The whistleblower from OpenAI was found dead in a San Francisco apartment, suspected suicide

According to 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 by suicide in his San Francisco apartment.

Suchir Balaji served as a technical staff researcher for OpenAI from November 2020 to August 2024. In an interview with The New York Times, he stated that he helped OpenAI use large amounts of data collected from the internet without permission to train ChatGPT until it was publicly released in November 2022. Among other allegations, The New York Times reported that the company created its own transcription software and ran it on YouTube to collect data.

Authorities said that on November 26th, police and medical personnel were called to check on Balaji's health at his home and subsequently found him dead in his apartment. "The Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) has confirmed the deceased as Suchir Balaji, age 26, of San Francisco," the coroner's office said in a statement. "The cause of death has been determined as suicide."