An unfortunate news has flooded the tech industry.
According to the latest report, 26 year old former researcher at OpenAI in the United States, Suqir Baragi, was recently found dead by suicide in his apartment in San Francisco. David Serrano Sewell, Executive Director of the San Francisco Chief Forensic Office, confirmed the news in an email on Friday and stated that the death was due to suicide.
The news of Barrage's death has caused a great sensation in the technology industry, and the world's richest man and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also reposted related reports on social media and made a comment with a "Hmm".
It is worth mentioning that the conflict between OpenAI and Musk has completely intensified. On December 13th local time, OpenAI released multiple emails and chat records between Musk and OpenAI's digital founders, refuting all of Musk's accusations through a series of detailed evidence.
OpenAI whistleblower dies
On December 13th local time, CNBC reported that 26 year old former OpenAI researcher, Suqir Baragi, was recently found dead by suicide in his apartment in San Francisco.
David Serrano Sewell, Executive Director of the San Francisco Chief Forensic Office, confirmed the news in an email on Friday and stated that the death was due to suicide.
The San Francisco Police Department also stated in an email that on the afternoon of November 26th, police were called to an apartment on Buchanan Street in New York for a health check. During the inspection, they found that an adult man had died, and preliminary investigations showed no evidence of murder.
A spokesperson for OpenAI said in an email, "We are deeply saddened to learn of this incredible news today, and at this difficult time, we express our sympathy to the family of Barrage
It is reported that Balaji is an Indian American who studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. After graduation, he joined OpenAI and participated in the research and development of WebGPT. Later, he joined the pre training team of GPT-4, the reasoning team of O1 and the post training team of ChatGPT.
After working at OpenAI for four years, Baragi suddenly resigned and emphasized that he believed the harm caused by artificial intelligence technology to society would outweigh the benefits.
He also stated that OpenAI's ChatGPT robot is suspected of violating US copyright laws.
In October of this year, The New York Times published a special article about Barrage's concerns, stating that Barrage believes that ChatGPT and other similar chatbots will disrupt the commercial future of individuals or organizations that create digital data and content that has been widely used to train artificial intelligence.
Therefore, he is also known as the "whistleblower" for OpenAI.
Baragi's last post on social platform X was to introduce his thoughts and analysis on whether OpenAI training ChatGPT violates the law. He emphasized that he hopes this will not be interpreted as a criticism of ChatGPT or OpenAI itself.
The news of Barrage's death has caused a great sensation in the tech industry. Elon Musk, the world's richest man and CEO of Tesla, who is currently in a lawsuit with OpenAI, shared the relevant report on social media and commented with a "Hmm".
In June of this year, dozens of former OpenAI employees once again warned through an open letter that artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI lack legal supervision and internal criticism mechanisms, especially in terms of protecting whistleblowers. The open letter was signed by thirteen former OpenAI employees and endorsed by three external individuals, including the "godfather of artificial intelligence" Geoffrey Hinton.
OpenAI, plagued by lawsuits
On the day before Baragi was found dead, a court document listed him as one of the defendants in a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI. OpenAI currently has legal disputes with multiple publishers, writers, and artists over copyright issues.
In addition, several media companies filed lawsuits in December last year, demanding billions of dollars in compensation from OpenAI and Microsoft.
The San Jose Courier, which first reported on the death of Barrage, mentioned that the information held by Barrage was originally considered important evidence in the lawsuit.
At the same time, the conflict between OpenAI and Musk has completely intensified.
On December 13th local time, OpenAI released multiple emails and chat records between Musk and OpenAI's digital founders, refuting all of Musk's accusations through a series of detailed evidence.
OpenAI called out to Musk in a blog post, stating that "you cannot achieve AGI (General Artificial Intelligence) through litigation
OpenAI stated, "We greatly admire Elon Musk's achievements and appreciate his early contributions to OpenAI, but he should compete in the market instead of resorting to court. Our mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity, and we have always adhered to this mission and will continue to do so. We hope Elon agrees with this goal and supports the values of innovation and free market competition, which have driven his personal success
Looking back, Musk sued OpenAI in a state court in San Francisco in March this year for breach of contract, and later withdrew the lawsuit. A few months later, he filed a new lawsuit in federal court. Musk stated in the lawsuit that Ultraman and OpenAI violated an agreement reached when the AI research company was founded to develop technology for the benefit of humanity rather than profit.
In mid November this year, Musk's legal team submitted a new indictment to the Northern District Court of California, which is 107 pages long, an increase of more than 20 pages compared to the original indictment.
Compared to previous lawsuits, Musk has expanded the scope of the lawsuit, accusing Microsoft and OpenAI of violating antitrust laws. OpenAI reportedly demanded that its investors agree not to invest in competitor companies, including Musk's latest startup company, xAI.
It is worth mentioning that the valuation of Musk's xAI company has continued to soar since the beginning of this year. According to the latest report, the valuation of xAI has more than doubled since its financing in May, reaching $50 billion (approximately RMB 363.7 billion).
In October of this year, OpenAI also completed an important round of financing with a valuation of $157 billion (approximately RMB 1142 billion). Thrive Capital led the financing, and investors such as Microsoft and Nvidia also participated in the financing.