Local news is reporting the sudden unexplained death of an OpenAI Whistleblower.

The medical examiner’s office determined the manner of death to be suicide…. Information he held was expected to play a key part in lawsuits against the San Francisco-based company.

[…]

In 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 three months ago had started his own blog with his first post about fair use.

Suchir Balaji’s homepage

Writing:

When does generative AI qualify for fair use? (PDF)

I’m a researcher living in San Francisco, CA.

I previously was an AI researcher at OpenAI from 2020-2024, and before that did my undergrad at UC Berkeley.

You can reach me at firstnamelastname@gmail.com.

Related: Whistleblower John Barnett also was recently found dead just before he was expected to testify against Boeing.