A 26-year-old Indian-origin former employee of artificial intelligence giant OpenAI has died by suicide in San Francisco, authorities said.
Suchir Balaji was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment in San Francisco on Nov. 26, San Francisco police and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner were quoted as saying by The Mercury News.
The medical examiner’s office determined the manner of death to be suicide, and police officials said that “at this time, there is no evidence of foul play.”
Balaji was known for whistleblowing a blockbuster artificial intelligence company that has faced widespread litigation over its business model.
Three months after Balaji’s death, he accused OpenAI of violating US copyright laws over ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence program that has become a money-making sensation used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, the report said.
Its public release in late 2022 prompted lawsuits against OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists, who say the company illegally stole their copyrighted material to train its program and raise its value to more than $150 billion.
In an interview with The New York Times Published on October 23, Balaji argued that OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data was used to train ChatGPT.
Balaji left OpenAI because he no longer wanted to contribute to technologies that he believed would do more harm than good to society, the report added.
“If you believe what I believe, you should leave the company,” he told the outlet, adding, “This is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”
Balaji grew up in Cupertino before attending UC Berkeley to study computer science.
Meanwhile, Balaji’s mother has expressed grief over her son’s death and requested privacy Wednesday News Reported.