Parents of OpenAI Whistleblower Don't Believe He Died by Suicide, Order Autopsy
Comments
Philpax
BadHumans
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.
mentalgear
"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.
BadHumans
The only Boeing whistleblower I know of is the one that is dead.
stonogo
Would that be Joshua Dean or John Barnett?
BadHumans
John Barnett I believe. The one who showed up dead outside a hotel.
whimsicalism
the one who killed himself in his locked vehicle on surveillance cameras outside of the hotel he was staying at
blackeyeblitzar
Extra suspicious because his plan was to drive home that night to his family. The other side convinced him to stay for one more day of hearing, if I recall. And that night he stayed he mysteriously died.
SlightlyLeftPad
Well yeah. The point is as that there are currently two recent whistleblowers in regards to Boeing. Both of them are dead.
slowmovintarget
Yep. Even a tiny fraction of a trillion dollars is a hell of an incentive for people of too little moral conviction.
ethbr1
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
What repercussions? The goal was to send a public message to journalists and dissidents and they succeeded in doing exactly that.
ethbr1
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.
pas
Data please.
The default is that people don't fucking care. Especially tourists. MBS can organize music festivals every week and people would go if it's not too expensive. Qatar hosted the world cup in 2022, and guess who was picked just recently to host the cup in 2034. Yes, Saudi Arabia.
Just this year, historic milestone. Yeey. :|
https://www.unwto.org/news/un-tourism-applauds-saudi-arabia-...
sofixa
> Qatar hosted the world cup in 2022
And saw relatively low amounts of tourists and views from Europe (top 2 in terms of footballing powerhouses, alongside South America which is generally poorer and less people from there can afford to travel). Just comparing the 22 World cup to the 24 Euros was night and day in terms of coverage, pubs showing the games, viewing parties, etc.
ckw
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.
cluckindan
Do you have any legitimate sources for this information?
ckw
From O1:
Summary of Confirmable vs. Speculative
• Confirmed by reputable sources:
1. Dates of the events (Las Vegas shooting: October 1–2, 2017; Khashoggi’s murder: October 2, 2018).
2. Alwaleed bin Talal was a major investor in the Four Seasons (including the top floors at Mandalay Bay).
3. Saudi authorities arrested Alwaleed bin Talal and other elites in November 2017 in a sweeping “anti-corruption” operation.
4. Alwaleed bin Talal eventually lost significant wealth or leverage as a result of that crackdown, though precise figures remain undisclosed.
• Not confirmed / purely speculative:
1. MBS staying in the Four Seasons above the Las Vegas shooter.
2. The Las Vegas shooting as a deliberate “distraction” from an assassination attempt.
3. Khashoggi being part of such a plot, or his execution date tying symbolically to the shooting.
whimsicalism
okay so there is no source about any of this except that they are a year apart and that the Saudi royal family invests in vegas hotels
cluckindan
So the sources are OpenAI training data and a far-right social media platform. It seems prudent to disregard this conspiracy theory as misinformation.
trod1234
In fairness, how would you know anything is true and not delusion when you discard everything that doesn't align with your world view as misinformation? If you followed the same process with just about any piece of news today (from mainstream journalism), it would be classified as misinformation.
Prudence dictates that if there are at least three points of intersection that further investigation is needed but more likely than not there is something there, which may not necessarily be what you are looking for.
Coincidences (two points of intersection) rarely occur, but the likelihood of three in a short time horizon is fairly astronomical, now it is statistical which is why further investigation is needed (since there is a certain level of due dilligence for proof). All the same classifying this as misinformation like you did is without proper rational basis.
You may not have noticed this, but you don't resolve your indirections, which more often than not leads to fallacy and false conclusion.
whimsicalism
christ this site has gone downhill
delfinom
Sent me the message that Saudi Arabia remains a shithole.
pythonic_hell
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
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
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.
ghaff
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
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
Citation on that?
upghost
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.
BadHumans
Gather and label are two wildly different things that change the entire context. They aren't saying go find this stuff for us, they are saying if people upload it or you find it in the data then, label it as such.
hansvm
It only changes who actually gathered the CSAM they asked this person to label. OpenAI definitely gathered it.
tiahura
Courts in the relevant jurisdictions don't work on "no one really disputes."
It’s called a Motion for Summary Judgment.
trod1234
Which begs the question, what did he see or could testify about while he was there that is not this, but so much worse?
In a conspiracy, all loose ends are cut.
whimsicalism
i'm skeptical that any corporation worth more than a billion has assassinated someone in the US in the last 50 years.
yeeetz
I'd be more surprised if they haven't.
dmix
Of course people believe this, they were raised on the hundreds of movies and netflix series where this is a common plotline. Most of our worldviews are heavily influenced by the fantasies of unchecked elite power systems above law enforcement and an unlimited pool of elite criminals for hire.
IRL companies barely release public statements without consulting lawyers for fear of minor risk and any criminal willing to do murder-for-hire is likely to be unstable, sloppy, have a history of crime and likely to get arrested in the future, and/or blackmail the company the second they fall on hard times.
whimsicalism
well that's you. personally, having worked in many billion dollar corporations - i simply don't see who the stakeholder who would be invested + capable of carrying it out. i would also expect to see a tail of failed/botched/uncovered attempts even if the vast majority were executed perfectly.
certainly, if i'm a billionaire owner, i'm not hiring a hitman
wahnfrieden
The only undisputed cases of >$1b US corporations assassinating individuals in the last 50 (or 25) years have been abroad
whimsicalism
yes, i think shell is quite well known to have done stuff like this in the niger delta. and brazil has all sorts of shady shenanigans.
but i simply do not believe any conspiracy theory i've seen about domestic US assassination by billion+ dollar company and i think people need to be realistic about the often cluster B individuals who tend to make whistleblower claims and their likelihood of suicide.
throwaway123127
We do not know what secrets he had for the witness stand. It could have been internal directives like "F*** copyright" or worse.
ghaff
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.
noname120
Intent matters in court.
KennyBlanken
[flagged]
nadermx
Copyright theft? Spew much copyright propaganda. Even courts don't call it theft[0]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(19...
Fluorescence
> the kind of knowledge an organisation would kill over
That's the wrong place to look a motive because you are right, the consequences of corporate malfeasance are rarely existential for the organisation. They pay the fine, fire whoever broke the law and move on... and here we find where to look for motive.
A killing would not be ordered by a boardroom but by an individual or tight circle for their direct personal benefit rather than wider collective benefit. If an executive is looking to lose millions, personal legal consequences and a ruined career... now there is motive.
There is also the less logical corporate criminal (e.g. ebay) where it's not personal benefit but a tornado of ego, paranoia and delusion. They escalate some minor business beef into a mind-consuming psychopathic obsession taking ever more extreme actions against their perceived enemy.
trod1234
This line of reasoning makes far too many assumptions and falls apart in a conspiracy.
Reminds me of TV shows like Dirty Rotten Money, and Damages.
mentalgear
[flagged]
newsclues
[flagged]
smeeger
[flagged]
3eb7988a1663
There are hundreds of OpenAI employees. Anyone of which is capable of testifying to the extent of copyrighted material present in the training datasets. It does not take too much work to get any number of agents to regurgitate extensive verbatim quotes from books/movies/newspaper articles/whatever.
tedd4u
Well, not any longer. It will take a lot more convincing, won’t it? It’s chilling.
smeeger
and your point is?
mentalgear
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.
julianeon
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.
nerdponx
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.
crustaceansoup
Is there a meaningful difference between "technically not allowed but unenforced" and "allowed"? People and smaller corporations are drowned all the time with no real recourse other than "just be more rich so you can hire your own giant legal/PR/marketing teams"
potsandpans
Oh, well if you're allowed to do that, then it's ok i guess.
maeil
> 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
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
What's meaningful about the distinction between killing someone and suing/smearing them? Really?
The dispute process is rather different, for starters.
KennyBlanken
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
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.
blackeyeblitzar
The “hatefest” was because of the trial. There were so many inconsistencies and flawed arguments from her side, along with damaging audio recordings, that made people feel that she had betrayed their trust in her initial claims. The clips from the trial went viral repeatedly. I doubt you need manufactured PR for that.
isthatafact
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
Does this include protecting someone from suicide? How would are organization protect them from that without infringing on the whistleblower's liberty?
isthatafact
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.
ChrisArchitect
Related:
Suchir Balaji's mom talks about his life, death, and disillusionment with OpenAI
https://www.businessinsider.com/suchir-balaji-openai-mom-dea...
omolobo
[flagged]
lewdwig
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.
abeppu
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.
whimsicalism
sure, but i think its valid that a lot of families go through this process. for instance, the guy who disappeared hiking the tiger leaping gorge trail but his family became convinced he was kidnapped and trafficked to North Korea (David Louis Sneddon)
lostmsu
> The family knows more about the situation that online commenters do
Do they though? I wouldn't say my mom would know anything, or even understand matters at hand. On the contrary, random HN folk could feasibly imagine themselves in my shoes.
throwaway123127
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.
nerdponx
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.
omolobo
How is this comment down-voted? Makes absolutely no sense. These are simple facts stated here.
Alupis
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.
mentalgear
they are not anti business, they are anti-establishment politics. But misunderstand that big business does big politics in 'merica.
Mistletoe
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
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
> 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
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
A non-trivial percentage of young Trump voters also supported the UHC assassination, presumably from some kind of general anti-institution vibe
ParetoOptimal
> 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
Most of America (somehow) didn't know what they were voting for and just believed the empty promises.
See the recent regrets of steelworkers and trends of people searching "can I change my vote".
Oh yeah, and all of the people mad that President Musk is gonna increase H1Bs.
kilna
[flagged]
Alupis
> 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.
kilna
Not an opinion, it's a verifiable fact that all gains have gone to the wealthy. Search "productivity hourly compensation graph" in your favorite image search. Effectively all gains for decades have gone to the already rich, not the working class. "Hellscape" is a reasonable assessment for a world in which most families' kids have worse prospects than their parents, they get to live under the thumb of an oligarchy with even more power. The only way out of this is a massive readjustment, so get used to hearing a lot of stuff you don't want to, because the wealth gap is making anti-corporate, anti-wealth sentiment inevitable.
ParetoOptimal
> 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
By violating employees rights and encouraging other companies to achieve success the same way... No, he has not made life better.
gosub100
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
> 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 naïve.
gosub100
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
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
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
> 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
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
for 2, why would you ascribe that to the business and not the employees?
Alupis
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.
Aunche
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.
1vuio0pswjnm7
"Days before his death, Balaji was named in a legal filing by the New York Times as a person with significant documents to support their case."
Potential witness
FireBeyond
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
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
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.
calf
That's because of your framing that it must be a conspiracy theory people are jumping on. How many people are actually doing that, and why is it so important to shut that sector down? There's an analytical context to these kinds of disagreements.
FireBeyond
I'm not trying to shut any sector down. You can read previous remarks here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42412718 for all manner of comments like "why would he commit suicide?" and other assumptions.
ALL I am saying is that a person's claims that they are not suicidal are very rarely meaningful when investigating what appears to be a suicide. People say that every day to get out of mental health holds, etc.
And parents who can't believe that their child would commit suicide is also rarely meaningful. It doesn't point to a conspiracy because of how well they know their child.
I think you're almost spinning my comments as trying to shut down any semblance of conspiracy. Like I said, read HN articles on this and the Boeing whistleblower and you'll find several claims that they "could not" have been suicide because the person involved "previously promised they were not suicidal", or similar. That's all.
jondwillis
Was there a suicide note?
paxys
"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.
chabes
> "But he seemed so happy" is said after every suicide.
Is absolutely is not. How can you say such a thing without a source?
dambi0
Because it’s an opinion. And how would you imagine you could even find a source to support that. What would the research look like?
tasuki
I can be your source. A friend's sister killed herself some years ago. She mentioned many times that she didn't want to live. No one I know said "but she seemed so happy" afterwards.
chabes
I don’t imagine you could find a source to support such claims. That’s the point
indigodaddy
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.
jpc0
People are oblivious, I can assure you of that.
They look at Joe and see the same Joe they have been seeing their entire life, when in reality that Joe ain't there anymore, he's about to "step out"...
FireBeyond
As someone who sees this, I have on multiple occasions heard, "He seemed like he was struggling, but the past few days/weeks things seemed to be better and he seemed much more calm and doing well."
Oftentimes, sadly, that's because the person has made the decision to end things, and that gives them some sense of relief for the pain they are going through.
I found the best summation in one of the most unlikely places, the show Nip/Tuck: "I think that if a person is in a great deal of pain, physical or spiritual, and they've exhausted all their options, I wouldn't judge them for it. I'd say a silent prayer and hope death brought them the peace of mind life never could give them."
wendyshu
Critic, not whistleblower
coding123
I wouldn't either. Whistleblowers are getting the short of the barrel lately.
IncreasePosts
People whistleblow for many reasons, but sometimes those reasons are disordered thinking, conspiratorial mindsets, etc, which are probably comorbid with suicidal thoughts.
Lerc
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.
exe34
next thing you know, health insurance companies will include whistleblowing as a dangerous activity and revoke your policy.
rjahrt
Nice psyop.
deadbabe
I got downvoted for suggesting this. Don’t know why HN is so quick to dismiss whistleblower deaths as coincidences
DaSHacka
Ironically, despite the name "Hacker News", I've noticed many are quick to adopt the official narrative largely unquestioningly
ramblerman
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
goodpoint
hacker news has always been hacker the same way a hot dog is a dog.
ThrowawayR2
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.
throwaway123127
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
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
> 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
Especially given his whole cult of personality schtick
Lerc
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
I can't tell. Are you saying it's not?
barrell
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
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
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?
Waterluvian
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.
brvsft
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smeeger
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kilna
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kilna
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mh-
I've downvoted each of your comments that violated the HN guidelines, so I wouldn't be so quick to chalk it up to anything but (some of) the userbase wanting those respected.
HeatrayEnjoyer
Did you expect this comment to help your case?
rjahrt
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hipadev23
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leoh
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yieldcrv
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
blagie
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.
HeatrayEnjoyer
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
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.
larodi
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.
grakker
> 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.
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 :/