OpenAI Whistleblower Suchir Balaji Found Dead: Family Demands FBI Investigation

Family of OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji demand FBI investigate death

Parents believe San Francisco police lack ability to conduct thorough investigation into multifaceted case Poornima Ramarao greeted everyone with a smile as they offered condolences for the death of her son Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI researcher and whistleblower who was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on 26 November. "I am not grieving," she told a small group of friends at a vigil held for Balaji in Milpitas, California, a city about 50 miles (80km) south-east of San Francisco. "I have become numb." A few moments later, tears began rolling down her cheeks as she talked about losing her only son. Balaji's parents have questioned the circumstances of their son's death and refuse to believe that he died by suicide, as ruled by the office of the chief medical examiner. They have demanded an FBI investigation into his death. The demand, Ramarao said, stems from their belief that the San Francisco police department lacks the ability to conduct a thorough investigation into a case that includes issues such as cybersecurity and whistleblower protection. Police found Balaji dead in his apartment on 26 November after Ramarao had failed to get in touch with her son for three days. She filed a missing person complaint where she lives in Union City, about 40 miles from San Francisco. Police there contacted San Francisco authorities. "Officers and medics arrived on scene and located a deceased adult male from what appeared to be a suicide," police said. "No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation." Ramarao said it took the medical examiner 40 seconds from the time they arrived at the scene to declare it a suicide. "The reason they said is he went inside and did not come out, nobody was with him ... and he shot himself," Ramarao said. "There was a gun near him." The parents said Balaji had no history of mental illness and no suicide note was found. Balaji Ramamurthy, who was the last person to talk to his son on 22 November, said they talked about his Los Angeles trip, part of his birthday celebration. "He was in LA and having a good time. So he sent us all the pictures," Ramamurthy said of his 15-minute call after Balaji's return. "He was in a good mood." The investigation, however, is open and active at this time, San Francisco police said. Balaji studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley and started working at OpenAI in November 2020. He worked on a project called WebGPT, which John Schulman, one of the OpenAI co-founders, said helped pave the way for ChatGPT. "I was heartbroken to hear of Suchir's passing. I worked with Suchir on and off since around 2021, and he was one of my favorite and most talented collaborators," Schulman said. Balaji quit OpenAI in August this year, the same day as Schulman, and publicly spoke of copyright violations by generative AI developers including OpenAI. In an interview with the New York Times in October, Balaji said OpenAI had violated copyright law and products like ChatGPT were damaging the internet. On his decision to quit OpenAI, Balaji said: "If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company." OpenAI said in a statement that it was "devastated" to learn of Balaji's death and had been in touch with his parents "to offer our full support during this difficult time". At the vigil, speakers talked about the importance of Balaji's work, including his advocacy for copyright laws. Ganesh Balamitran, a Fremont resident, said Balaji fought for every creative person. "You cannot replace human creators with computers, and he was pointing that out with his work, and I think he was starting to fight that battle for every creative artist out there," Balamitran said. Aruja Gupta, a student at San Jose State University who attended the vigil in solidarity with Balaji's family, said she supported the parents' demand for further investigation. "If the police department could thoroughly investigate, they could put some more time and resources into his death, that's kind of my demand or my wish from my solidarity here today," she said. Surrounded by nearly 80 people, Ramarao and Ramamurthy spoke about their son's childhood. "He was a prodigy," Ramarao said. "We knew he had excellent motor skills when he was two-and-a-half months. At 13 months old, he showed he was not ordinary by picking up all the alphabet. Less than two years old, he could recognize words." Ramarao said her son had been an upstanding human being who never said anything negative about teachers, school or colleagues. "I don't know how I could have saved my son by teaching him to tell lies," Ramarao said. "The ethics with which I raised him took his life today."

OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji dead at age 26; family seeks answers as death ruled suicide

A former researcher at OpenAI was found dead inside of his California apartment last month, authorities said. Suchir Balaji, 26, had in recent months become a whistleblower against OpenAI, speaking publicly about the company's practices and questioning whether or not they were legal. Balaji died by suicide, the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office told CBS News in a statement. There was no evidence of foul play. His body was discovered Nov. 26 inside of his apartment in San Francisco, where OpenAI is headquartered, CBS News partner BBC News reported, citing police. Officers said they performed a welfare check at Balaji's residence after receiving a call requesting them to do so. Balaji's family told the Associated Press that they are planning a memorial for him, set to take place later in December at the India Community Center in Milpitas, California, near his hometown. His parents, Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy, told the AP that they are seeking answers about their son's death and described him as a "happy, smart and brave young man." "We are devastated to learn of this incredible sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," said a spokesperson for OpenAI in a statement to the Associated Press. Originally from Cupertino, California, Balaji worked for four years as a researcher at OpenAI before leaving the company in August. He alleged in an October interview with The New York Times that OpenAI, an artificial intelligence organization co-founded by Tesla magnate Elon Musk, had violated United States copyright law as it developed ChatGPT, which Balaji himself helped build during his time with the company. Balaji subsequently told the Associated Press that he would "try to testify" in the strongest copyright infringement cases against his former employer. OpenAI now faces a group of lawsuits brought by various news publishers across the U.S. and Canada as well as some individuals -- including The New York Times and the authors John Grisham and Jodie Picoult -- accusing OpenAI of illegally using their intellectual property to train the online chatbot. Although Musk was originally a co-founder of OpenAI, he engaged in a monthslong attack against the company, most recently claiming in a lawsuit that its conversion to a for-profit company is "illegal." John Schulman, who also co-founded OpenAI and announced his own departure from the company in August, shared a tribute to Balaji after his death in a statement that Balaji's father posted on social media. In it, Schulman said he was "heartbroken to hear of Suchir's passing" and called Balaji "one of my favorite and most talented collaborators." CBS News contacted OpenAI but did not receive an immediate response. If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or a suicidal crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. You can also chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline here.

OpenAI whistleblower who died was being considered as witness against company

Suchir Balaji, listed in court filing as having 'relevant documents' about copyright violation, died on 26 November Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26. Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He had been well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI's strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products. "We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," said a statement from OpenAI. Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on 26 November in what police said "appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation." The city's chief medical examiner's office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide. His parents, Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy, said they are still seeking answers, describing their son as a "happy, smart and brave young man" who loved to hike and recently had returned from a trip with friends. Balaji grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first arrived at the fledgling AI research lab for a 2018 summer internship while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned a few years later to work at OpenAI, where one of his first projects, called WebGPT, helped pave the way for ChatGPT. "Suchir's contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn't have succeeded without him," said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman in a social media post memorializing Balaji. Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said what had made him such an exceptional engineer and scientist was his attention to detail and ability to notice subtle bugs or logical errors. "He had a knack for finding simple solutions and writing elegant code that worked," Schulman wrote. "He'd think through the details of things carefully and rigorously." Balaji later shifted to organizing the huge datasets of online writings and other media used to train GPT-4, the fourth generation of OpenAI's flagship large language model and a basis for the company's famous chatbot. It was that work that eventually caused Balaji to question the technology he helped build, especially after newspapers, novelists and others began suing OpenAI and other AI companies for copyright infringement. He first raised his concerns with the New York Times, which reported them in an October profile of Balaji. He later told the Associated Press he would "try to testify" in the strongest copyright infringement cases and considered a lawsuit brought by the New York Times last year to be the "most serious". Times lawyers named him in an 18 November court filing as someone who might have "unique and relevant documents" supporting allegations of OpenAI's willful copyright infringement. His records were also sought by lawyers in a separate case brought by book authors including the comedian Sarah Silverman, according to a court filing. "It doesn't feel right to be training on people's data and then competing with them in the marketplace," Balaji told the AP in late October. "I don't think you should be able to do that. I don't think you are able to do that legally." He told the AP that he had grown gradually more disillusioned with OpenAI, especially after the internal turmoil that led its board of directors to fire and then rehire the CEO, Sam Altman, last year. Balaji said he was broadly concerned about how its commercial products were rolling out, including their propensity for spouting false information known as hallucinations. But of the "bag of issues" he was concerned about, he said, he was focusing on copyright as the one it was "actually possible to do something about". He acknowledged that it was an unpopular opinion within the AI research community, which is accustomed to pulling data from the internet, but said "they will have to change and it's a matter of time". He had not been deposed and it's unclear to what extent his revelations will be admitted as evidence in any legal cases after his death. He also published a personal blog post with his opinions about the topic. Schulman, who resigned from OpenAI in August, said he and Balaji coincidentally left on the same day and celebrated with fellow colleagues that night with dinner and drinks at a San Francisco bar. Another of Balaji's mentors, co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, had left OpenAI several months earlier, which Balaji saw as another impetus to leave. Schulman said Balaji had told him earlier this year of his plans to leave OpenAI and that Balaji didn't think that better-than-human AI known as artificial general intelligence "was right around the corner, like the rest of the company seemed to believe". The younger engineer expressed interest in getting a doctorate and exploring "some more off-the-beaten-path ideas about how to build intelligence", Schulman said. Balaji's family said a memorial is being planned for later this month at the India Community Center in Milpitas, California, not far from his hometown of Cupertino. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP's text archives.

Dead OpenAI Whistleblower Had Been Named as Potential Witness in Lawsuit Against Employer

Suchir Balaji, the young OpenAI whistleblower whose death was made public earlier this month, was apparently being considered as a witness against his former employer in a major lawsuit, The Associated Press reports. Shortly before his passing, the 26-year old Balaji had sounded the alarm on OpenAI's allegedly illegal copyright practices in an October profile with The New York Times. But according to the report, his involvement with the newspaper of record wasn't set to end there. Balaji later told the AP that he would "try to testify" in the strongest copyright infringement cases brought against OpenAI, and considered the NYT's high-profile one, filed last year, to be the "most serious." The Times seems to have had the same idea. In a November 18 court filing, lawyers for the newspaper named Blaji as someone who might possess "unique and relevant documents" that could prove OpenAI knowingly committed copyright infringement. Balaji had worked at OpenAI for four years, but quit in August after becoming appalled at what he saw as the ChatGPT developer's flagrant disregard for copyright law. He had worked first-hand on the company's massive data scraping efforts, in which it more or less pulled any content it could from the web to train its large language models. "If you believe what I believe," Balaji told the NYT, "you have to just leave the company." On November 26, a month after his profile in the NYT, Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment, in what the police said was an apparent suicide. His death wasn't reported until December 13. Publicly, OpenAI mourned Balaji's passing. "We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news today, and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," a company spokesperson told CNBC at the time. The high-profile lawsuit that Balaji was being considered as a witness for was filed by the NYT last December, alleging that OpenAI had illegally used the newspaper's copyrighted work to train its chatbots. Balaji's documents were also being sought by another suit filed by comedian Sarah Silverman against OpenAI and Meta, the AP said. OpenAI and other tech companies argue that their use of copyrighted data on the internet constitutes "fair use" because their AI models significantly transform that content. But Balaji disagreed, saying that the AI models create a copy of the data they ingest, and are from there instructed to generate text of dubious originality. "The outputs aren't exact copies of the inputs, but they are also not fundamentally novel," he told the NYT in October. Balaji's family said that a memorial is being planned for later this month at the India Community Center in Milpitas, California.

Ex-OpenAI engineer who raised legal concerns about the technology has died

The whistleblower helped train artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT. Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26. Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He was well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI's strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products. "We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," said a statement from OpenAI. Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26 in what police said "appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation." The city's chief medical examiner's office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide. His parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy said they are still seeking answers, describing their son as a "happy, smart and brave young man" who loved to hike and recently returned from a trip with friends. Balaji grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first arrived at the fledgling AI research lab for a 2018 summer internship while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned a few years later to work at OpenAI, where one of his first projects, called WebGPT, helped pave the way for ChatGPT. "Suchir's contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn't have succeeded without him," said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman in a social media post memorializing Balaji. Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said what made him such an exceptional engineer and scientist was his attention to detail and ability to notice subtle bugs or logical errors. "He had a knack for finding simple solutions and writing elegant code that worked," Schulman wrote. "He'd think through the details of things carefully and rigorously." Balaji later shifted to organizing the huge datasets of online writings and other media used to train GPT-4, the fourth generation of OpenAI's flagship large language model and a basis for the company's famous chatbot. It was that work that eventually caused Balaji to question the technology he helped build, especially after newspapers, novelists and others began suing OpenAI and other AI companies for copyright infringement. He first raised his concerns with The New York Times, which reported them in an October profile of Balaji. He later told The Associated Press he would "try to testify" in the strongest copyright infringement cases and considered a lawsuit brought by The New York Times last year to be the "most serious." Times lawyers named him in a Nov. 18 court filing as someone who might have "unique and relevant documents" supporting allegations of OpenAI's willful copyright infringement. His records were also sought by lawyers in a separate case brought by book authors including the comedian Sarah Silverman, according to a court filing. "It doesn't feel right to be training on people's data and then competing with them in the marketplace," Balaji told the AP in late October. "I don't think you should be able to do that. I don't think you are able to do that legally." He told the AP that he gradually grew more disillusioned with OpenAI, especially after the internal turmoil that led its board of directors to fire and then rehire CEO Sam Altman last year. Balaji said he was broadly concerned about how its commercial products were rolling out, including their propensity for spouting false information known as hallucinations. But of the "bag of issues" he was concerned about, he said he was focusing on copyright as the one it was "actually possible to do something about." He acknowledged that it was an unpopular opinion within the AI research community, which is accustomed to pulling data from the internet, but said "they will have to change and it's a matter of time." He had not been deposed and it's unclear to what extent his revelations will be admitted as evidence in any legal cases after his death. He also published a personal blog post with his opinions about the topic. Schulman, who resigned from OpenAI in August, said he and Balaji coincidentally left on the same day and celebrated with fellow colleagues that night with dinner and drinks at a San Francisco bar. Another of Balaji's mentors, co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, had left OpenAI several months earlier, which Balaji saw as another impetus to leave. Schulman said Balaji had told him earlier this year of his plans to leave OpenAI and that Balaji didn't think that better-than-human AI known as artificial general intelligence "was right around the corner, like the rest of the company seemed to believe." The younger engineer expressed interest in getting a doctorate and exploring "some more off-the-beaten path ideas about how to build intelligence," Schulman said. Balaji's family said a memorial is being planned for later this month at the India Community Center in Milpitas, California, not far from his hometown of Cupertino. -- -- -- -- -- - EDITOR'S NOTE -- This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. -- -- -- -- -- -- The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP's text archives.

Ex-OpenAI engineer who raised legal concerns about the technology he helped build has died

Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26. Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He was well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI's strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products. "We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," said a statement from OpenAI. Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26 in what police said "appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation." The city's chief medical examiner's office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide. His parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy said they are still seeking answers, describing their son as a "happy, smart and brave young man" who loved to hike and recently returned from a trip with friends. Balaji grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first arrived at the fledgling AI research lab for a 2018 summer internship while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned a few years later to work at OpenAI, where one of his first projects, called WebGPT, helped pave the way for ChatGPT. "Suchir's contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn't have succeeded without him," said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman in a social media post memorializing Balaji. Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said what made him such an exceptional engineer and scientist was his attention to detail and ability to notice subtle bugs or logical errors. "He had a knack for finding simple solutions and writing elegant code that worked," Schulman wrote. "He'd think through the details of things carefully and rigorously." Balaji later shifted to organizing the huge datasets of online writings and other media used to train GPT-4, the fourth generation of OpenAI's flagship large language model and a basis for the company's famous chatbot. It was that work that eventually caused Balaji to question the technology he helped build, especially after newspapers, novelists and others began suing OpenAI and other AI companies for copyright infringement. He first raised his concerns with The New York Times, which reported them in an October profile of Balaji. He later told The Associated Press he would "try to testify" in the strongest copyright infringement cases and considered a lawsuit brought by The New York Times last year to be the "most serious." Times lawyers named him in a Nov. 18 court filing as someone who might have "unique and relevant documents" supporting allegations of OpenAI's willful copyright infringement. His records were also sought by lawyers in a separate case brought by book authors including the comedian Sarah Silverman, according to a court filing. "It doesn't feel right to be training on people's data and then competing with them in the marketplace," Balaji told the AP in late October. "I don't think you should be able to do that. I don't think you are able to do that legally." He told the AP that he gradually grew more disillusioned with OpenAI, especially after the internal turmoil that led its board of directors to fire and then rehire CEO Sam Altman last year. Balaji said he was broadly concerned about how its commercial products were rolling out, including their propensity for spouting false information known as hallucinations. But of the "bag of issues" he was concerned about, he said he was focusing on copyright as the one it was "actually possible to do something about." He acknowledged that it was an unpopular opinion within the AI research community, which is accustomed to pulling data from the internet, but said "they will have to change and it's a matter of time." He had not been deposed and it's unclear to what extent his revelations will be admitted as evidence in any legal cases after his death. He also published a personal blog post with his opinions about the topic. Schulman, who resigned from OpenAI in August, said he and Balaji coincidentally left on the same day and celebrated with fellow colleagues that night with dinner and drinks at a San Francisco bar. Another of Balaji's mentors, co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, had left OpenAI several months earlier, which Balaji saw as another impetus to leave. Schulman said Balaji had told him earlier this year of his plans to leave OpenAI and that Balaji didn't think that better-than-human AI known as artificial general intelligence "was right around the corner, like the rest of the company seemed to believe." The younger engineer expressed interest in getting a doctorate and exploring "some more off-the-beaten path ideas about how to build intelligence," Schulman said. Balaji's family said a memorial is being planned for later this month at the India Community Center in Milpitas, California, not far from his hometown of Cupertino. -- -- -- -- -- - EDITOR'S NOTE -- This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. -- -- -- -- -- -- The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP's text archives.