Open AI whistleblower Suchir Balaji’s mother alleges son’s ‘murder, not suicide’

Mother of Indian-American OpenAI whistleblower, Suchir Balaji, who was found dead inside his apartment, has shared shocking details about the case.

Poornima Rao, Balaji’s mother claimed that it was a ‘cold-blooded murder’ and authorities are projecting it as a ‘suicide’.

Seeking help from X Chairman Elon Musk, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, and Governor of California Gavin Newsom, Balaji’s mother wrote, “We hired a private investigator and did a second autopsy to throw light on the cause of death. Private autopsy doesn’t confirm the cause of death stated by police”.

“Suchir’s apartment was ransacked, signs of struggle in the bathroom and looks like someone hit him in the bathroom based on blood spots,” she added.

She said that ‘lobbying’ in San Francisco city won’t stop them from getting justice. Rao also demanded an FBI investigation into the case.

Elon Musk replies

Surprisingly, Elon Musk responded to the X post by saying, “This doesn’t seem like a suicide”.

In October, the 26-year-old AI researcher raised serious concerns about Sam Altman-run chatGPT maker OpenAI “breaking copyright law”.

In a post on X in October, Balaji said, “I was at OpenAI for nearly 4 years and worked on ChatGPT for the last 1.5 of them. I initially didn’t know much about copyright, fair use, etc. but became curious after seeing all the lawsuits against GenAI companies.”

“When I tried to understand the issue better, I eventually concluded that fair use seems like a pretty implausible defence for a lot of generative AI products, for the basic reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the data they’re trained on,” he further posted.

Also read:

OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji found dead at US apartment