Suchir Balaji, a former Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher at OpenAI, has been found dead in his apartment in San Francisco. The 26-year-old reportedly died by suicide, with no evidence of foul play, according to the San Francisco Police Department.
Balaji’s body was discovered on November 26 at his apartment on Buchanan Street, as reported by The Mercury News. Officer Robert Rueca, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Police, confirmed the absence of any indications of foul play during the initial investigation.
Balaji worked at OpenAI from November 2020 until August 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile, contributing to projects including ChatGPT.
Elon Musk, co-founder of OpenAI and current CEO of rival AI company xAI, responded to the news with a cryptic “hmm” on X (formerly Twitter). Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 following disagreements with current CEO Sam Altman, has been critical of the organisation, recently labelling it a monopolist.
In recent months, Balaji had been vocal about his concerns regarding generative AI and its implications for copyright law. In an October interview with The New York Times, he accused OpenAI of violating copyright laws and criticised the impact of technologies like ChatGPT on the internet.
“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he said, reflecting on his decision to depart OpenAI.
In a detailed social media post on X, Balaji expressed scepticism about generative AI’s reliance on “fair use” as a defence against copyright infringement claims. Drawing from his four-year tenure at OpenAI, he argued that many generative AI products, including ChatGPT, fail to meet fair use standards because they can generate substitutes that compete directly with the data they are trained on.
Balaji elaborated on the issue in a blog post, explaining the four factors of the fair use test, which include the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount of material used and the impact on the market for the original work. He concluded that none of these factors appeared to support ChatGPT’s compliance with fair use principles.
“Similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a wide variety of domains,” he wrote, noting the broader implications for the industry.
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