A 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher, Suchir Balaji, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in recent weeks, CNBC confirmed.
Balaji has left OpenAI earlier this yr and expressed concerns publicly that the corporate allegedly violated U.S. copyright law when developing its popular ChatGPT chatbot.
“The manner of death was determined to be suicide,” David Serrano Sewell, executive director of the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, told CNBC in an email Friday. He said Balaji's next of kin have been notified.
San Francisco police said in an email that officers were called to an apartment on Buchanan Street on the afternoon of Nov. 26 to conduct a “well-being check.” They found a deceased adult male and located “no evidence of foul play” during their initial investigation, the department said.
The news of Balaji's death was first reported by the San Jose Mercury News. A member of the family contacted by the newspaper requested privacy.
In October, The New York Times published a story about Balaji's concerns.
“If you believe what I believe, you just have to leave the company,” Balaji told the newspaper. He reportedly believed that ChatGPT and similar chatbots would destroy the economic viability of the people and organizations that created the digital data and content now commonly used to coach AI systems.
An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed Balaji's death.
“We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news today, and our thoughts are with Suchir’s loved ones during this difficult time,” the spokesman said in an email.
OpenAI is currently engaged in legal disputes with plenty of publishers, authors and artists over the alleged use of copyrighted material for AI training data. A lawsuit filed last December by news outlets goals to carry OpenAI and its major backer Microsoft accountable for billions of dollars in damages.
“We don’t actually need to train on their data,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at an event organized by Bloomberg in Davos earlier this yr. “I think that’s something that people don’t understand. A specific training source doesn’t move us that much.”
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