OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji’s death: family demands FBI probe

New York: Poornima Ramarao, mother of Suchir Balaji a former employee at ChatGPT-parent OpenAI, demanded FBI probe into her son’s death calling it a ‘cold-blooded murder’, according to The Guardian.

Suchir Balaji, who accused the company in October of violating copyright laws, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in California on November 26.

However, authorities termed the 26-year-old OpenAI whistleblower’s death a suicide.

Taking to platform X, Poornima Ramarao claimed that the private investigator they hired to do a second autopsy ‘doesn't confirm’ the cause of death as stated by police.

Ramarao alleged that at Balaji's apartment on the Buchanan Street ‘There was a sign of struggle in the bathroom and it looks like someone hit him in the bathroom based on blood spots.’

Ramarao said that what authorities decaled as suicide was a ‘cold-blooded murder’, alongside tagging billionaire Elon Musk and Indian-American tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Responding to the post, Musk said Balaji's death ‘doesn't seem like a suicide’.

Speaking at a vigil for his son in Milpitas, Balaji's father, Balaji Ramamurthy said that during a 15-minute call that he had with his son on November 22 they talked about Balaji's Los Angeles trip for his birthday celebration, adding ‘He was in a good mood’.

Suchir Balaji who quit OpenAI in October 2023 after nearly four years in the company, alleged that OpenAI's AI models were trained on copyrighted material taken from the internet without authorization, which he termed harmful.

At OpenAI Suchir Balaji worked on data collection for the company’s product ChatGPT.

In an interview with the New York Times, he said that OpenAI’s alleged practice of replicating copyrighted material during training ‘is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole’.

OpenAI responded to the allegations claiming that they adhere to principles and legal precedents in their data use.