OpenAI whistleblower’s body found in San Francisco…Who was Suchir Balaji?

Indian American OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. San Francisco Health Department officials say he committed suicide. However, no evidence of this was found in the apartment.

Balaji, a 26-year-old AI expert, raised concerns about the challenges posed by artificial intelligence and OpenAI breaking copyright laws in an interview with The New York Times in October. Balaji worked as a researcher at OpenAI and left the company earlier this year.

What did you write in your last social media post?

• After leaving the company he became a vocal critic of the firm and regularly accused the company of violating copyright law by copying online data.
• In his last social media post, Balaji said that he was curious to see all the lawsuits filed against GenAI companies. He wrote, initially I did not know much about copyright.
• ‘As I tried to better understand the issue, I ultimately came to the conclusion that fair use seems to be an impossible thing for many AI products.’
• Balaji completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and interned with OpenAI. He started working at Quora as a software engineer in August 2016.
• Then worked as a machine learning intern at OpenAI. He then joined ScaleAI as an intern in Machine Learning and also interned with Helia.
• He was working as a member of the technical staff at OpenAI since November 2020 before leaving the firm in August this year. At OpenAI, Balaji worked on data and also conducted data-based research for the firm.

Elon Musk also expressed grief

He left the firm after considering what OpenAI was doing and came to the conclusion that the firm was violating copyright laws and could have long-term bad effects. Many prominent personalities, including Elon Musk, have reacted to Balaji’s death.