4 ms·

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 inte

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      > "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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
anon373839 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.
    - cleanerbob 2y ago
      [dead]
    - chgs 2y ago
      > I, of course, am not proposing that OpenAI assassinated Presumably you mean the company. How many decades before AI has that ability.
ninetyninenine 2y ago
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 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
    Right, so given the paradox, consider both possibilities rather then dismiss one like the parent is implying here.
shusaku 2y ago
[flagged]
- bbqfog 2y ago
  Isn't it the other way around since OpenAI is training their models on news company content? OpenAI has behaved extremely unethical the entire time it has existed. It's very likely there is foul play here, it fits the pattern.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - bbqfog 2y ago
      I wasn't even talking about the copyright issues. I was talking about things like this and Sam Altman's sister's accusations. Things way beyond what any reasonable person would consider moral. https://www.timesofisrael.com/openais-sam-altman-says-israel-will-have-huge-role-to-play-in-ai-revolution/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/openais-sam-altman-says-israel...
calf 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  Technically, the term "insider witness of the prosecution" could fit his role.
ADeerAppeared 2y ago
> 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.

lyu07282 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    > "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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

anon373839 2y ago

> 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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.
  - cleanerbob 2y ago
    [dead]
  - chgs 2y ago
    > I, of course, am not proposing that OpenAI assassinated Presumably you mean the company. How many decades before AI has that ability.

ninetyninenine 2y ago

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 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
  Right, so given the paradox, consider both possibilities rather then dismiss one like the parent is implying here.

shusaku 2y ago

[flagged]

bbqfog 2y ago
Isn't it the other way around since OpenAI is training their models on news company content? OpenAI has behaved extremely unethical the entire time it has existed. It's very likely there is foul play here, it fits the pattern.
- lolinder 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - bbqfog 2y ago
    I wasn't even talking about the copyright issues. I was talking about things like this and Sam Altman's sister's accusations. Things way beyond what any reasonable person would consider moral. https://www.timesofisrael.com/openais-sam-altman-says-israel-will-have-huge-role-to-play-in-ai-revolution/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/openais-sam-altman-says-israel...

calf 2y ago

> 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 2y ago
Technically, the term "insider witness of the prosecution" could fit his role.

ADeerAppeared 2y ago

> 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.