SAN FRANCISCO — The parents of a former OpenAI researcher who recently exposed the corporate's business practices are questioning the circumstances surrounding their son's death last month.
In an interview this week, Suchir Balaji's mother and father expressed confusion and shock at his sudden death and doubted that their son could have died by suicide, because the county coroner had determined.
The family hired an authority to conduct an independent autopsy but has not yet released the outcomes of the report.
“We demand a thorough investigation – that is our job,” said Balaji's mother, Poornima Ramarao.
San Francisco police found Balaji dead in his Lower Haight apartment on Nov. 26, lower than per week after his twenty sixth birthday.
The San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office later told this news outlet that his death was a suicide, although a final autopsy report has not yet been released while the office conducts toxicology tests. Earlier this month, San Francisco police officials said there was “no evidence of a crime at this time.”
Balaji's death sent shockwaves throughout Silicon Valley and the unreal intelligence industry.
In late October, he attracted national attention when he accused his former employer OpenAI of violating federal copyright law by harvesting data from the Internet to coach its blockbuster chatbot ChatGPT.
His concerns underscored allegations made in recent times by authors, screenwriters and computer programmers that OpenAI stole their content without permission, violating U.S. fair use laws that govern how people can use previously published works.
Media corporations which have sued the corporate include The Mercury News and 7 of its affiliated newspapers, and individually the New York Times.
In an interview with The New York Times published in October 2024, Balaji described his decision to depart the generative artificial intelligence company in August, while also declaring that its data collection practices were “not a sustainable model for the Internet ecosystem as a whole.” .
“If you believe what I believe, you just have to leave the company,” he told the newspaper.
By November 18, Balaji was named in court filings as someone who had “unique and relevant documents” that might support the case against OpenAI. He was amongst a minimum of 12 people — a lot of them former or current OpenAI employees — named by the newspaper in court filings as having material helpful to its case.
His death per week later left Balaji's parents in turmoil.
In an interview this week at their Alameda County home, his mother said her only child “was an amazing person from childhood.”
“Nobody believes he could do this,” Ramarao said of his suicide.
OpenAI didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment, but in an announcement to Business Insider it said it was “devastated” to learn of Balaji's death and said it had been in contact along with his parents “to navigate this difficult time.” Time to supply our full support.” .”
“Our priority is to continue to do everything we can to support them,” the corporate said in an announcement. “We first became aware of his concerns when The New York Times published his comments, and we have no record of any further interactions with him.
“We respect his and others’ right to freely share his views,” the statement continued. “Our thoughts are with Suchir’s family and we extend our deepest condolences to all who mourn his loss.”
Balaji was born in Florida and grew up within the Bay Area. He was a toddler prodigy from a young age, his mother told this news outlet. When he was three months old he spoke her name; At 18 months, he asked me to “light a lamp to cheer me up,” and by 20 months, he could recognize words, she said.
Balaji appeared to have a knack for technology, mathematics and computer science, taking home trophies and gaining fame, including on the 2016 United States of America Computer Olympiad.
In 2020, he began working for OpenAI – he found the corporate's commitment to operating as a nonprofit organization admirable on the time, his mother said. His opinion of the corporate soured in 2022 when he was hired to gather data from the Internet for the corporate's GPT-4 program, The New York Times reported. The program analyzed text from almost your entire Internet to coach its artificial intelligence program, the outlet reported.
Ramarao said she was not aware of her son's decision to go public along with his concerns about OpenAI until the newspaper published his interview. While she was immediately concerned about his decision and even begged him to talk to a copyright lawyer, Ramarao also expressed pride in her son's courage.
“He kept reassuring me, 'Mom, I'm not doing anything wrong – look at the article.' I'm just saying, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with that,” said Ramarao, herself a former Microsoft worker who worked on its Azure cloud computing program. “I supported him. I didn't criticize him. I told him, ‘I’m proud of you because you have your own opinion and you know what’s right and what’s wrong.’ He was very ethical.”
After leaving the corporate, Balaji decided to begin a nonprofit organization that might concentrate on the areas of machine learning and neuroscience, Ramarao said. He has already spoken to a minimum of one enterprise capitalist about seed funding, she said.
“For example, I ask, 'How are you going to make a living?'” Ramarao said. She recalled how her son repeatedly tried to allay concerns about his funds by saying, “I don't care about money – I want to do a service to humanity.”
Balaji also appeared to have a busy schedule. He turned 26 while backpacking within the Catalina Islands with several friends from highschool. Such trips were a every day occurrence for him – in April he traveled to Patagonia and South America with several friends.
Balaji last spoke to his parents on November 22, a 10-minute phone call that discussed his recent trip and ended with him talking about dinner.
“He was very happy,” Ramarao said. “He had a lot of fun. He had one of the best times of his life.”
Ramarao remembers calling her son just after noon on Nov. 23, but said it rang once and went to voicemail. Suspecting that he was busy with friends, she tried to go to his apartment only on November 25, when she knocked but received no answer. She said she called the authorities that evening but was allegedly told by a police dispatch center that little might be done that day. She followed suit on November 26 and San Francisco police later found Balaji's body in his apartment.
Ramarao said she only discovered about her son's death when a stretcher showed up outside Balaji's apartment. She wasn't allowed in until the subsequent day.
“I will never forget this tragedy,” Ramarao said. “My heart is broken.”
Ramarao questioned authorities' investigation into her son's death, claiming that San Francisco police closed their case and turned it over to the county coroner's office inside an hour of the invention of Balaji's body.
Ramarao said she and her husband have since commissioned a second autopsy on Balaji's body. She declined to release documents from that investigation. Their attorney, Phil Kearney, declined to comment on the outcomes of the family's independent autopsy.
Last week, San Francisco police spokesman Evan Sernoffsky referred questions on the case to the coroner's office. David Serrano Sewell, executive director of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, declined to comment.
Ramarao sat on the couch within the front room, shaking his head and expressing frustration with the authorities' investigative efforts thus far.
“As grieving parents, we have the right to know what happened to our son,” Ramarao said. “He was so happy. He was so brave.”
Originally published:
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