Award-winning Open Artificial Intelligence Critic mysteriously found dead in U.S.
- Vineet Malik
- Dec 14, 2024
- 3 min read
By Vineet Malik | December 14, 2024 | London, England | @vineetmalik1
In a shocking revelation, Indian-American origin Open Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher – Suchir Balaji, 26 was mysteriously found dead in his Buchanan Street apartment on 26 November in San Francisco, California.
Balaji had raised a flag against his employer – OpenAI, a California based technology Co. for unlawful copyright violations while developing on ChatGPT.
The San Francisco Police has confirmed that there is no foul play behind his death.
What is ChatGPT
It is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI, launched in 2022.
It is capable of generating human-like conversational responses and enables users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail and language.
It is credited with accelerating the AI boom, which has led to ongoing rapid investment in and public attention to the field of AI.
Some observers have raised concern about the potential of ChatGPT and similar programs to displace human intelligence, enable plagiarism or fuel misinformation.
OpenAI has been entangled in myriad lawsuits since 2022 in the United States (U.S.) for unlawfully stealing the copyright material belonging to techies and journalists. The alleged unethical business model used by OpenAI has been under a scanner.
Balaji’s accusations made fearlessly against OpenAI were published through an interview by The New York Times on 23 October, raised eyebrows among people worldwide.
He said “OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs for stealing their material through infringement.
If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the Company. This is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”
He had recently parted ways from OpenAI for ethical and moral reasons on realizing that contributions made by him towards developing ChatGPT brought harm rather than benefiting society.
Balaji, a graduate from University of Berkeley, California in computer science had won multiple awards.
An Award-winning Techie
ACM Intercollegiate Programming Contest ACM Intercollegiate Programming Contest
31st place in ACM Intercollegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals 2018
1st place in Pacific Northwest Regional Contest 2017
1st place in Berkeley Programming Contest 2017
31st place in ACM 2017
1st place in ICPC World Finals 2018
1st place in Pacific Northwest Regional Contest 2017
7th place, $100,000 prize winner in the TSA-sponsored "Passenger Screening Algorithm Challenge"
USA Computing Olympiad USA
US Open 2016 National Champion 2016
USACO Finalist, Training Camp Invitee 2016
He had conducted an in-depth analysis about AI Generative qualification for fair use on his blog just a month prior to his demise.
He concluded his analysis by criticising the use of AI.
Professor emeritus at New York University (NYU) - Gary Marcus, a prominent AI researcher and cognitive scientist has been a big critic of deep learning and AI.
Marcus in his a book called Taming Silicon Valley, launched in fall this year, is his manifesto on how AI should be regulated, but at the same time also most pertinently a call to action.
“We need to get the public involved in the struggle to try to get the AI companies to behave responsibly,” said Marcus in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
review published in February this year.
If Balaji was alive today, his testimony would have helped in the ongoing lawsuit proceedings against OpenAI and perhaps opened a can of worms in this world of AI.
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