The family is seeking justice.
Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old AI researcher, was found dead in his San Francisco home on November 26, three months after publicly accusing OpenAI of copyright violations in its development of ChatGPT. His death was ruled a suicide by the San Francisco Police Department, but his mother, Poornima Ramarao, believes there were unusual circumstances surrounding his death and has called for a more thorough investigation. She shared concerns about the findings of a private autopsy conducted in early December, prompting the family to work with an attorney to push for further investigation.
Balaji had been critical of OpenAI, particularly after his departure from the company, where he voiced concerns about the company’s use of copyrighted material without proper licensing for training its AI models. This issue was central to a lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing the companies of using millions of articles to train their AI models without compensation. Just days before his death, Balaji was named in a court filing by the Times as a key figure with valuable information for the lawsuit.
When Balaji joined OpenAI, he was drawn to its open-source philosophy and believed that the company’s work could benefit society. However, after the release of ChatGPT, he became increasingly disillusioned as he observed OpenAI’s shift toward a more commercial direction. Balaji began to fear that the technology could do more harm than good, particularly to those whose creative works were being used without compensation to train the AI.
Balaji also raised concerns about the legal justification of “fair use” often used by OpenAI and Microsoft to defend their use of existing online content. He argued that AI models like ChatGPT could create substitutes for the data they were trained on, making it unlikely that “fair use” could be a legitimate defense. Balaji’s criticism of the industry and his decision to leave OpenAI stemmed from his belief that the technology, rather than solving global challenges, would lead to the displacement of workers and other societal harms.
His death remains shrouded in mystery, and his family is seeking answers. Balaji’s concerns about the ethical implications of AI and its potential to harm both individuals and society continue to resonate, especially as lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft regarding copyright violations unfold.
