OpenAI Whistleblower's Death Ruled Suicide, Family Disputes Findings

Mother of OpenAI Whistleblower Says She's Sent Material From Scene of Alleged Suicide for Laboratory Testing

OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji's autopsy report has been released to his family, who remain unconvinced that he died by suicide -- and that they're testing a strange hair sample found in his apartment. According to a joint report from the city's medical examiner and police department that was provided to Fortune and other media outlets, investigators "found no evidence or information to establish a cause and manner of death for [Balaji] other than a suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head." As she has since soon after Balaji's untimely death -- which occurred just a month after the New York Times published his claims that he'd helped OpenAI hoover up "enormous amounts" of copyrighted material to train its AI without the consent of any creators -- his mother Poornima Ramarao insists there's more to the story than authorities are letting on, especially when it comes to the official report's claim that the young man was alone in his apartment and that there was no sign of struggle or forced entry. "There are tons of inconsistencies in [the medical examiner's] decision," Ramarao wrote in a post on X, seemingly referencing a previous claim she made about the discovery of a blood-covered synthetic hair at Balaji's apartment after his death. Ramarao now says that she and her family "have sent the hair found in [the] apartment for testing." "[Underlying] assumptions are not supporting the facts in reports," the mother wrote, alluding to her family's independent autopsy that found his fatal gunshot wound wasn't consistent with suicide In a lawsuit filed ahead of this new report, Ramarao and her husband Balaji Ramamurthy claimed that San Francisco and its police department were covering up alleged foul play in their son's death and that they had never properly processed the scene of their son's death or looked at his phone or laptop. Perhaps responding to the latter claim, SF authorities said in their report that Balaji's computer had been used to search for information about brain anatomy. Paired with toxicology findings from the latest autopsy suggesting he'd been drinking and taking amphetamines, that final internet search does seem to bolster a portrait of a young man under pressure and in crisis. Needless to say, the whole situation feels ripped from the pages of a techno-thriller -- and while much has remained a muddy haze of claims and counterclaims, it'll be interesting to see if that synthetic hair analysis brings any new clarity to the case.

OpenAI Whistleblower's Death Ruled a Suicide by Autopsy Report

San Francisco's medical examiner has ruled that OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji died by suicide, amid speculation fueled by his own family that he was murdered. An autopsy report has backed up initial police findings which found "no evidence of foul play" while revealing several other disturbing details. Balaji quit OpenAI last year after becoming disenfranchised with the company's data training practices. "If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company," Balaji told The New York Times. Balaji had come to the opinion that scraping images, text, and videos from the open web and feeding it to AI models was not a "sustainable model for the internet ecosystem." After his death, rumors began to swirl around the circumstances. His own parents questioned the official story saying "there was no suicide note left" and "there was nobody else at the scene but that doesn't mean they can just come to a conclusion." The family released gruesome photos of blood splattered around his apartment which they say proves Balaji's death was a cold-blooded murder. However, the Chief Medical Examiner's Office returned a suicide verdict while highlighting new findings. The report reveals that Balaji had alcohol and amphetamine in his system when he died and had been searching on his computer for information about brain anatomy. It also highlighted that there was only one entrance into Balaji's apartment -- the front door -- and there was no sign of "forced entry to the unit or disturbance within the unit." Security camera footage and key fob records also confirmed that no one else entered the apartment during the time window in which he died. "These facts, taken together, support that Mr Balaji was alone at the time of the incident," writes San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott in a joint letter with the Medical Examiner's office. "The SFPD found no evidence or information to establish that Mr Balaji died of means other than a suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."