Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher turned whistleblower, died in San Francisco on November 26 in a suspected suicide, according to local authorities.
The San Francisco Police Department said they found Balaji dead inside his apartment on Buchanan Street after being called to the property for a well-being check at around 1 p.m. on November 26, The Mercury News reported.
The past few years have seen dramatic improvements in the capabilities of AI-powered chatbots, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which rely on large language models to produce content for users. However, the process has also been controversial with some publishers accusing OpenAI of using copyrighted works without permission, and a number of legal cases are currently ongoing.
Newsweek contacted OpenAI for comment on Saturday via email outside of regular office hours.
The San Francisco medical examiner’s office said it determined Balaji’s cause of death as suicide. Earlier this week, police said there is “currently no evidence of foul play.”
Balaji joined OpenAI in 2020 as a researcher, but by 2022 was becoming increasingly concerned about the company’s attitude towards copyright law.
In an October 23 post on X, formerly Twitter, he said: “I was at OpenAI for nearly 4 years and worked on ChatGPT for the last 1.5 of them. 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 defense 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.”
Balaji also shared an interview he gave to The New York Times, which is currently suing OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement of the newspaper.
In the interview, Balaji said he initially thought “A.I. was a thing that could be used to solve unsolvable problems, like curing diseases and stopping aging.” However, over time, he said he soured on OpenAI’s position on copyright law, concluding: “If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company.”
Writing on his website, Balaji said he didn’t believe the fair use copyright defense was applicable to what OpenAI was doing with ChatGPT, though he noted that “similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a wide variety of domains.”
Speaking in defense of its business practices in a recent court filing, OpenAI said: “The models learn, as we all do, from what has come before.
“The fair use defense exists for precisely that reason: to encourage and allow the development of new ideas that build on earlier ones.”
On November 7, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in New York dismissed one lawsuit against OpenAI which had been brought by media outlets Raw Story and AlterNet.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by a group of technology enthusiasts including Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who became its co-chairs. Musk left the company in 2018 after a disagreement about its strategy, and in February 2024 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “988” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
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