SAN FRANCISCO — A former OpenAI researcher known for whistleblowing the
blockbuster artificial intelligence company facing [1]a swell of
lawsuits over its business model has died, authorities confirmed this
week.
Suchir Balaji, 26, was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment
on Nov. 26, San Francisco police and the Office of the Chief Medical
Examiner said. Police had been called to the Lower Haight residence at
about 1 p.m. that day, after receiving a call asking officers to check
on his well-being, a police spokesperson said.
Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAi employee, in San Francisco, on Oct. 3,
2024. Balaji helped gather and organize the enormous amounts of
internet data used to train the startup's ChatGPT chatbot. (Ulysses
Ortega/The New York Times) Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAi employee, in
San Francisco, on Oct. 3, 2024. Balaji helped gather and organize the
enormous amounts of internet data used to train the startup’s ChatGPT
chatbot. (Ulysses Ortega/The New York Times)
The medical examiner’s office determined the manner of death to be
suicide and police officials this week said there is “currently, no
evidence of foul play.”
Information he held was expected to play a key part in lawsuits against
the San Francisco-based company.
Balaji’s death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of
violating U.S. copyright law while developing ChatGPT, a generative
artificial intelligence program that has become a moneymaking sensation
used by hundreds of millions of people across the world.
Its public release in late 2022 spurred a torrent of lawsuits against
OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists, who say the
company illegally stole [2]their copyrighted material to train its
program and elevate its value past $150 billion.
The Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among several
newspapers, including the New York Times, to sue OpenAI in the past
year.
In [3]an interview with the New York Times published Oct. 23, Balaji
argued OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data were
used to train ChatGPT.
“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he
told the outlet, adding that “this is not a sustainable model for the
internet ecosystem as a whole.”
Balaji grew up in Cupertino before attending UC Berkeley to study
computer science. It was then he became a believer in the potential
benefits that artificial intelligence could offer society, including
its ability to cure diseases and stop aging, the Times reported. “I
thought we could invent some kind of scientist that could help solve
them,” he told the newspaper.
But his outlook began to sour in 2022, two years after joining OpenAI
as a researcher. He grew particularly concerned about his assignment of
gathering data from the internet for the company’s GPT-4 program, which
analyzed text from nearly the entire internet to train its artificial
intelligence program, the news outlet reported.
The practice, he told the Times, ran afoul of the country’s “fair use”
laws governing how people can use previously published work. In late
October, he posted [4]an analysis on his personal website arguing that
point.
No known factors “seem to weigh in favor of ChatGPT being a fair use of
its training data,” Balaji wrote. “That being said, none of the
arguments here are fundamentally specific to ChatGPT either, and
similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a
wide variety of domains.”
Reached by this news agency, Balaji’s mother requested privacy while
grieving the death of her son.
In a Nov. 18 letter filed in federal court, attorneys for The New York
Times named Balaji as someone who had “unique and relevant documents”
that would support their case against OpenAI. He was among at least 12
people — many of them past or present OpenAI employees — the newspaper
had named in court filings as having material helpful to their case,
ahead of depositions.
Generative artificial intelligence programs work by [5]analyzing an
immense amount of data from the internet and using it to answer prompts
submitted by users, or to create text, images or videos.
When OpenAI released its ChatGPT program in late 2022, it turbocharged
an industry of companies seeking to write essays, make art and create
computer code. Many of the most valuable companies in the world now
work in the field of artificial intelligence, or manufacture the
computer chips needed to run those programs. OpenAI’s own value nearly
doubled in the past year.
News outlets have argued that OpenAI and Microsoft — which is in
business with OpenAI and also has been sued by The Mercury News — have
plagiarized and stole its articles, undermining their business models.
“Microsoft and OpenAI simply take the work product of reporters,
journalists, editorial writers, editors and others who contribute to
the work of local newspapers — all without any regard for the efforts,
much less the legal rights, of those who create and publish the news on
which local communities rely,” the newspapers’ lawsuit said.
OpenAI has staunchly refuted those claims, stressing that all of its
work remains legal under “fair use” laws.
“We see immense potential for AI tools like ChatGPT to deepen
publishers’ relationships with readers and enhance the news
experience,” the company said when the lawsuit was filed.
If you or someone you know is struggling with feelings of depression or
suicidal thoughts, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline offers free,
round-the-clock support, information and resources for help. Call or
text the lifeline at 988, or see the 988lifeline.org website, where
chat is available.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send
him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at
[email protected].
Originally Published: December 13, 2024 at 1:12 PM PST
References
1.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/30/mercury-news-and-other-papers-sue-microsoft-openai-over-the-new-artificial-intelligence/
2.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/06/18/new-artificial-intelligence-will-silicon-valley-ride-again-to-riches-on-other-peoples-products/
3.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/openai-copyright-law.html
4.
https://suchir.net/fair_use.html
5.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/04/25/chatbots-and-the-new-ai-what-will-silicon-valley-unleash-upon-the-world-this-time/
