Former OpenAI employee Suthir Balaji was recently found dead in his San Francisco apartment, according to the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In October, a 26-year-old AI researcher expressed concerns about OpenAI violating copyright laws during an interview with the New York Times.
“The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) has identified the deceased as Suthir Balaji, 26, of San Francisco. The cause of death has been determined to be suicide,” a spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. “OCME has notified next of kin and there are no further comments or reports to make public at this time.”
After nearly four years at OpenAI, Balaji told the New York Times that he left the company after realizing that the technology would do more harm than good to society. Balaji's main concern was the way OpenAI allegedly used copyrighted data, a practice he believed was harming the internet.
“We are devastated to learn this incredibly sad news today and our hearts go out to Suchil's loved ones during this difficult time,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch.
Balaji was found dead in his Buchanan Street apartment on November 26, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Police were reportedly called to the former OpenAI researcher's residence in the city's Lower Haight district to check on his health.
“I have been at OpenAI for nearly 4 years, the last 1.5 years of which were spent working on ChatGPT,” Balaji said in an October tweet. “Initially, I didn’t know much about things like copyright and fair use, but I became interested after seeing all the lawsuits being filed against GenAI companies. After much effort, we concluded that fair use is a pretty implausible defense for many generative AI products, the basic reason being that you can create substitutes that compete with the data that was trained on them. For a reason.
OpenAI and Microsoft are currently involved in multiple ongoing lawsuits from newspapers and media publishers, including the New York Times, alleging that the generative AI startup violates copyright laws.
San Francisco Police Department did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.
This is a developing story…