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Comment by lyu07282 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

> "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.

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.

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.

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