An Indian-American researcher, Suchir Balaji, has been found dead in his San Francisco apartment. Police have ruled that he died by suicide. However, before his death, Balaji had made public allegations against OpenAI, claiming the company had flouted US copyright law while developing its GPT-4 chatbot.
Balaji, 25, grew up in California and studied computer science at UC Berkeley. He joined OpenAI as a technical staff member and worked on the GPT-4 project, gathering vast amounts of digital data for analysis. According to The New York Times, Balaji initially assumed that OpenAI was free to use any internet data, regardless of its copyright.
However, after the release of ChatGPT in 2022, he believed it had become a competitor to existing online services, prompting him to raise concerns about OpenAI’s use of data. Balaji claimed that the company had made unauthorized copies of copyrighted data for the generative model and imitated online data, leading to “hallucinations” or nonsensical information.
OpenAI has dismissed Balaji’s claims, stating that its AI models are built using publicly available data in a manner protected by fair use principles. The company has lodged a series of cases against Microsoft and other publishers alleging unauthorized use of copyrighted material.
Balaji’s allegations have sparked concerns about the ethics of using large datasets to train AI models. As the technology continues to evolve, it is essential to address these issues and ensure that companies are adhering to fair use principles and respecting creators’ rights.
Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-global/suchir-balaji-openai-allegations-9724976