Open AI Whistleblower Suchir Balaji Found Dead In San Francisco Flat, Was It Suicide?

San Francisco: Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher, who had accused the artificial intelligence company of copyright violations shortly after resigning from the firm in August, was found dead in his San Francisco flat on November 26, according to reports. But the news of his death has come to the forefront now.

After his friends and colleagues expressed concern over his well-being, San Francisco police were called to Balaji’s apartment, the India Today reported. Thereafter, officers discovered Balaji’s body and his death was confirmed. The investigators suspected it to be a case of suicide, claiming that the initial reports suggested no evidence of foul play.

“Officers and medics arrived on scene and located a deceased adult male from what appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported, quoting a police statement.

The death of Balaji sparked a strong reaction online. Tesla CEO Elon Musk reacted to the news with a cryptic ‘hmm.’

Balaji had openly accused OpenAI of using copyrighted material without proper authorization to train its generative AI program, ChatGPT. He also alleged that ChatGPT was damaging the internet.

In his last post on X, Balaji wrote on October 24, “I recently participated in a NYT story about fair use and generative AI, and why I’m sceptical ‘fair use’ would be a plausible defence for a lot of generative AI products”.

“I initially didn’t know much about copyright, fair use, etc. but became curious after seeing all the lawsuits filed against GenAI companies. When I tried to understand the issue better, I eventually came to the conclusion that fair use seems like a pretty implausible defence for a lot of generative AI products, for the basic reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the data they’re trained on,” he added.

His allegations have been central to several lawsuits filed against OpenAI by authors, programmers, and journalists. They all have claimed their copyrighted works were being used illegally.