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Suchir Balaji death: Mother suspects murder, says documents he had would have shaken OpenAI, Microsoft

In an exclusive interview with India Today, Balaji's mother, Poornima said, "A lot of investment has gone into the AI industry. He was named as a witness by the NYT. Within a week, he was found dead. He had documents and some information that would have been very critical. It would have shaken the AI industry, especially OpenAI and Microsoft. If he had given his testimony, it would have had a very big impact."

On Tuesday, 31st December, the family of the deceased AI expert of Indian origin, Suchir Balaji expressed dissatisfaction over police investigation in the latter’s death case indicating that her son was killed and that he did not commit suicide. Balaji’s mother said that the police hurried the investigation by concluding that the deceased had committed suicide, however, the evidence, she said, proved otherwise.

In an exclusive interview with India Today, Balaji’s mother, Poornima said, “A lot of investment has gone into the AI industry. He was named as a witness by the NYT. Within a week, he was found dead. He had documents and some information that would have been very critical. It would have shaken the AI industry, especially OpenAI and Microsoft. If he had given his testimony, it would have had a very big impact.”

Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old Indian-origin AI expert was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on November 26th. The police ruled the event as a suicide but reports suggest that before his death, Balaji had sounded an alarm on OpenAI’s allegedly illegal copyright practices in the development of ChatGPT. He had left OpenAI in August.

Poornima said that her son was not a whistleblower but just wanted to reveal the harmful effects of AI LLM (large language model) which could turn the AI industry upside down.

“He was not a whistleblower against OpenAI, all he was saying was that the AI LLM model is harmful. It doesn’t actually render the data as it is. This is not only about copyright violations but also about the harm to humanity because the data output is not as expected. A whistleblower is only when he is inside the company, but he had left OpenAI. Until he was there, he never raised his voice against the management,” she said.

Meanwhile, Poornima said that she had hired a private investigator to search for the cause of the death. She said that it does not match with the one stated by the police. Notably,

Elon Musk also took cognizance of the event and said that the case did not look like a suicide case.

Earlier, Poornima had stated that the police reached conclusions too quickly and that she had seen blood stains in the bathroom, signs of a fight. “How can there be no suicide note or further investigation?” she questioned.

The parents of Balaji have expressed disbelief that their son could take his own life. They have called for an FBI investigation into the death of Suchir Balaji to uncover the truth.

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