An Indian American ex-employee of OpenAI Suchir Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment, according to the city’s Chief Medical examiner. His body was found in his house on November 26 after which the cause of his death was defined as suicide. However, the news of his death has surfaced now.
In a statement to TechCrunch, it said “The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) has identified the decedent as Suchir Balaji, 26. The manner of death has been determined as suicide. The OCME has notified the next-of-kin and has no further comments or reports for publication at this time.”
As per reports, city police were called to his apartment after some of his friends and coworkers expressed concerns over his well-being. As per the initial reports, no evidence suggesting foul play was found.
San Francisco Chronicle based on a police statement said, “Officers and medics arrived on scene and located a deceased adult male from what appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation.”
Balaji levelled allegations of copyright infringement
It must be noted that Balaji resigned from ChatGPT maker OpenAI in August following which he accused the company of copyright violations. His claims drew attention on social media as users raised concerns over it. X owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also reacted to his demise.
Balaji’s post goes viral
Meanwhile, his post from October has again gone viral on social media where he has accused OpenAI. In his post he said, “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 defense 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. I’ve written up the more detailed reasons for why I believe this in my post. Obviously, I’m not a lawyer, but I still feel like it’s important for even non-lawyers to understand the law — both the letter of it, and also why it’s actually there in the first place.”
