[HN Gopher] Parents of OpenAI Whistleblower Don't Believe He Die...
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Parents of OpenAI Whistleblower Don't Believe He Died by Suicide,
Order Autopsy
Author : miles
Score : 172 points
Date : 2024-12-27 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sfist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sfist.com)
| coding123 wrote:
| I wouldn't either. Whistleblowers are getting the short of the
| barrel lately.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| People whistleblow for many reasons, but sometimes those
| reasons are disordered thinking, conspiratorial mindsets, etc,
| which are probably comorbid with suicidal thoughts.
| exe34 wrote:
| next thing you know, health insurance companies will include
| whistleblowing as a dangerous activity and revoke your
| policy.
| rjahrt wrote:
| Nice psyop.
| Lerc wrote:
| Whistleblowers are also often subject to harassment.
| Treatment, stress and potentially reduced career prospects
| probably weigh quite heavily on most whistleblowers.
|
| Parents all too frequently have a poor understanding of their
| children's mental health. The opinions of close friends is a
| better assessment of state-of-mind.
|
| I have no idea how much any of this applies to the case being
| discussed here. I doubt other commenters have any better idea
| and their assessment comes down to their own biases.
|
| Be wary of statistical claims when something 'seems to be
| happening a lot'. Something not happening is generally not
| news, so you lose a sense of what proportion of a population
| you are considering.
|
| Even if you know that 30% of deaths of whistleblowers were
| murders, that means that for any given death the likelihood
| is that it was not murder.
|
| Every case deserves to, and should, be investigated
| thoroughly.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Speaking as someone who has dealt professionally with several
| dozens of suicides and hundreds of attempts, as a paramedic, I'd
| like to add the following notes of caution:
|
| It's very easy to claim that your mental health emergency was an
| "accident" or "overreaction", and so forth. "No, I'm not really
| suicidal, I just lost myself for a moment or got overwhelmed.
| Everything is fine now/I'm going to see someone to help me
| cope/get the help I need/I was never -actually- suicidal"... and
| then commit suicide in very short order.
|
| Denial is a stage of grief. I have had many family members tell
| me to be careful when responding to their loved ones, "because
| it's a crime scene" or similar, "because they've never shown any
| mental health issues", "would never do this to themselves",
| "would never do it to those they loved" that... go on to be ruled
| suicide.
|
| I'm not saying anything about this particular case, but it's very
| easy to see a smoking gun when you're predisposed to it (and I'm
| not someone who is a particular fan of OpenAI/SamA, etc., hardly
| a defender).
| calf wrote:
| It's not an either-or. It could be an Aaron Swarz, the
| persecution by his opponents triggered his own mental health
| and thus a suicidal response. Here, the material effect of
| ostracism and isolation, destruction of his livelihood as the
| price of being a critic/apostate/whistleblower--that can lead
| people to becoming suicidal.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Never said it was, and I know nothing to understand what
| happened here.
|
| I'm just saying, people should pause and reflect before
| jumping on the conspiracy theories immediately. It was
| similar with someone else recently. "If you're reading this
| know that I would never commit suicide". People immediately
| sprung to the conspiracy.
|
| But I don't presume to know what happened here.
| deadbabe wrote:
| I got downvoted for suggesting this. Don't know why HN is so
| quick to dismiss whistleblower deaths as coincidences
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Because it's almost always correct and feeding oxygen to
| conspiracies further pollutes the space and numbs people to
| when there really are sinister actors at play.
|
| I think it's a tricky situation. Most of the time it's noise
| and unproductive. But we also don't want to sterilize the
| environment so far that we can't ever question things. There's
| a tricky balance.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Ironically, despite the name "Hacker News", I've noticed many
| are quick to adopt the official narrative largely
| unquestioningly
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| I'll just leave this here: "High conspiracy belief is
| associated with low critical thinking ability"
| (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/acp.3790),
| previously discussed in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27806447.
|
| Most here on HN seem to have fairly high critical thinking
| ability.
| ramblerman wrote:
| If a hacker just went against the official narrative as a
| knee jerk reaction that would make them more like a
| rebellious teenager no?
|
| In a sense you are agreeing that this as tragic as it is
| probable needs no further discussion
| throwaway123127 wrote:
| The spirit is completely gone, isn't it? When a hacker was
| mysteriously hanged in 1988, people discussed it for years:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(hacker)
|
| Now everyone is accusing others of "conspiracy theories" and
| browbeating everyone to follow the party line.
| lewdwig wrote:
| The alternative here is accepting it's perfectly reasonable to
| think that Sam Altman decided it would be a good idea to have
| an ex-employee (of no particular import) murdered for
| expressing their opinion on Twitter.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| > Sam Altman decided
|
| What is more plausible is a "Will no one rid me of this
| turbulent priest?" [1] situation.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_
| tur...
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Especially given his whole cult of personality schtick
| Lerc wrote:
| I know a lot of people hate Altman with a passion, but I
| haven't encountered that depth of feeling going in the
| other direction.
|
| The strongest advocation I have seen for him has be to
| say that he is an extremely persuasive and talented
| organiser with vision. The only thing that distinguishes
| that from any other superlative laden blurb you could
| find about just about any tech CEO is the persuasive
| attribute.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I can't tell. Are you saying it's not?
| barrell wrote:
| Surely that's not the only alternative? I can think of
| countless others.
|
| Personally I do not want to start any conspiracies myself by
| listing them, but this is hardly a binary choice
| DesiLurker wrote:
| have you seen the lengths to which Sama goes to silence ex-
| employees using legal means like cancelling vested equity and
| super-aggressive NDAs. there have been multiple articles
| written on that. its not far fetched to imagine & definitely
| not conspiratorial if you factor in the fact that now openAI
| has $40B worth of saudi investments. that regime is known to
| some of most vicious atrocities including that reporter.
|
| this would be sending a clear message to future
| whistleblowers.
| smeeger wrote:
| it wasnt sam. it was the federal government who has many
| state assets installed in openAI. would this be the first
| time a global power murdered someone for trying to blow the
| whistle?
| smeeger wrote:
| because HN is influenced by the CIA. its a major clearinghouse
| of ideas and what is written in these comments is read by
| disproportionately wealthy and influential people.
| brvsft wrote:
| I don't think it's a coincidence. The correlation is that
| _some_ whistleblowers are troubled people. And sometimes
| troubled people kill themselves.
|
| I'll add that part of my view is largely colored by having
| known the Facebook whistleblower before she became the FB
| whistleblower. She was an acquaintance of a woman I dated. She
| told me personal information about her sex life that is
| inappropriate to talk about with someone you've just met. I
| don't even remember what she told me, just that she was kind of
| a creep, which is a surprising thing to think _of a woman_.
|
| Further bias I have is that if the whistleblower has released
| information that we already know, let's call it a
| "nothingburger", they're more likely to be troubled. It comes
| off as risky, attention-seeking behavior.
|
| (To add, I doubt the Boeing whistleblower killed himself. Not
| sure about Epstein (mentioned elsewhere in the thread), but
| he's not a whistleblower, just a tremendously evil piece of
| shit, so I think that could easily be suicide knowing he faced
| a lifetime of assrape in prison.)
| lewdwig wrote:
| Succumbing to conspiracism is a surprisingly common response to
| grief. Being egged on by folk Twitter, who clearly do not know
| any better, won't have helped.
|
| Hopefully the autopsy will bring them some kind of closure.
| Alupis wrote:
| Similar to the recent Boeing whistleblower conspiracies,
| despite video evidence of the suicide etc.
|
| Currently we're in some sort of weird anti-business mood, so
| anything that's negative about a perceived mega-corp is taken
| literally on social media, and amplified up to 11 by karma-
| farming bots.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| But America didn't vote anti-business at all so it's just
| more rage posting on Facebook and Reddit that doesn't do
| anything. If they want to blame someone, they need to look in
| the mirror.
| Alupis wrote:
| I think I agree with you here.
|
| However, one cannot use Reddit currently without seeing 42
| smiling pictures of a murderer, with thousands of fawning
| comments.
|
| Many are bots, manipulating people on social media.
| Unfortunately, too many people are pulled into that bubble
| and become convinced it represents reality. It doesn't
| anymore than the flood of Harris posts that suddenly
| stopped on a dime election night, leaving millions of young
| people wondering where all the support went (not realizing
| the support was never there to begin with).
| talldayo wrote:
| > too many people are pulled into that bubble and become
| convinced it represents reality
|
| I don't think you're describing any particular political
| phenomenon though. We saw the same thing happen in 2016
| and 2020 overnight - people go from Facebook pundits to
| sheepish and sore losers in just 12 hours. Bots certainly
| play a role in all this, but I think you're wrong to
| blame them as the deus-ex-machina when human behavior
| explains it all just fine.
|
| Support bases are real for Luigi Mangione and Harris in
| the same way it's real for MAGA and Elon. People are
| truly sucked into the cult of personality because it's
| big, and they don't understand how to contextualize
| politics outside of celebrity. In a world where people
| virtue-signal on their favorite politically-aligned
| platform, it's not hard at all to imagine the majority of
| this support being entirely genuine.
|
| A lot of people thought the "Stop the Steal" folks were
| bots, until they showed up and rioted and subsequently
| hid their identities out of fear that they'd be lambasted
| for supporting an anti-populist movement. In a post-Jan
| 6th world I don't quite understand how you can still
| blame bots for stupid opinions that real people clearly
| hold.
| snypher wrote:
| Well it used to be that people would form their opinions
| on others around them, not online misinformation
| campaigns. Evidence of this is how much content gets
| retweeted, but not so much is original content from the
| poster.
| apsec112 wrote:
| A non-trivial percentage of young Trump voters _also_
| supported the UHC assassination, presumably from some kind
| of general anti-institution vibe
| mentalgear wrote:
| they are not anti business, they are anti-establishment
| politics. But misunderstand that big business does big
| politics in 'merica.
| kilna wrote:
| _broadly gestures to the late stage capitalism hellscape
| where all of the productivity gains for the greatest leaps in
| scale and automation in human history have gone to the
| wealthy for decades_
|
| For some unfathomable reason, yes, we're in some sort of
| weird anti-business mood.
| Alupis wrote:
| > broadly gestures to the late stage capitalism hellscape
|
| To quote The Dude - "that is like, your opinion... man".
|
| People are better off than any time in history. Some people
| are more better off than others... and some people perceive
| other people's success as the cause/reason for their own
| personal failures.
|
| Jeff Bezos has made every single person's life in America
| better by making products accessible to everyone regardless
| of economic bracket. Bezos' Amazon has compelled all other
| ecommerce companies to do better and offer better service
| to compete with Amazon. Literally everyone has won - except
| now that Bezos has been rewarded for creating one of the
| most important companies in the US, people want to tear him
| down. How dare he have more money than me!
|
| Let's pick any wealthy successful person, the story is the
| same.
|
| Those who believe the people who've built these mega
| companies don't actually provide value and/or earn their
| rewards are the very same people who have never and will
| never attempt to start a business and employ other people.
| The work only gets harder and there's more of it... Someone
| like Bezos is responsible for hundreds of thousands of
| jobs, perhaps millions when you consider all of the 3rd
| party sellers operating on Amazon these days.
|
| But, it's much easier to just scream "LaTe StAgE
| cApItAlIsM!" than do anything about our own situations.
|
| Read some books, work in industry to develop skills, then
| start your own business. Let's talk again in five years
| about this anti-business mood.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Amazon was successful because for the first 10+ years
| they paid no sales tax (edit: they exploited interstate
| laws to enable _buyers_ to circumvent paying sales tax.
| This was true for eBay as well). This is not competition,
| in fact it 's the opposite. thats nothing revolutionary.
| In fact, 'exploitative' is the adjective that comes to my
| mind (which coincidentally, also applies to his laborers)
| Alupis wrote:
| > Amazon was successful because for the first 10+ years
| they paid no sales tax
|
| Quite a history revision.
|
| 1. Businesses do not pay sales tax - customers do. No
| online webstore _collected_ taxes until recently. That
| was not something special for Amazon...
|
| 2. The business employs hundreds of thousands of people.
| All of which pay taxes. Even if the business itself
| literally paid zero dollars in taxes (lol), it is
| responsible for millions of dollars of taxes every month
| via payroll and employees buying things.
|
| 3. More taxes is not inherently better. What is up with
| people demanding more taxes be paid to the black hole
| that is the government?
|
| This idea that businesses don't pay taxes and therefore
| are bad is totally naive.
| gosub100 wrote:
| what I meant was they sold goods across state lines,
| which absolved _buyers_ of paying sales tax. I will edit
| my original comment to clarify.
| Alupis wrote:
| 100% of online webstores enjoyed the very same "benefit".
|
| I am disputing your assertion that Amazon was successful
| because of this. By that logic, all online webstores
| would be Amazon today... yet, there's only one Amazon.
|
| In fact, the recent changes to online sales tax
| collection have places a _significant_ burden on smaller
| online webstores. You now _need_ a 3rd party service to
| calculate taxes for the gazzilion tax jurisdictions all
| across the US. In some cases you have to guess if you
| meet the minimum thresholds for collecting taxes in
| certain states. The entire thing is a mess.
|
| Regardless, nobody is not purchasing online because they
| have to pay sales tax. Amazon's early appeal was being
| able to buy darn near _any book_ and it was delivered to
| your house a few days later. No longer were you limited
| to the inventory of your local Barnes & Noble, etc.
| gosub100 wrote:
| The sales tax loophole made eBay and PayPal into mega
| corporations as well, especially at various times over
| the past 2 decades. At one point in time Amazon was
| growing because of book sales. That era is long gone.
| Their business model is one of exploitation. Of both
| employees, local governments, and to some extent their
| own customers due to their lack of action against
| counterfeit merchandise sellers.
| Alupis wrote:
| > The sales tax loophole made eBay and PayPal into mega
| corporations as well
|
| Your logic is severely flawed, as previously pointed out.
| Every single webstore that existed back then would be the
| size of eBay, PayPal, Amazon, etc. Yet, very few are.
|
| The lack of tax _collection_ by a webstore has absolutely
| nothing to do with a couple examples of extreme success.
|
| Perhaps you should consider the companies you are using
| as examples. What sets them apart from the countless
| smaller, less successful companies out there? They were
| the _first_ to do something new that literally changed
| the world. Online auctions from anywhere in the world,
| online payments from anyone to anyone, virtually
| unlimited product inventory and choices, etc. That is why
| those companies are huge - not because they didn 't
| _collect_ taxes for some state a customer lived in.
|
| > Their business model is one of exploitation.
|
| Again, fundamentally flawed logic. As an employee, you
| literally sell your labor/time in exchange for money. You
| literally have the power to choose how much you are
| willing to sell your labor/time for. This fictitious
| narrative of exploitation requires quite a mental leap
| and assumption people have zero other options but to work
| for $COMPANY.
|
| If you worked for Amazon and felt you were underpaid -
| quit and get a different job. It's literally that simple.
| brvsft wrote:
| You're reaching to suggest that lack of sales tax was a
| reason that customers used Amazon. Like the sibling
| comment mentions, every other e-commerce site or platform
| had the same advantage.
|
| The reason customers used Amazon was because it was easy
| and fast, not because you didn't have to pay sales tax. I
| used it extensively even back then, and sales tax was
| literally never a factor.
| 8note wrote:
| for 2, why would you ascribe that to the business and not
| the employees?
| Alupis wrote:
| Because the business is the one that created the jobs,
| not the employee. The employee is selling their labor to
| the company in exchange for money - and that exchange of
| money is taxed by the government.
|
| The more jobs a business can create and pay for, the more
| tax money gets funneled into the black pit we call the
| government.
| abeppu wrote:
| I think this kind of framing, suggesting that _seeking more
| information_ is some kind of irrational-yet-understandable
| emotional response, is kind of disrespectful and presumptuous.
| The family knows more about the situation that online
| commenters do, and they 're _choosing to get more information_
| which they can only choose to do now. Isn 't that appropriate
| and reasonable in the context?
|
| I've never dealt with such a situation before. But after
| something bad and unexpected happens, shouldn't it be
| considered generally a good idea to collect/record a lot of
| information while it's still possible? After production outages
| we ensure logs and records and traces are preserved. After bad
| car crashes you get witness statements, take photos, etc.
|
| Further, nowhere in the article are any family members quoted
| saying anything conspiratorial. It's people online who are
| talking about assassination by BigCorp. There are other
| possibilities besides suicide and being murdered specifically
| because of the whistleblowing. I think we should take seriously
| the possibility that an autopsy can be an appropriate and
| rational choice even without any conspiracy theory being true.
| throwaway123127 wrote:
| It is not "conspiracism" to assume foul play if a witness is
| murdered. There is a thing like witness protection programs.
| Are these set up by conspiracy theorists?
|
| For the people who say he had no important information: We do
| not know that, perhaps he had surprise information.
| omolobo wrote:
| How is this comment down-voted? Makes absolutely no sense.
| These are simple facts stated here.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Not to mention several high-profile whistleblowers in various
| unrelated situations have all suspiciously "committed
| suicide" in the last few years. Suspicion _should_ be high at
| this point.
| Philpax wrote:
| I'm no big fan of OpenAI myself, but what he was whistleblowing
| over (OpenAI training on copyrighted material) is not really a
| secret, nor is it the kind of knowledge an organisation would
| kill over, even if he had evidence to present.
|
| I hope the autopsy gives them peace, but I'm not expecting it to
| change the result :/
| BadHumans wrote:
| This is where I stand. I think corporations have assassinated
| whistleblowers in the past, maybe even the very recent past,
| but I don't see what they stand to gain here unless they were
| just sending a message to everyone else.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I'd just point out that assassination doesn't have to be
| logical activity.
|
| Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi government were aware of
| the repercussions of murdering Jamal Khashoggi, if it were
| found out, but went ahead and did it anyway.
| paxys wrote:
| What repercussions? The goal was to send a public message
| to journalists and dissidents and they succeeded in doing
| exactly that.
| delfinom wrote:
| Sent me the message that Saudi Arabia remains a shithole.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The huge PR headache that continues to hang over Saudi
| Arabia to this day.
|
| Given their attempts to rebrand into a tourism and
| entertainment capital, mindshare of "that country and
| leader who tortured and murdered a journalist" isn't
| great.
|
| Specifically because not doing it, while a thorn in their
| side, wouldn't have destabilized the state. They did it
| because they could and they thought they'd get away with
| it.
| ckw wrote:
| Khashoggi was killed one year after the LV shooting, to
| the day. The theory is that MBS was staying at the Four
| Seasons at the Mandalay Bay (~6 floors above Paddock's
| room) at the invitation of his cousin Alwaleed bin Talal,
| who owned the Four Seasons at the time of the shooting.
| The shooting was a distraction from an assassination
| attempt on MBS, or potentially a way of flushing him out.
| The conspiracy presumably involved disgruntled Saudi
| royal family members and businessmen, many of whom were
| arrested a month later (several also died in suspicious
| circumstances) including Alwaleed bin Talal, who was
| ultimately stripped of much of his wealth (~$20 billion)
| and influence. Presumably Khashoggi was involved, hence
| the symbolic date of his execution.
| mentalgear wrote:
| "sending a message to everyone else" - is a pretty big
| incentive.
|
| Think about Boeing's whistleblowers.
|
| Even if they do not kill them directly, they bury them under
| so much legal fees that they are financially ruined for life,
| their career broken and through clandestine PR operations
| destroy even their social life and public image to make an
| example of them.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Yep. Even a tiny fraction of a trillion dollars is a hell
| of an incentive for people of too little moral conviction.
| BadHumans wrote:
| The only Boeing whistleblower I know of is the one that is
| dead.
| stonogo wrote:
| Would that be Joshua Dean or John Barnett?
| BadHumans wrote:
| John Barnett I believe. The one who showed up dead
| outside a hotel.
| pythonic_hell wrote:
| He was going to testify in a case involving openAIs illegal
| usage of copy right data and text. There's a lot to be gained
| with his death.
| ghaff wrote:
| Except no one really disputes that training on copyrighted
| data and text is going on. The question is whether that is
| OK from a legal perspective. Which is a matter for the
| courts and the legislature.
| foundart wrote:
| Courts in the relevant jurisdictions don't work on "no
| one really disputes."
|
| It would have to be _proven_ in a court, which involves
| evidence and testimony, and if the whistleblower was in a
| good position to provide credible testimony then his
| death would likely make it harder to do prove copyright
| violations have taken place.
| tiahura wrote:
| _Courts in the relevant jurisdictions don 't work on "no
| one really disputes."_
|
| It's called a Motion for Summary Judgment.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm pretty sure any competent lawyer would stipulate
| that, in many/most cases, training is happening on
| copyrighted information. I'm also pretty sure that OpenAI
| is not arguing that all their training data is either
| licensed or they own the copyrights to. (Some companies,
| perhaps Adobe?, have been more conservative.) Perhaps I'm
| wrong. But I haven't heard that argument publicly and I
| would need to be convinced.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Discovering certain types of data were gathered and used
| would be much worse.
|
| Training on CNN and Netflix content = i sleep
|
| Training on private personal and corporate inboxes,
| medical records, and illegal content, purchased from
| blackhat data brokers = real shit
|
| A Kenyan data labeler famously cut ties with Openai after
| Openai asked them to gather CSAM content.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Citation on that?
| upghost wrote:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/chatgpt-openai-content-
| abusive-...
|
| https://www.bigdatawire.com/2023/01/20/openai-outsourced-
| dat...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/02/ai-
| chatbo...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-kenyan-contract-
| worke...
|
| https://www.medianama.com/2023/07/223-kenyan-workers-
| call-fo...
|
| They were asked to label CSAM, to clarify.
| throwaway123127 wrote:
| We do not know what secrets he had for the witness stand. It
| could have been internal directives like "F*** copyright" or
| worse.
| ghaff wrote:
| Why would that matter?
|
| What they and other companies are doing with available
| publicly available data (whether copyrighted or not) is a
| matter of fact and subject to law. The opinion of their
| executives on copyright regimes is pretty much irrelevant.
| jondwillis wrote:
| Was there a suicide note?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Suchir Balaji 's mom talks about his life, death, and
| disillusionment with OpenAI_
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/suchir-balaji-openai-mom-dea...
|
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42516784)
| paxys wrote:
| "But he seemed so happy" is said after every suicide. The truth
| is that we don't know what goes on in peoples' heads and never
| will. I feel for the parents who are being pulled into these
| nonsense conspiracy theories started by bored internet
| commenters.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Are those who are so depressed that they are close to suicide
| able to consistently put on a happy face for friends and
| family? I suppose they likely do perhaps? But I'd imagine the
| charade consumes an extremely high amount of emotional energy
| which might serve to heighten the depression. I feel like
| though that if someone were close enough that they'd have to
| detect some sort of inkling of a severe problem.
| chabes wrote:
| > "But he seemed so happy" is said after every suicide.
|
| Is absolutely is not. How can you say such a thing without a
| source?
| Aunche wrote:
| https://suchir.net/fair_use.html
|
| > none of the arguments here are fundamentally specific to
| ChatGPT either, and similar arguments could be made for many
| generative AI products in a wide variety of domains.
|
| Coming to this conclusion would basically prevent him from
| working on his passion basically anywhere. He also had to
| experience OpenAI's gaslighting about being a nonprofit trying to
| save humanity firsthand.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I believe the suicide because this occurred right after he was
| named as a defendant in a lawsuit right alongside OpenAI
|
| This means that he had ostracized himself from the AI industry
| and is still seen as representative of it by the creatives he
| tried to cozy up to with his half baked legal theories he tried
| to whistleblow with
| mentalgear wrote:
| Even if companies do not directly kill whistleblowers, they may
| use targeted strategies that bury them under so much legal fees
| that would financially ruin them for life, have their career
| shattered and, through clandestine PR operations destroy their
| social life and public image to make an example of them, which
| leaves them with nothing left to fight for.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Or the company hires publicists who specialize in character
| assassination.
|
| There's a NY Times story about how this sort of thing is done
| around celebrities. 90% of what you read, watch, or listen to
| involving celebrities is manufactured attention-seeking or
| revenge PR.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/opinion/blake-lively-just...
|
| There seems to be a decent chance the Amber Herd hatefest on
| reddit and twitter was manufactured by Johnny Depp's PR team.
| dcrazy wrote:
| And her NY Times op-ed was part of her own strategy to
| tarnish Depp. There's a reason they were both found guilty of
| defamation.
| julianeon wrote:
| You're allowed to do that. You're not allowed to shoot them.
| It's a meaningful distinction.
|
| Disclaimer: for the record, and because I think it needs to be
| stated directly, I don't believe this man was killed by OpenAI.
| maeil wrote:
| > You're allowed to do that. You're not allowed to shoot
| them. It's a meaningful distinction.
|
| So what? Why is this meaningful?
| thephyber wrote:
| One of these things is unremarkable to the extent that it
| happens all day, every day.
|
| The other is uncommon in developed countries that mostly
| follow the rule of law.
|
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
| itishappy wrote:
| What's meaningful about the distinction between killing
| someone and suing/smearing them? Really?
|
| The dispute process is rather different, for starters.
| nerdponx wrote:
| You're not "allowed" to do that. Frivolous litigation is
| against federal law in the USA. There are also laws against
| harassment.
|
| You can get away with it, but you aren't technically allowed
| to do it.
| wendyshu wrote:
| Critic, not whistleblower
| isthatafact wrote:
| Given the vulnerability of whistleblowers, I would suggest a
| (poorly thought out) mitigation: The organization being whistled
| at must take full responsibility for the safety of that person at
| least until the case is resolved.
|
| Obviously the details of the implementation would be important,
| and it likely could never be completely fair, but first goal
| should be to remove the serious risks involved in legitimate
| whistleblowing.
| varenc wrote:
| Does this include protecting someone from suicide? How would
| are organization protect them from that without infringing on
| the whistleblower's liberty?
| isthatafact wrote:
| Yes, protection from suicides and "suicides" would be
| critical.
|
| How to do that while preserving freedom is an open question.
| If the organization and its leaders have a genuine incentive
| in keeping the person safe, do you think there would be fewer
| deaths?
|
| Over time, I have a feeling that a set of best practices
| would be developed for these situations.
| blagie wrote:
| If anyone's feeling inspired, what I would love to read is a
| conspiracy theory about how an AI did it.
|
| Part of my wants to read it since eventually we will reach a
| point where an AI might have done it. I don't know if that's a
| year away or a hundred years away, but aside from being
| interesting reading, plausible science fiction does bring ideas.
|
| Terminator views differently in 2024. The basic idea of Skynet --
| where an AI unexpectedly achieves sentience -- has gone from
| "that's not how computers work" to well within the realm of
| possibility for how some systems might evolve.
| larodi wrote:
| Well if you want it more down to Earth, and if we allow
| ourselves to dive in the very loose possibility the person did
| not meet a natural death. (this is a disclaimer).
|
| Then you can just for a minute imagine a more trivial (yet
| conspiracy) connection between a CTO of Albanian origin, which
| rose to prominence too quick. Its connection with certain
| circles who helped this. And the public secret of a very
| powerful cartel running a Balkan country (or few perhaps) long
| enough to pull lotta weird shit.
|
| I hope this is depersonalized enough to not get anyone implied
| in anything. But just - for the fiction of it.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Skynet is not even a leap now, IMO I'll be surprised if
| something like it _doesn 't_ happen. An AI doesn't even need to
| be supersmart, just able to coordinate and action faster than
| humans can respond, if humans already plugged it into robotic
| military and industrial control systems (which is already a
| work in progress).
|
| Take the human out of the loop and events can cascade quickly
| (as anyone who has executed a script with incorrect scope
| knows). No new alignment problems would be necessary;
| jailbreaks exist, glitch tokens exist, unexpected edge case
| behavior exists.
| blagie wrote:
| Some Ukrainian drones are fully autonomous.
|
| They're not integrated autonomous, as far as I know (e.g.
| swarms, let alone manufacturing), but if a single drone loses
| a connection due to jamming, it can strike targets on its
| own.
|
| It's worth following the rapidly-evolving policies of nations
| on lethal autonomous systems. The short story is everyone
| wanted them banned a half-decade ago. Now, everyone realizes
| that if adversaries have them and they don't, they're dead.
| As a result, we move from human-in-the-loop to human-on-the-
| loop to fully autonomous strike vehicles.
|
| That evolves much more quickly in wartime. I suspect if there
| is a great power conflict, that's when all controls will be
| let lose.
| grakker wrote:
| > backpacking with high school friends in the Catalina Islands
|
| Channel Islands or Catalina Island. Something fishy there.
| Probably some OpenAI written article. Don't trust it. The new AI
| overlords are trying to manipulate us all.
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