OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji found dead in San Francisco apartment

Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher who raised concerns about the artificial intelligence company’s operations and practices, was found dead in his flat in San Francisco on November 26, reports said on Saturday.

According to reports, San Francisco police were called to Balaji’s apartment after friends and colleagues expressed concern over his well-being. Upon arrival, officers discovered Balaji’s body and his death was confirmed subsequently on November 26. The news of his death has come to light now.

Initial reports suggest no evidence of foul play, with investigators suspecting it could be suicide. “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 quoted a police statement.

“The manner of death has been determined to be suicide,” the director of the office of the city’s chief medical examiner told the media.

The death of Balaji, who had accused OpenAI of copyright violations shortly after resigning from the company in August, sparked a strong reaction online, with many expressing shock. Tesla CEO Elon Musk reacted to the news with a cryptic “hmm,” offering no further elaboration.

Balaji had publicly accused OpenAI of using copyrighted material without proper authorisation to train its generative AI program, ChatGPT. He had alleged that technologies like ChatGPT were damaging the internet.

In an interview to the New York Times, Balaji had expressed his belief that OpenAI’s practices were harmful to the internet ecosystem and detrimental to the businesses and individuals whose data was used without consent.

“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he said.

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, who claim their copyrighted works were used illegally, significantly enhancing the AI capabilities of the company.