Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on November 26th. Police have ruled his death a suicide, a conclusion confirmed by the city’s chief medical examiner. His parents, Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy, while acknowledging the official finding, are still seeking answers, describing their son as a “happy, smart and brave young man.”
Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years, making significant contributions to the development of several products, including WebGPT, a crucial precursor to ChatGPT. OpenAI co-founder John Schulman described Balaji as one of the company’s strongest contributors, praising his meticulous attention to detail and his ability to identify and solve complex problems with elegant code. His work later involved organizing the massive datasets used to train GPT-4, the fourth generation of OpenAI’s large language model.
However, this work led Balaji to raise concerns about copyright infringement, particularly after numerous lawsuits were filed against OpenAI and other AI companies. He shared these concerns with The New York Times and the Associated Press, expressing his belief that training AI models on copyrighted material without permission was both ethically and legally problematic. He intended to testify in relevant cases and his testimony was sought by lawyers involved in lawsuits brought by The New York Times and authors including Sarah Silverman. Balaji stated, “It doesn’t feel right to be training on people’s data and then competing with them in the marketplace.” He also felt disillusioned by OpenAI’s internal turmoil and the rollout of its commercial products, citing concerns about the prevalence of false information generated by the AI.
Despite his concerns, Balaji had plans to pursue a doctorate and explore alternative approaches to artificial intelligence. He and OpenAI co-founder John Schulman, who also recently left the company, had coincidentally departed on the same day and celebrated together. Balaji’s family is planning a memorial service later this month.
If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP’s text archives.