Suchir Balaji, 26, who used to work for OpenAI has been found dead in his apartment just months after speaking out against the company following a string of lawsuits
An OpenAI whistleblower who made a chilling claim against ChatGPT has been found dead inside his apartment.
Suchir Balaji, 26, was discovered lifeless inside his property in San Fransisco, US, last month on November 26, police can now confirm. Emergency services were called to his apartment for a wellness check at around 1pm.
Police have now confirmed that his cause of death was ruled as suicide. The medical examiner and the authorities said there is “currently, no evidence of foul play.” The former researcher, who worked for OpenAI, publicly accused the company of violating US copyright law with its generative AI app, ChatGPT.
Suchir Balaji accused his former employer of wrongdoing (Image: LinkedIn)
The bombshell accusations follow a wave of other lawsuits against the company over concerns with its business model. Balaji held vital information for a lawsuit against the company. His accusations come after authors, publications and computer programmers claimed ChatGPT stole their copyrighted work and used it to train AI.
Balaji was profiled in The New York Times in October and told the publication that the company was damaging businesses and entrepreneurs. He said: “If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company."
The former researcher initially believed that AI could be used to make the world a better place. “I thought we could invent some kind of scientist that could help solve them,” he added. However, he became concerned two years into joining the company due to its rapidly growing technology.
He also claimed that the company exploits internet "fair use" laws and said unknown factors “seem to weigh in favour of ChatGPT being a fair use of its training data." Balaji added: “That being said, none of the arguments here are fundamentally specific to ChatGPT either, and similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a wide variety of domains."
On November 18, the legal team at The New York Times named Balaji as a person with “unique and relevant documents” to help assist their case with Open AI. The lawsuit said: “Microsoft and OpenAI simply take the work product of reporters, journalists, editorial writers, editors and others who contribute to the work of local newspapers — all without any regard for the efforts, much less the legal rights, of those who create and publish the news on which local communities rely."
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