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Parents of OpenAI Whistleblower Don't Believe He Died by Suicide, Order Autopsy

230 points by miles 2y ago

johhnnybravo 2y ago
There is no doubt he was killed. 1) For People who say everyone already knows Open AI already is infringing copyright and that is not a good enough reason for them to kill Suchir: He was going to present documents and testify in a legal filing days before his death. Its not like Open AI was going to tell the courts ... "Ohh yeah everyone knows we steal data , its an open secret , dont you know ? " .. They obviously want to defend that. 2) He was someone very driven. Not someone sad about life sitting at home eating chips and watching tv. If he has plans to pursue further research after leaving open ai , and go after his ex-employer , he clearly is not someone beaten down by life that he would take his life. ( On one hand he is planning to present documents and testify , and on the other hands these guys are saying its a suicide ). 3) Who ransacks their own home before suicide. There were also signs of struggle, and blood spots in his apartment.
coding123 2y ago
I wouldn't either. Whistleblowers are getting the short of the barrel lately.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  People whistleblow for many reasons, but sometimes those reasons are disordered thinking, conspiratorial mindsets, etc, which are probably comorbid with suicidal thoughts.
  - exe34 2y ago
    next thing you know, health insurance companies will include whistleblowing as a dangerous activity and revoke your policy.
  - rjahrt 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - Lerc 2y ago
    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.
leoh 2y ago
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FireBeyond 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
deadbabe 2y ago
I got downvoted for suggesting this. Don’t know why HN is so quick to dismiss whistleblower deaths as coincidences
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  Ironically, despite the name "Hacker News", I've noticed many are quick to adopt the official narrative largely unquestioningly
  - ThrowawayR2 2y ago
    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 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/acp.3790), previously discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27806447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27806447. Most here on HN seem to have fairly high critical thinking ability.
  - ramblerman 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(hacker) Now everyone is accusing others of "conspiracy theories" and browbeating everyone to follow the party line.
lewdwig 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        > 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.
Philpax 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      What repercussions? The goal was to send a public message to journalists and dissidents and they succeeded in doing exactly that.
      - delfinom 2y ago
        Sent me the message that Saudi Arabia remains a shithole.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        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.
jondwillis 2y ago
Was there a suicide note?
rjahrt 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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hipadev23 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: Suchir Balaji's mom talks about his life, death, and disillusionment with OpenAI https://www.businessinsider.com/suchir-balaji-openai-mom-death-concerns-interview-2024-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/suchir-balaji-openai-mom-dea... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42516784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42516784)
- omolobo 2y ago
  [flagged]
paxys 2y ago
"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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    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."
- chabes 2y ago
  > "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 2y ago
https://suchir.net/fair_use.html 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 2y ago
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
- deleted 2y ago
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mentalgear 2y ago
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.
- DoctorOetker 2y ago
  I remember the first HN thread I saw where a lot of commenters chastised anyone who brought up the possibility of assassination, supposedly out of "respect" for the bereaved next of kin. I wonder if the family would have found sufficient courage to do what they deem an obvious necessity without seeing others ask the same questions they apparently had themselves. While a prediction market of actions can obviously lead to perverse incentives, a prediction market of comments may have some utility in aligning commenters utterances with their true beliefs. Where are those commenters now? Why aren't they chastising the parents to stop poking the hornets nest, out of respect for ... the other next of kin / friends / ...
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  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-justin-baldoni.html 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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    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.
kilna 2y ago
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- kilna 2y ago
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  - mh- 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      Did you expect this comment to help your case?
wendyshu 2y ago
Critic, not whistleblower
isthatafact 2y ago
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 2y ago
  Does this include protecting someone from suicide? How would are organization protect them from that without infringing on the whistleblower's liberty?
  - isthatafact 2y ago
    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.
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blagie 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
> 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.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
"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

230 points by miles 2y ago

There is no doubt he was killed. 1) For People who say everyone already knows Open AI already is infringing copyright and that is not a good enough reason for them to kill Suchir: He was going to present documents and testify in a legal filing days before his death. Its not like Open AI was going to tell the courts ... "Ohh yeah everyone knows we steal data , its an open secret , dont you know ? " .. They obviously want to defend that. 2) He was someone very driven. Not someone sad about life sitting at home eating chips and watching tv. If he has plans to pursue further research after leaving open ai , and go after his ex-employer , he clearly is not someone beaten down by life that he would take his life. ( On one hand he is planning to present documents and testify , and on the other hands these guys are saying its a suicide ). 3) Who ransacks their own home before suicide. There were also signs of struggle, and blood spots in his apartment.

coding123 2y ago

I wouldn't either. Whistleblowers are getting the short of the barrel lately.

IncreasePosts 2y ago
People whistleblow for many reasons, but sometimes those reasons are disordered thinking, conspiratorial mindsets, etc, which are probably comorbid with suicidal thoughts.
- exe34 2y ago
  next thing you know, health insurance companies will include whistleblowing as a dangerous activity and revoke your policy.
- rjahrt 2y ago
  [flagged]
- Lerc 2y ago
  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.

leoh 2y ago

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FireBeyond 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.

deadbabe 2y ago

I got downvoted for suggesting this. Don’t know why HN is so quick to dismiss whistleblower deaths as coincidences

Waterluvian 2y ago
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 2y ago
Ironically, despite the name "Hacker News", I've noticed many are quick to adopt the official narrative largely unquestioningly
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  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 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/acp.3790), previously discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27806447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27806447. Most here on HN seem to have fairly high critical thinking ability.
- ramblerman 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(hacker) Now everyone is accusing others of "conspiracy theories" and browbeating everyone to follow the party line.

lewdwig 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      > 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.

Philpax 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    What repercussions? The goal was to send a public message to journalists and dissidents and they succeeded in doing exactly that.
    - delfinom 2y ago
      Sent me the message that Saudi Arabia remains a shithole.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      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.

jondwillis 2y ago

Was there a suicide note?

rjahrt 2y ago

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deleted 2y ago

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hipadev23 2y ago

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ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related: Suchir Balaji's mom talks about his life, death, and disillusionment with OpenAI https://www.businessinsider.com/suchir-balaji-openai-mom-death-concerns-interview-2024-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/suchir-balaji-openai-mom-dea... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42516784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42516784)

omolobo 2y ago
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paxys 2y ago

"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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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."
chabes 2y ago
> "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 2y ago

https://suchir.net/fair_use.html 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 2y ago

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

deleted 2y ago
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mentalgear 2y ago

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.

DoctorOetker 2y ago
I remember the first HN thread I saw where a lot of commenters chastised anyone who brought up the possibility of assassination, supposedly out of "respect" for the bereaved next of kin. I wonder if the family would have found sufficient courage to do what they deem an obvious necessity without seeing others ask the same questions they apparently had themselves. While a prediction market of actions can obviously lead to perverse incentives, a prediction market of comments may have some utility in aligning commenters utterances with their true beliefs. Where are those commenters now? Why aren't they chastising the parents to stop poking the hornets nest, out of respect for ... the other next of kin / friends / ...
KennyBlanken 2y ago
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-justin-baldoni.html 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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.

kilna 2y ago

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kilna 2y ago
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- mh- 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    Did you expect this comment to help your case?

wendyshu 2y ago

Critic, not whistleblower

isthatafact 2y ago

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 2y ago
Does this include protecting someone from suicide? How would are organization protect them from that without infringing on the whistleblower's liberty?
- isthatafact 2y ago
  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.

deleted 2y ago

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blagie 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago

> 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.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

"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