Suchir Balaji, an Indian-American whistleblower who raised concerns about OpenAI’s practices, has been found dead in his San Francisco apartment. Authorities confirmed that Balaji, aged 26, was discovered deceased in his Buchanan Street flat on November 26. San Francisco police and the Medical Examiner’s Office reported that officers responded to a welfare check at the Lower Haight residence around 1:00 pm on that day, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.
While the cause of death has not yet been disclosed by the medical examiner, police have stated that there is no evidence of foul play at this time.
Balaji had made headlines three months before his death when he publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright laws in the development of its widely popular AI system, ChatGPT. The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked legal challenges from writers, programmers, and journalists who claimed the company used their copyrighted material without permission to train the AI and increase its valuation, which has surpassed $150 billion.
In a New York Times interview published on October 23, Balaji argued that OpenAI’s practices were negatively impacting businesses and entrepreneurs whose data had been used to train the AI. “If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he said, adding, “This is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”
In his final post, Balaji clarified any confusion regarding his interview with the New York Times, stating, “NYT didn’t reach out to me for this article; I reached out to them because I thought I had an interesting perspective, as someone who’s been working on these systems since before the current generative AI bubble. None of this is related to their lawsuit with OpenAI. I just think they’re a good newspaper.”
Balaji’s untimely death has raised questions, but as of now, authorities have found no indications of foul play.
