Tag: mysterious deaths

OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

A former OpenAI researcher known for whistleblowing the blockbuster artificial intelligence company facing a swell of lawsuits over its business model has died, authorities confirmed this week.

Suchir Balaji, 26, was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment on Nov. 26, San Francisco police and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said. 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, a police spokesperson said.

The medical examiner’s office has not released his cause of death, but police officials this week said there is “currently, no evidence of foul play.”

Information he held was expected to play a key part in lawsuits against the San Francisco-based company.

Balaji’s death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright law while developing ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence program that has become a moneymaking sensation used by hundreds of millions of people across the world.

Its public release in late 2022 spurred a torrent of lawsuits against OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists, who say the company illegally stole their copyrighted material to train its program and elevate its value past $150 billion.

The Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among several newspapers, including the New York Times, to sue OpenAI in the past year.

In an interview with the New York Times published Oct. 23, Balaji argued OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data were used to train ChatGPT.

“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he told the outlet, adding that “this is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”

Balaji grew up in Cupertino before attending UC Berkeley to study computer science. It was then he became a believer in the potential benefits that artificial intelligence could offer society, including its ability to cure diseases and stop aging, the Times reported. “I thought we could invent some kind of scientist that could help solve them,” he told the newspaper.

But his outlook began to sour in 2022, two years after joining OpenAI as a researcher. He grew particularly concerned about his assignment of gathering data from the internet for the company’s GPT-4 program, which analyzed text from nearly the entire internet to train its artificial intelligence program, the news outlet reported.

The practice, he told the Times, ran afoul of the country’s “fair use” laws governing how people can use previously published work. In late October, he posted an analysis on his personal website arguing that point.

No known factors “seem to weigh in favor of ChatGPT being a fair use of its training data,” Balaji wrote. “That being said, 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.”

Reached by this news agency, Balaji’s mother requested privacy while grieving the death of her son.

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Eccentric millionaire killed in LA fire was ‘imposter’ posing as member of Rothschild dynasty

The eccentric millionaire killed in a Los Angeles house fire last week was likely an “imposter” posing as a member of the ultra-wealthy Rothschild banking family, according to a new report.

The mystery man who went by William de Rothschild, 87 —  found dead in his charred Hollywood Hills abode on Nov. 27 — had assumed the prestigious identity despite having no family ties to the Jewish dynasty, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

“My brother is not a Rothschild, as far as I know,” Richard Kauffman, 78, of Oregon, told the paper. “It’s odd, because I thought he had died years ago.”

Born in Colorado as William Alfred Kauffman, he inexplicably changed his name to William de Rothschild in 1985 and fooled friends and neighbors for years — complete with a flashy collection of Ferraris and Jaguars, the paper reported.

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Man Found Dead in Hollywood Hills Home Reportedly Will Rothschild

Authorities Thursday were investigating a residential fire in the Hollywood Hills that left a man dead, with neighbors telling reporters that the victim was eccentric millionaire Will Rothschild of the famous banking family.

Fire crews responded to 8551 Lookout Mountain Avenue, east of Crescent Drive , at 4:33 p.m. Wednesday after they received a call reporting a fire at the two-story hillside residence. They were able to prevent the flames from spreading to nearby vegetation or other structures, according to Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey.

During a search of the home after the fire was extinguished, firefighters found the body of a man, Humphrey said.

It took 45 firefighters 33 minutes to extinguish the flames.

Coroner’s officials had not identified the victim as of Thursday morning, but neighbors told ABC7 that he was Rothschild, who was described as a bit reclusive and eccentric.

The house was also said to be a potential fire hazard, with possible hoarding conditions.

“Given the fire damage, it’s kind of hard to determine how much of that was prior to the fire and how much of it is the building itself that has been demolished by the fire,” Battalion Chief Adam Knabe of the LAFD told the station.

The Mayor’s Crisis Response Team was summoned to provide emotional support and assistance to the decedent’s family and neighbors, fire authorities said.

The cause of the fire was under an active and joint investigation by the fire department and the Los Angeles Police Department.

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State senator dies following freak lawn mower accident

Kentucky state Sen. Johnnie Turner, a Republican, died on Tuesday, Senate President Robert Stivers noted in a statement on behalf of the Senate Majority Caucus.

“It is with heavy hearts that we share the news of Sen. Johnnie Turner’s passing Tuesday evening, following a hard-fought battle with injuries sustained in his recent accident,” the statement reads. 

Turner, who passed away at 76, was hurt last month when he plummeted into an empty swimming pool while riding a lawn mower, the Associated Press reported.

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Congressman Matt Gaetz Says Epstein Was Killed as Part of a ‘Foreign Operation’

Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz says sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was killed as part of a ‘foreign operation’, but refused to divulge which government was responsible for his death.

Gaetz made the comments during an appearance on Benny Johnson’s show.

In August 2019, Epstein was found unresponsive in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City after supposedly committing suicide by hanging.

Multiple violations of normal jail procedures allied with the convenient failure of two cameras in front of Epstein’s cell prompted conspiracy theories suggesting Epstein was murdered in order to keep his high profile client list secret.

At the time, Attorney General William Barr described Epstein’s death as “a perfect storm of screw-ups,” but Gaetz said Barr should be called to testify because “there’s no way the story you’re getting is the real story there, no freakin’ way and Bill Barr knows it.”

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Georgia environmental official collapses and dies near state Capitol after testifying about toxic BioLab fire

A Georgia environmental official died after suddenly collapsing near the state Capitol on Tuesday during a public meeting on last month’s toxic chemical plant inferno outside Atlanta, officials said.

Kenny Johnson, the Rockdale County Soil and Water Conservation District supervisor, testified alongside business owners and leaders about the BioLab chemical fire in Conyers, about 25 miles outside Atlanta, which spewed clouds of hazardous chlorine gas and smoke throughout the area.

Shortly afterward, the 62-year-old collapsed and was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he died.

The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said that due to the circumstances of Johnson’s death, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has agreed to investigate, 11Alive reported.

An official cause of death will be determined once an autopsy is completed.

After delivering his remarks, Johnson “complained of shortness of breath and subsequently collapsed in the hallway” after the meeting, according to a statement from the Georgia House Democratic Caucus.

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Child star Gary Coleman may have been murdered by family member, claims bombshell documentary

A bombshell new documentary has alleged that ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ child star Gary Coleman may have been murdered and suggests the heinous act was done by none other than his own wife. 

The explosive claims are featured in Peacock’s Gary, which premiered August 29 and delves into the tragic life and mysterious death of the child who captivated America with his catchphrase ‘What’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?’

Coleman died on May 28, 2010, two days after a mysterious fall at his home led to intracranial hemorrhaging and cardiac arrest.

Coleman’s death at 42 was officially ruled an accident, but close friends are now calling it foul play – and placing the blame on his now-widow, Shannon Price.

But his wife has consistently denied these claims, saying: ‘I didn’t touch him…nothing happened.’ 

But Coleman’s ex Anna Gray isn’t buying it: ‘I think Price’s actions speak volumes, and I don’t have to say much more than that.’ 

The bombshell documentary takes a deep dive into Price and her actions on that fateful day.

A chilling 911 call reveals Price refused to help her bleeding husband.

She then fled the scene, claiming she didn’t want to be ‘traumatized’.

Price didn’t go to the hospital with Coleman and later pulled the plug after just two days – against Coleman’s express written wishes.

On top of that, Price even sold Coleman’s deathbed photo – a move one friend calls ‘depraved’.

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Plot Thickens? British Tech Titan’s Co-Defendant Killed In Car Crash, Days Before Yacht ‘Hit By Tornado’

An unexpected violent storm, which some EU media outlets described as a ‘tornado,’ sank the British-flagged superyacht “Bayesian” early Monday morning off the coast of Sicily. Local authorities confirmed one dead, and six people are missing, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer. Bayesian was carrying 22 people during what appears to be a ‘weather-related’ incident.

Let’s take a step back because the plot thickens here. Just days before the Bayesian sank to the ocean floor, off the coast of Porticello – a small fishing village nestled between Palermo and Cefalu on Sicily’s western shore – Lynch’s co-defendant in the US Autonomy-Hewlett-Packard fraud trial was struck and killed by a car while out for a run near his home in England on Saturday. 

Here’s more from The Independent:

Stephen Chamberlain, Autonomy’s former vice president of finance, who worked alongside chief executive Mr Lynch, was killed after being hit by a vehicle while out running on Saturday, his lawyer, Gary Lincenberg said.

…

In a statement, Mr Lincenberg said: “Our dear client and friend Steve Chamberlain was fatally struck by a car on Saturday while out running.

“He was a courageous man with unparalleled integrity. We deeply miss him. Steve fought successfully to clear his good name at trial earlier this year, and his good name now lives on through his wonderful family.”

Chamberlain faced similar fraud and conspiracy charges as his former boss, Lynch, for allegedly conspiring to inflate their company Autonomy before it was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. 

On June 6, a federal court jury in San Francisco found Lynch and Chamberlain not guilty following an 11-week criminal trial. 

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Jack Posobiec Unearths Alleged Coverup by One of Harris’s VP Pick Frontrunners

Jack Posobiec has unearthed an old controversy involving then-Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, one of Kamala Harris’s likely VP picks.

Posobiec shared with his followers on X that a woman was “stabbed 20 times” back in 2011, “including twice while dead.” 

“[The] coroner ruled it a homicide, then changed it to suicide,” Posobiec added. 

“This week, the PA Supreme Court announced it will investigate why Attorney General Josh Shapiro upheld the lie,” Posobiec continued, noting more information was “to come.”

His post has sparked outrage against Shapiro, with countless X users digging into the case more.

Fox News reported back in 2022 on the mysterious death of Ellen Greenberg, a 27-year-old Philadelphia teacher, after new evidence casted doubt on the official suicide ruling. 

The case, which has perplexed investigators for over a decade, is now under renewed scrutiny as experts and the PA Supreme Court challenges the initial findings.

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