Indian-American OpenAI whistleblower and former researcher Suchir Balaji was found dead in his apartment at the age of 26.
According to The Mercury News, Police, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Balaji was found dead in his Buchanan Street apartment in San Francisco on November 26, 2024.
As per a police spokesperson, the Lower Haight residence called them at about 1 pm that day and asked police to check on his well-being.
The medical examiner determined that the death was a suicide, and the police did not find any “evidence of foul play.”
A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed Balaji’s death and expressed, “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.”
Notably, his death came three months after he publicly accused the artificial intelligence company of violating US copyright laws.
At that time, an artificial intelligence researcher wrote on X, “I initially didn’t know much about copyright, fair use, etc., but I 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.
Furthermore, the death of a former OpenAI researcher sparked a reaction from the tech giant Elon Musk, who responded to the news with a cryptic “hmm” on his social media platform X.
Balaji worked at OpenAI from November 2020 until August 2024 and contributed to multiple AI projects, including ChatGPT.
