Suchir Balaji Death: An OpenAI Whistleblower’s Mother Has Alleged Foul Play Behind Her Son’s Death. 26-year-old Suchir Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment last month.
OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji’s mother has alleged foul play in her son’s death, claiming that a private investigator’s probe contradicted the police’s version.
In an exclusive interview with India Today, Balaji’s mother, Poornima Ramarao, said she used ChatGPT to determine that the blood stains found in her son’s apartment don’t seem like a case of suicide.
26-year-old Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment last month, with the medical examiner ruling it as a suicide. Balaji, who quit OpenAI in August, spoke out against the data gathering practice of Open AI and the company’s alleged copyright violation while making ChatGPT.
According to an article in Bloomberg, ” precious life of my son has gone. He wanted to make a difference to mankind”, Suchir Balaji’s mother, Poornima Ramarao (@RaoPoornima), said
There are signs of a fight in the bathroom, and when we fed the picture to ChatGPT, we found that the splatter of blood is not like what it is supposed to be as per the cause of death. We also found separate blood spots in the bathroom, which indicate he may have been hit. There was also no suicide note left, said a grief-stricken Poornima.
That’s when she decided to hire a private investigator to probe the death of her son. The private investigator has concluded that it doesn’t seem like a case of suicide, she said.
“When death by suicide is determined, so many factors are taken into account. The major factor is whether the person is depressed. They didn’t even ask us,” Balaji’s mother said.
Through an X post, Elon Musk has also supported Poornima’s claim of foul play. She added that the lawyer told them no one had been inside the apartment on November 26 and that all CCTV cameras were checked carefully.
“The lawyer said we reviewed all the CCTV, and no one entered or left. Then, it was decided that it was a case of suicide. We told them there are 3 entry points. Two of them, one through the garage and one through the backdoor don’t have CCTV. But they’re not listening to us,” she said.
Appealing to the Ministry of External Affairs for intervention, Poornima alleged that the tech industry lobby in San Francisco was very powerful. “There is a lot of corruption. My son wanted to make a difference to humanity. He was working on a project called ‘Futura Doctor Visit’. Our dreams have been snatched away from us,” she said.
