Indian-origin OpenAI whistleblower dies by suicide in San Francisco

A 26-year-old Indian-origin former employee of the artificial intelligence giant OpenAI has died by suicide in San Francisco, authorities said.

Suchir Balaji was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment in San Francisco on November 26 on Thanksgiving Day. The medical examiner’s office determined the manner of death to be suicide and police officials said there is “currently, no evidence of foul play”.

“The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) has identified the decedent as Suchir Balaji, 26, of San Francisco,” the office’s Executive Director David Serrano Sewell said. “The manner of death has been determined to be suicide. The OCME has notified the next-of-kin and has no further comment or reports for publication at this time.” The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) said in a statement that officers responded to a residence on the 100 block of Buchanan St. at about 1:15 pm for a well-being check.

“Officers and medics arrived on scene and located a deceased adult male from what appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation,” SFPD officer Robert Rueca wrote in a statement.

Balaji spoke to the Times in October, saying he was one of the researchers who worked gathering data to train OpenAI’s programmes like GPT4, which users interact with through the chatbot ChatGPT.

OpenAI was “devastated” that Balaji had passed away, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.