Elon Musk reacts to an interview conducted by the mother of OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji

Last year, OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji was found dead in his apartment and several people, including Elon Musk, were found crying. Earlier this week, his mother claimed that the deceased technician was against OpenAI turning into a for-profit company. The interview sparked new debate, as well as reaction from the billionaire businessman in X.

“The reason he joined OpenAI was because he believed that artificial intelligence would help humanity. He was initially impressed by OpenAI because it was a nonprofit organization. Then his concerns started to appear and he started asking himself questions,” said the whistleblower’s mother in an interview with Mario Nawfal on X.

Musk re-posted the video on his social media account, emphasizing his stance with several exclamation marks. He had previously agreed with her that it “didn’t look like suicide.” The founder of Tesla and SpaceX – once co-founder of OpenAI – has been a vocal critic of recent decisions made by Sam Altman.

Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment last year – months after OpenAI was accused of copyright infringement in creating ChatGPT. The San Francisco Police Department ruled his death a suicide and found no evidence of foul play.

During a conversation on October 24, Suchir Balaji expressed skepticism about the “fair use” of generative AI products.

“I recently participated in a NYT article on fair use and generative AI, and why I’m skeptical ‘fair use’ would be a plausible defense for many generative AI products,” he expressed his opinion a month before his death.

He added: “To give some context: I have worked at OpenAI for almost 4 years and have been working on ChatGPT for the last 1.5 years. Initially, I didn’t know much about copyright, fair use, etc., but I became interested after seeing all the lawsuits filed against GenAI companies.”

As I tried to understand this issue better, I eventually came to the conclusion that fair use seems a pretty unlikely defense for many generative AI products for the basic reason that they can create substitutes that compete with trained NA data. I go into more detail about why I think so in my post. Of course, I’m not a lawyer, but I still believe that even non-lawyers should understand the law – both the letter of it and why it exists at all,” he wrote. (ANI)

(With the participation of the agency)