According to PANews on December 14, as reported by Decrypt, 26-year-old former OpenAI employee Suchir Balaji publicly accused the company of unethically using data to train its artificial intelligence platform, and was later found dead in his San Francisco apartment from suicide.
Suchir Balaji served as a researcher for OpenAI's technical staff from November 2020 to August 2024. In an interview with The New York Times, he stated that he helped OpenAI train ChatGPT using a vast amount of data collected from the internet without permission, until its public release in November 2022. Among other allegations, The New York Times reported that the company created its own transcription software and ran the software on YouTube to collect data.
According to authorities, on November 26, police and medical personnel were called to Balaji's home to check on his well-being, and subsequently found him dead in his apartment. 'The Chief Medical Examiner's Office (OCME) has confirmed the deceased as Suchir Balaji, 26, from San Francisco,' the medical examiner's office stated in a release. 'The cause of death has been determined as suicide.'