Elon Musk has publicly defended Poornima Ramarao, the mother of Suchir Balaji, an Indian programmer and former OpenAI employee who was discovered dead at his San Francisco apartment.
Musk asked a question about the official suicide ruling in a post on the social media site X, which echoed Ramarao’s theory of foul play. Before his death, 26-year-old Balaji had accused OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, of infringing on copyright.
According to the police, “no evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation.” His death was determined to be a suicide by the San Francisco Chief Medical Examiner’s Office.
She shared her concerns on X with a post: “Suchir’s apartment was ransacked, signs of struggle in the bathroom and looks like someone hit him in the bathroom based on blood spots. It’s a cold-blooded mu*d*r declared by authorities as suicide. Lobbying in SF city doesn’t stop us from getting justice. We demand FBI investigation”
Ramarao has encouraged the FBI to look into the battle in her son’s apartment and discrepancies in the official autopsy findings, even though the local authorities and medical reports ruled out foul play.
Since then, Musk has received a message from Balaji’s mother requesting more help with the issue. Musk has previously tweeted on the passing of Suchir Balaji.
Suchir Balaji was a vocal opponent of AI abuse before his tragic passing. In an interview with The New York Times, he voiced concerns that ChatGPT and other similar technologies were doing more harm than good and accused OpenAI of illegally utilizing copyrighted data.
After almost four years, Balaji resigned from OpenAI, saying he could no longer support a technology that he felt endangered humanity.
