OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment from apparent suicide
FOX NewsDEC 22 2024
OpenAI Whistleblower Death Ruled Suicide
Above: Illustration of OpenAI o1, in Suqian, Jiangsu, China, on Dec. 6, 2024. Image copyright: CFOTO/Contributor/Future Publishing via Getty Images
The Spin
Narrative A
OpenAI whistleblowers deserve more support as they face significant personal and professional risks for sounding the alarm. The internal environment of OpenAI is not only hostile to AI safety — as shown by its release of new models at Microsoft's behest — but also to the law, blatantly violating content creators' copyright rights. These individuals have been trying to warn the world about what's to come, yet their bosses treat them like pariahs instead of heroes.
Narrative B
While the untimely death of anyone is always tragic, this shouldn't be cause for attacks on OpenAI regarding copyright law. OpenAI's use of content to train its AI models falls under fair use, as the company's models don't reproduce copyrighted works but rather learn from them, akin to human learning. Courts have upheld similar uses as non-infringing, focusing on transformation and purpose rather than blatant reproduction.