Suchir Balaji, the 26-year-old former OpenAI employee who went public with allegations that the company used data to train its artificial intelligence platform, has committed suicide in his San Francisco apartment. Techcrunch.
Balaji worked as a researcher for OpenAI's technical staff from November 2020 to August 2024. In an interview with the New York Times, he headlined that OpenAI has helped train massive amounts of data collected without permission from the Internet. In the year until it goes public in November 2022. Among other allegations, the Times reported that the company created its own transcription software on YouTube to collect data.
“At first, I didn't know much about copyright, fair use, etc., but after seeing all the lawsuits against GenAI companies, I became curious,” Balaji told X in October. . educated”
Last December, the Times sued OpenAI for copyright infringement. In an interview at the New York Times' annual Delbook conference, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said his company had done nothing wrong and that the newspaper was “on the wrong side of history.”
Ian Crosby, partner at Sussman Godfrey and general counsel at The New York Times, told Decrypt that Altman misunderstood copyright law: “What he misses is why copyright law exists and that there is a way to build new technologies that respect the law and the rights of copyright owners.” Crosby. “History has shown time and time again that it is entirely possible to do both.”
According to authorities, Balaji was found dead in his apartment on November 26 after police and paramedics were called to the home to perform a medical check-up. “The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCEE) has identified the deceased as Suchir Balaji, 26, of San Francisco.
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