Missing Pen Drive, No CCTV: Mystery Deepens in OpenAI Whistleblower Suchir Balaji's Death Case

San Francisco: Suchir Balaji, 26-year-old former OpenAI employee was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on December 14; while initially his death was termed as a suicide, his family and some investigative journalists believe it to be a murder. While an autopsy report is yet to be shared by the police, investigations reveal a missing pen drive and no CCTV cameras from the apartment where Suchir Balaji's body was found.

‘Missing Pen Drive, No CCTV’: Shocking Revelations in OpenAI Whistleblower Suchir Balaji Death Case

As per latest investigations, the OpenAI whistleblower's pen drive was missing from his apartment and there were no CCTV cameras there as well. Reports suggest that Suchir Balaji's house was ransacked, his pen drive is missing and his cupboards and drawers were also searched. 

San Francisco police has launched an investigation in the Suchir Balaji Death Case as his parents demand an FBI investigation; with new revelations, what seemed like a suicide case, is coming out as a horrific case of murder. 

In a conversation with a leading media house, investigative journalist George Webb, who visited the OpenAI whistleblower's apartment in San Francisco with the latter's parents, said that it was a murder which was committed by one person.

Autopsy and Forensic Report Awaited, Cops Say Suchir Balaji Shot Himself Dead

While an official autopsy report is yet to be released by the police and a forensic report of the fingerprints on the gun found at the California apartment is also awaited, cops believe that Suchir Balaji had shot himself and died by suicide on December 14, 2024. Receipt of a gun license application by Suchir Balaji was also found on a table at his apartment; his parents denied having any information about his son owning a gun. 

‘It Was a Cold-Blooded Murder’: Suchir Balaji's Mother

Amid reports about Suchir Balaji Death Case being a suicide, the 26-year-old boy's mother Poornima Rao has claimed her son's death to be a ‘cold-blooded murder declared by authorities as suicide’. She further claimed that there was a stark difference between the initial police report and a private autopsy report, that her son's apartment was ransacked and that there were signs of struggle in the bathroom suggesting he was hit and this is not a suicide, but a case of murder.

‘This Doesn't Seem Like a Suicide': Elon Musk 

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has responded to the plea made by the mother of OpenAi Whistleblower Suchir Balaji saying that, “This doesn't seems a suicide”, in which she called for an FBI investigation following her son's death. Balaji accused the AI gaint of copyright violations, and he was found dead a month after the allegations surfaced.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, his mother, Poornima Ramarao, revealed that they had hired a private investigator and conducted a second autopsy to further investigate the cause of death. According to Ramarao, the private autopsy did not confirm the police's conclusion. In her post, she tagged billionaire Elon Musk and Indian-American tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom will join the incoming Donald Trump administration and are key ally of president-elect. Mr. Musk, known for his ongoing feud with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, replied to her post, stating, “This doesn't seem like a suicide.”

Suchir Balaji vs OpenAI: What the 26-Year-Old Whistleblower Said

Suchir Balaji had accused OpenAI of training its AI models on copyrighted material scraped from the internet without proper authorization, a practice he argued was detrimental. "If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company," Mr. Balaji said in an interview with The New York Times earlier this year. The Indian-origin tech professional resigned from OpenAI in October 2023 after nearly four years with the company. 

Balaji was outspoken about what he called OpenAI’s misuse of copyrighted materials to train generative AI models. In October, he posted on X (formerly Twitter), “Fair use seems like a pretty implausible defense for a lot of generative AI products, for the basic reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the data they’re trained on.” He also criticized the company’s reliance on ‘fair use’ as a defense, arguing in a blog post cited by the Chicago Tribune that the training of AI systems like ChatGPT raised significant legal and ethical concerns. “No known factors seem to weigh in favor of ChatGPT being a fair use of its training data,” he wrote.

Who was Suchir Balaji, Former OpenAI Employee Found Dead in his Apartment

Indian-American tech researcher Suchir Balaji, 26, who openly criticized the use of copyrighted data in artificial intelligence (AI), was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. Balaji, a computer science graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, had interned with OpenAI and Scale AI during his college years. 

He joined OpenAI in 2019 and during his four years at the company, he worked on several projects, including GPT-4 training and improving ChatGPT’s performance. He left OpenAI in August this year, expressing concerns over the potential harm OpenAI could cause. During his tenure, he played a significant role in data collection for OpenAI's flagship product, ChatGPT. On his personal website, Mr. Balaji elaborated on his concerns, claiming that OpenAI's method of copying data for training its models potentially amounted to copyright infringement.

Just a day before his death, Balaji’s name was mentioned in a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI. Though details about his involvement remain unclear, his public criticism of the company’s data usage practices likely drew attention to his stance on ethical AI development.