Why Suchir Balaji’s death has fueled conspiracy theories and unresolved questions.
  • ErsatzCoalButter@beehaw.org
    79·
    2 days ago

    Okay so this is actually a death threat by OpenAI that Fortune is laundering and helping spread. This is clearly modeled after the Boeing murders and resulting wave of anti-activist propaganda that the capitalist media spread afterward.

    Otherwise they wouldn’t be re-framing things like this:

    That vantage point helped build his view that OpenAI was breaking the law by making copies of online content. OpenAI was Balaji’s first job out of college, a prodigious leap that…

    This young man did not have “his view” that OpenAI is breaking the law and stealing content. That is what is factually happening. He was not a naive idealist, fresh out of college. He was a 26 year old man who knew that what he was seeing was wrong.

    Fortune then deeply implies that OpenAI has murdered him. This propaganda serves to terrorize people who are in similar positions with corporations. It is a death threat.

    Mr. Remington, as a mod, maybe you could add some context to the headline to reflect this.

  • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
    49·
    2 days ago

    This just as a reminder: Even if this is to turn out to really 100% be a suicide, that just means they were able to silence him by driving him into suicide - basically by all important metrics the same as a corporate assassination with extra steps.

    • DdCno1@beehaw.org
      17·
      2 days ago

      It can mean that, but it’s also possible that he already had psychological issues. While the entire thing stinks and my first instinct is to assume foul play as well, it’s still important not to jump to conclusions. The reason is simple: If there’s a real case of corporate murder, then people will take it less seriously due to past conspiracy theories.

      • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
        14·
        2 days ago

        Okay, that is fair enough - although one small thing I’d add is “psychological issues not greatly exacerbated by his former employer” - where I also don’t think intentionality is important, as long as they callously don’t consider the potential of that exacerbation.

        Thing is: psychological issues don’t exist in a vacuum. For example - let’s say he was robbed of all perspectives to ever work again in a field he was passionate about by his former employer de facto “blacklisting” him - they surely did not explicitly have this outcome in mind, but they accepted it as a possibility. Similar situation with the high suicide rates in countries like South Korea - they don’t exist the way they are because of independently existing, isolated mental illness, but because of a material system that interacts with, and sets the conditions of, psychological development.

        So, you are right, it’s true that it could be, that it ends up as the result of a completely unrelated mental illness. But I’d be wary to take reports like “he actually had a diagnosis of depressive disorder” as simply washing OpenAI clean of all responsibility.