OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji found dead in San Francisco

Suchir Balaji, an Indian-American researcher and former OpenAI employee, has died in San Francisco.

He was found dead on November 26, and according to the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, his death has been ruled a suicide. However, officials found no evidence of foul play at the scene.

The 26-year-old had been vocal about the risks associated with artificial intelligence and accused OpenAI of violating copyright laws. He raised these concerns in an interview with The New York Times in October.

Balaji had worked as a researcher at OpenAI but left the company earlier this year. After his resignation, he became a vocal critic, frequently accusing OpenAI of using online data in ways that breached copyright laws.

In his last social media post, Balaji stated, "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 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." 

Suchir Balaji graduated in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and started his career as a software engineer at Quora in August 2016. Over the years, he interned at several organizations, including OpenAI, ScaleAI, and Helia, where he focused on machine learning. He joined OpenAI in November 2020 as a member of the technical staff, working on data-related projects and research.

Balaji decided to leave the company in August this year, after concluding that OpenAI’s practices, particularly regarding copyright, could have serious long-term consequences.

Elon Musk has reacted to Balaji's death, sharing a post about the news and commenting with a simple "hmm," which sparked further discussion.