A former researcher at OpenAI, Suchir Balaji, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment last month at the age of 26. The manner of death has been determined to be a suicide. Balaji had previously voiced concerns about copyright violations at the startup before leaving in August. He claimed that the use of copyrighted data in chatbots like ChatGPT violated the law and was harmful to the internet. OpenAI has disputed these claims, stating that they followed “fair use” principles and widely accepted legal precedents. Balaji had joined OpenAI in 2020 after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was captivated by AI technology since 2013. His death has sent shockwaves through the tech community, leaving behind loved ones to mourn his loss.
Source: https://fortune.com/2024/12/14/openai-whistleblower-suchir-balaji-suicide-san-francisco-apartment-copyright-violations