Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment.
Police investigators determined Balaji’s cause of death a suicide as they couldn’t find evidence of foul play in the apartment.
His death, on November 26, comes just days after his name surfaced in court filings related to lawsuits against OpenAI for its data-gathering practices.
Who Was Balaji?
Balaji, a Cupertino-raised Indian American, was nothing short of brilliant.
A programming prodigy, he clinched top honors in competitions like the 2017 Berkeley Programming Contest and placed 31st in the ACM ICPC World Finals.
His passion for artificial intelligence blossomed early, inspired by the technology’s potential to tackle humanity’s biggest challenges.
“I thought AI could solve unsolvable problems…like curing diseases,” he told The New York Times in October.
By 2024, disillusioned, he left OpenAI, citing concerns that the technology was doing more harm than good.
Balaji claimed that the company was using copyrighted material to develop its products.
