Indian-origin activist Suchir, who warned about OpenAI, commits suicide

New York: Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old Indian-origin whistleblower against artificial intelligence giant Open AI, committed suicide in San Francisco, authorities said. Suchir Balaji, a former OpenEA employee, was found dead in his Buchanan Street home in San Francisco on November 26, Thanksgiving Day.

Balaji accuses OpenAI of massive data theft to create ChatGPT program

Indian-origin activist Suchir, who warned about OpenAI, commits suicide

The medical examiner’s office has ruled it a suicide, and police officials say there is no evidence of anything wrong at this time. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) has identified the person who died in San Francisco as Lathir Balaji, said David Serrano Sewell, executive director of the office. The cause of his death is said to be suicide. OCME informed his relatives and they did not comment further.

Suchir Balaji told The Times in October that he was one of the researchers behind OpenAI programs like GPT-4. In ChatGPT users can interact with the chatbot GPT. The San Francisco Chronicle said that Balaji’s death has shocked OpenAI.

OpenAI said in its statement, “We are deeply shocked to learn of this extremely bad news and our thoughts are with Suchir’s family and we offer our condolences during this difficult time. Balaji became known as the whistleblower for the blockbuster artificial intelligence company, which is currently facing multiple lawsuits over its business model.

Balaji died just three months after publicly accusing OpenAI of violating US copyright law. It alleges that OpenAI violated multiple US copyright laws in creating ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence program that has become a multi-million dollar product for the company today. It is used by crores of people in the world.

In 2022, authors, computer programmers, and journalists filed several lawsuits against OpenAI. He said that the company systematically stole his copyrighted material to train its program and valued it at $150 billion. Balaji, in an interview published in The New York Times on October 23, argued that OpenAI is harming the businesses and entrepreneurs whose data was used to train ChatGPT. Balaji left OpenAI because he did not want to be a part of a technology that caused more harm than good to society.