- Sunday, February 23, 2025
Balaji’s death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of violating US copyright law while developing ChatGPT. Police officials said there is “currently, no evidence of foul play.”
By: Shajil Kumar
His death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of violating US copyright law while developing ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence programme that has become a moneymaking sensation used by hundreds of millions of people across the world, the report said.
Its public release in late 2022 spurred a torrent of lawsuits against OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists, who say the company illegally stole their copyrighted material to train its programme and elevate its value past USD 150 billion.
In an interview with the New York Times published on October 23, Balaji argued that OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data were used to train ChatGPT.
Balaji left OpenAI because he no longer wanted to contribute to technologies that he believed would bring society more harm than benefit, the report added.
“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 grew up in Cupertino before attending UC Berkeley to study computer science.
Meanwhile, Balaji’s mother has requested privacy while grieving the death of her son, the Mercury News reported. (PTI)
