OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji's parents demand FBI probe into alleged suicide

Parents of Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI researcher and whistleblower, are calling for an FBI investigation into the techie's death.

Balaji, who was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov 26, 2024, worked on OpenAI's project WebGPT, which as per John Schulman, one of OpenAI co-founders helped pave the way for ChatGPT.

While the investigators have labelled Suchir Balaji's death a suicide, his parents question the circumstances surrounding it. They contend that the medical examiner did not spend enough time examining Balaji and the scene.

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Suicide or something else?

Balaji was discovered dead in his San Francisco apartment during a police welfare check after his mother Poornima Ramarao filed a missing person report after failing to get in touch with him for three days.

Police in their report said, "Officers and medics arrived on scene and located a deceased adult male from what appeared to be a suicide."

"No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation," they added.

However, Balaji's parents contend that the medical examiner only took 40 seconds to declare the death a suicide.

"The reason they said is he went inside and did not come out, nobody was with him … and he shot himself," said Ramarao, as quoted by The Guardian.

"There was a gun near him," she added.

However, according to the parents, the young techie had no history of mental illness and no suicide note was found.

Suchir's father Balaji Ramamurthy was the last person to talk to him on Nov 22, 2024. The parents said they talked about the 26-year-old's birthday celebrations which included a trip to Los Angeles and that during the 15-minute call "He was in a good mood."

Describing him as an upstanding human who never had anything bad to say about anyone, Suchir's mother lamented, "I don't know how I could have saved my son by teaching him to tell lies."

"The ethics with which I raised him took his life today," added Ramarao.

(With inputs from agencies)