OpenAI Whistleblower Suchir Balaji Found Dead at San Francisco Home

Suchir Balaji Found Dead: 26-year-old Suchir Balaji, a former researcher at OpenAl, has been found dead in his San Francisco apartment. "No evidence of foul play was found," said the San Francisco Police Department.

The medical examiner’s office determined the manner of death to be suicide and police officials said there is “currently, no evidence of foul play.”

He worked for OpenAI from November 2020 to August 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile.

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Balaji’s death comes amid ongoing lawsuits against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft. The company faces multiple legal challenges, including allegations of copyright infringement.

In an October interview with The New York Times, he voiced concerns about the ethical implications of generative AI, specifically questioning OpenAI’s approach to copyright issues and its use of protected content. Balaji, who had worked at OpenAI for nearly four years, quit the company in August 2024.

He told The New York Times that, over time, he realised the technology would likely cause more harm than good to society, particularly due to concerns about OpenAI’s alleged misuse of copyright data.

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He also said that technologies like ChatGPT, were damaging the internet a generative artificial intelligence programme that has become a moneymaking sensation used by hundreds of millions of people across the world, the report said.

In his last social media post, Balaji wrote "I initially didn't know much about copyright, fair use, etc. but became curious after seeing all the lawsuits against GenAI companies."

"When I tried to understand the issue better, I eventually concluded 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 further posted.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who has a long-standing feud with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, reacted to the news with a cryptic "hmm" post on X (formerly Twitter).

OpenAI was co-founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman in 2015. Three years later, Musk left OpenAI and founded another rival start-up, xAI.

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