San Francisco: Indian-American Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old former researcher at OpenAI known for his whistleblowing against the company, was found dead in his home in San Francisco on November 26, reported Chicago Tribune.
Police responded to a call requesting a welfare check at approximately 1 p.m. on the same day. Authorities have said that Balaji’s death was a suicide, and there is “currently no evidence of foul play.”
The tragedy comes three months after Balaji publicly accused OpenAI of breaching U.S. copyright law in the development of ChatGPT, the highly popular generative artificial intelligence program.
The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 triggered a wave of lawsuits against OpenAI. Authors, computer programmers, and journalists accused the company of illegally using their copyrighted material to train its AI model, which significantly boosted its market value to over USD 150 billion.
Balaji, who departed from OpenAI in August after a four-year tenure, was a significant figure voicing ethical concerns regarding the use of copyrighted materials to train generative AI models like ChatGPT.
“I recently participated in a New York Times 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 also wrote a blog post about the nitty-gritty details of fair use and why I believe this,” Balaji had written on X.
In a separate interview with the New York Times, Balaji had described OpenAI’s method of data collection as “harmful.”
“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he said, expressing concern over the training of GPT-4 on massive amounts of internet data.
Balaji was particularly concerned about generative AI systems creating outputs that directly competed with the original copyrighted works used in their training. In a blog post cited by the Chicago Tribune, he stated, “No known factors seem to weigh in favour of ChatGPT being a fair use of its training data.”
He also emphasized that this issue was not limited to OpenAI alone, adding, “Fair use and generative AI is a much broader issue than any one product or company.”
The lawsuits against OpenAI, including those filed by prominent media outlets such as The New York Times, allege that the company’s practices violate copyright laws. Balaji was cited in court documents as possessing “unique and relevant documents” that could support these legal actions.
OpenAI has continually denied the accusations. In a statement reported by the Chicago Tribune, the company stated, “We see immense potential for AI tools like ChatGPT to deepen publishers’ relationships with readers and enhance the news experience.”
The death of Balaji has reignited debates surrounding the ethical and legal ramifications of AI technologies.
