 "OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji found dead in San Francisco home, police ruled suicide")
A former employee of the artificial intelligence giant OpenAI, who alleged that the company’s programs violated copyright law, was found dead at his San Francisco apartment. San Francisco police found 26-year-old Suchir Balaji dead in his Lower Haight apartment on November 26, Huffington Post reported. In the latest update, the police on Friday said that the whistleblower died by suicide and there was “no evidence of foul play”.
“The manner of death has been determined to be suicide,” David Serrano Sewell, director of the office of the city’s chief medical examiner, told The San Francisco Standard by email. Balaji was a former researcher for the company. In a New York Times article, he accused OpenAI of using copyrighted material to train ChatGPT. Balaji quit the company in August and his profile on NYT was published in October.
Multiple lawsuits against OpenAI are expected to present information unearthed by Balaji as key evidence. As per the report, officers went to Balaji’s house at 1:15 pm (local time) on November 26. The officers were visiting the apartment for a “wellness check”. “Officers and medics arrived on scene and located a deceased adult male from what appeared to be a suicide,” SFPD said. “No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation,” the officials furthered.
OpenAI reacts to Balaji’s death
While speaking to TechCrunch, an OpenAI spokesperson said that the company is devastated to hear the news. “We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news today and our hearts go out to Suchir’s loved ones during this difficult time.” In the NYT article, Balaji emphasised that the way ChatGPT is operating, “is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”
In his final post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Balaji plugged the article. “I recently participated in an NYT 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,” Balaji wrote.
I recently participated in a NYT story about fair use and generative AI, and why I'm skeptical "fair use" would be a plausible defense for a lot of generative AI products. I also wrote a blog post (https://t.co/xhiVyCk2Vk) about the nitty-gritty details of fair use and why I…
— Suchir Balaji (@suchirbalaji) October 23, 2024
“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 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 added.
In the past, Balaji has emphasised that Machine Learning (ML) researchers should learn more about copyright laws.
With inputs from agencies.
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