 "Why parents of OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji want FBI to investigate his death")
The death of OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji has become a subject of debate.
Balaji, 26, a former OpenAI employee, was found dead in November.
While authorities have said that Balaji’s death “appeared to be a suicide,” his parents are insisting that there are signs of foul play and have demanded an FBI investigation.
But what do we know about Balaji’s death? And what are his parents alleging?
Let’s take a closer look:
What happened?
First, let’s take a brief look at Balaji.
Balaji grew up in San Francisco’s Bay Area.
As per The Guardian, Balaji studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.
It was at this time that he did an internship at Open AI – then a fledgling AI research lab.
He began working at OpenAI in November 2020.
Balaji is said to have helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT.
As per The Guardian, John Schulman, one of the founders of OpenAI, said Balaji worked on WebGPT – a precursor to ChatGPT.
Balaji later shifted to organising the huge datasets of online writings and other media used to train GPT-4 – the fourth generation of OpenAI’s flagship large language model and a basis for the company’s famous chatbot .
It was that work that eventually caused Balaji to question the technology he helped build, especially after newspapers, novelists and
others began suing OpenAI and other AI companies for copyright infringement.
Balaji ended up quitting the San Francisco firm in August.
According to The Times of India, Balaji then accused the firm of violating copyright law in its training of ChatGPT .
Balaji in October told The New York Times that the company had violated copyright law.
He claimed programmes like ChatGPT were damaging the internet.
“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” Balaji told the newspaper.
Balaji later told The Associated Press he would “try to testify” in the strongest copyright infringement cases and considered a lawsuit brought by The New York Times last year to be the “most serious.”
_Times l_awyers named him in a November 18 court filing as someone who might have “unique and relevant documents” supporting allegations of OpenAI’s willful copyright infringement.
His records were also sought by lawyers in a separate case brought by book authors including the comedian Sarah Silverman, according to a court filing.
“It doesn’t feel right to be training on people’s data and then competing with them in the marketplace,” Balaji told the AP in late October. “I don’t think you should be able to do that. I don’t think you are able to do that legally.”
He told the AP that he gradually grew more disillusioned with OpenAI, especially after the internal turmoil that led its board of directors to fire and then rehire CEO Sam Altma n last year. Balaji said he was broadly concerned about how its commercial products were rolling out, including their propensity for spouting false information known as hallucinations.
But of the “bag of issues” he was concerned about, he said he was focusing on copyright as the one it was “actually possible to do something about.”
He acknowledged that it was an unpopular opinion within the AI research community, which is accustomed to pulling data from the internet, but said “they will have to change and it’s a matter of time.”
Found dead
Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on November 26 by the police.
As per The Guardian, his mother Poornima Ramarao, who lives in California’s Union City, had filed a missing persons complaint with the police.
This, after she was unable to get in touch with her son for a few days.
Police in Union City then reached out to authorities in San Francisco – who found Balaji dead.
“Officers and medics arrived on scene and located a deceased adult male from what appeared to be a suicide,” police said. “No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation.”
OpenAI after Balaji’s death released a statement saying, “We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir’s loved ones during this difficult time.”
Schulman, who incidentally quit on the same day as Balaji, was quoted as saying by The Guardian, “I was heartbroken to hear of Suchir’s passing. I worked with Suchir on and off since around 2021, and he was one of my favorite and most talented collaborators.”
“Suchir’s contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn’t have succeeded without him,” Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said.
He wrote that what made him such an exceptional engineer and scientist was his attention to detail and ability to notice subtle bugs or logical errors.
“He had a knack for finding simple solutions and writing elegant code that worked,” Schulman wrote. “He’d think through the details of things carefully and rigorously.”
But Balaji’s family said he showed no signs of wanting to take his own life.
They also pointed out that Balaji had no history of mental illness.
They added that no suicide note was recovered.
Balaji Ramamurthy, who was the last person to talk to his son on 22 November, said they discussed his trip to Los Angeles as part of his birthday celebration.
“He was in LA and having a good time. So he sent us all the pictures,” Ramamurthy said. “He was in a good mood.”
Balaji’s family described him as a “happy, smart and brave young man” who loved to hike.
“I was the last person to talk to him,” Ramamurthy told The Times of India. “He was happy, not depressed or anything. It was his birthday week. How can anyone believe there was no note left?”
“He made plans to see us in January. That was the last phone conversation he had with anyone. He went into his apartment and never came out,” Ramarao claimed as per Hindustan Times.
‘Foul play involved’
Balaji’s family has insisted that foul play is involved.
His mother Ramarao claimed it took the medical examiner under a minute to call the incident a suicide.
“The reason they said is he went inside and did not come out, nobody was with him … and he shot himself,” she was quoted as saying by The Guardian. “There was a gun near him.”
“There were signs of a fight in the bathroom. Blood shots. This cannot be ignored,” she was quoted as saying by The Times of India.
His parents have demanded that the FBI investigate Balaji’s case.
Ramarao on X wrote that they hired a private investigator and even carried out a second autopsy.
She said the autopsy did not confirm cause of death as stated by police.
She claimed her son’s apartment was ransacked, there were signs of struggle in the bathroom and that based on blood spots, it looked like someone had hit him.
She claimed that the authorities had declared as suicide what is a cold blooded murder.
“Lobbying in SF city doesn’t stop us from getting justices. We demand FBi investigation,” she concluded.
The family has also started a GoFundMe to raise funds for litigation and to conduct a detailed investigation.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, has thrown his two cents in too.
“This doesn’t seem like a suicide,” the world’s richest man wrote on his social media platform X.
Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company earlier this year alleging it had betrayed its founding aims as a nonprofit research lab benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits.
Musk and OpenAI founder Sam Altman were said to be at odds over whom would run the firm.
Meanwhile, a number of users on social media also rallied behind Balaji’s family.
“This is a high profile case that needs to be thoroughly investigated,” one user wrote.
“Is America really struggling to handle basic investigations? This is so concerning. He was a whistleblower, clearly at risk, and calling this a su**cide just doesn’t add up,” another added.
Balaji had not been deposed.
It remains unclear to what extent his revelations will be admitted as evidence in any legal cases after his death.
He also published a personal blog post with his opinions about the topic.
With inputs from agencies
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