Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher and whistleblower, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. The medical examiner ruled the death as suicide, with police finding no evidence of foul play.

Balaji joined OpenAI in 2020 at age 21, driven by AI's potential to advance technology and medical research. However, he became increasingly concerned about the company's data gathering practices, particularly regarding copyright law violations in training ChatGPT.

In October, Balaji publicly accused OpenAI of illegally using copyrighted material to train ChatGPT, telling The NY Times that the company was "harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data was scraped." He specifically criticized the data collection methods used for GPT-4, arguing they violated U.S. fair use laws.

His revelations came amid multiple lawsuits against OpenAI from creators, including authors, programmers, and journalists, all claiming copyright infringement. The NY Times, in their federal court filing on November 18, identified Balaji as someone possessing "unique and relevant documents" supporting their case against OpenAI.

A UC Berkeley computer science graduate from Cupertino, Balaji initially believed in AI's potential to "cure diseases and stop aging." However, his perspective shifted in 2022 when he recognized that OpenAI's practices were "destroying the commercial viability" of content creators whose work was being used to train AI systems.

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