Police Report OpenAI Whistleblower Committed Suicide in ...
He was being very thorough, shooting himself three times in the back of the head before strangling himself and stabbing himself in both lungs and the heart. "Police had been called to the Lower Haight residence at about 1 p.m. that day, after receiving a call asking officers to check on his well-being." So, 1 day after a court filing specifically naming him, some unknown person triggers a well-being check for no adequately explained reason and he is subsequently discovered dead. That's not remotely suspicious, as people with no prior indication or documentation of even the slightest mental issues are constantly just deciding one morning to kill themselves.
Professional Services
On the plus-side, commercial assassination-for-hire seems to be a really professional service in the US these days. Whether that is because the cops are bought, incompetent, or have been successfully intimidated is immaterial. The good thing here is clearly that some things actually work and some people are doing professional work to high standards. I mean, compare that to the quality services you can get in the US! Endorsements and recommendations on who to hire can be gotten from OpenAI, Boeing, and the former "Friends-of-Epstein."
Wellness Checks and Foul Play
Typically, a wellness check would be triggered by things such as the possibly un-well person missing appointments and no longer answering the phone. Assassins don't call for a wellness check, they want the evidence trail to grow cold. While he may have been assassinated, it would be family, journalists, or lawyers who tried to contact him the likeliest to call for a wellness check.
I know this is the standing joke with this type of high-profile death, but it IS strange how there is never any foul play found during the “investigation” of a high-profile death. Like, ever.
Corruption and Intimidation
My guess would be the cops know but are either bought or deeply intimidated, maybe both. The way to handle this is to assign some junior investigators that probably have some shaky record and know they can be gotten rid of easily and hence have no effective protection. I have seen that approach in a different field (IT security) several times: Just make sure the ones that would need to speak up cannot afford to. Big-ego-small-skill people that are easy to manipulate are also a very good tool here. Maybe what really needs to be investigated are the kind of protections whistleblowers can expect to receive.
Copyright Issues and AI Companies
AI companies are not using copyrighted works to "quote" them in their entirety, which can indeed be construed as copyright infringement. You require a license to use software because your computer makes a copy of it when it reads it from the hard drive into memory. The license makes that act of copying legal.
It's extremely unlikely there's foul play here. Whatever evidence he had, OpenAI would have paid for all the "damages" anyway. Silencing him is only one motive. Another motive is to send a message to anyone else contemplating blowing a whistle.
AI-Driven Surveillance Systems
Several days ago, the Chief said that SFPD doesn't use AI. Two days ago, SFPD said its outsourcing mobile security (whatever that means) to LVT. San Francisco’s partnership with LVT is a prime example of how AI-driven surveillance systems can enhance public safety efforts by deploying mobile units especially in crime hotspots.
So I think the news should ask the Chief, again, whether OpenAI (the product) decided that Suchir Balaji, formerly of OpenAI (the company) killed himself despite having whistleblower protections after his reports about OpenAI (the company and the product.)
There is no way of knowing whether or not this was suicide. Most likely, the police know it is either (i) suicide; or (ii) a highly professional hit made to look like suicide, a crime that the investment of vast amounts of police time would be unlikely to solve. The police can legitimately say that it looks like a suicide, with no evidence to the contrary. It allows them to cleanly close the investigation. In the unlikely event that evidence surfaces...
