially given what was at stake. It takes
| someone truly exceptional to challenge the establishment. RIP
| Suchir. May the light of your candle, while it burned, have
| sparked many others.
| npvrite wrote:
| Unfortunately, many whistleblowers don't take proper precautions
| to release information that will make them a target.
|
| QubesOS, disposable laptop, faraday cage, and never work from
| home. https://www.qubes-os.org/
| cutemonster wrote:
| Why do you need the Faraday cage?
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| This is incredibly sad, Suchir went to my high school and we both
| went to Berkeley together. He was clearly very intelligent, and I
| was always sure he'd go on to be very successful / do interesting
| things.
|
| If you're struggling reading this, I want to say that you're not
| alone. Even if it doesn't feel like it right now, the world truly
| wants you to be happy.
|
| The path is open to you:
|
| Old Path White Clouds [0]
|
| Opening the Heart of Compassion [1]
|
| Seeing That Frees [2]
|
| [0] https://z-library.sk/book/1313569/e77753/old-path-white-
| clou... [1] https://z-library.sk/book/26536611/711f2c/opening-
| the-heart-... [2]
| https://z-library.sk/book/3313275/acb03c/seeing-that-frees-m...
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