Former OpenAI Researcher Suchir Balaji’s Parents Don’t Believe Their Son Died by Suicide

Suchir Balaji’s parents seeking answers about their son’s death last month. The 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher and whistleblower died of suicide in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26, as determined by the county medical examiner. In interviews with some news outlets, Balaji’s parents — Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy — expressed doubt their son could have died by suicide. 

The family has hired an expert to perform an independent autopsy, but has yet to release the report’s findings, Balaji’s mother, Poornima Ramarao told The Mercury News. “We’re demanding a thorough investigation — that’s our call.”

Meanwhile, officers have told The Mercury News so far they do not suspect any foul play in Balaji’s death.

The young Indian American techie made headlines in late October when he accused OpenAI of breaking federal copyright law by siphoning data from across the internet to train its blockbuster chatbot ChatGPT. His death came a week after he had been named in court filings as someone who had “unique and relevant documents” that would support the case against OpenAI, with whom he worked for nearly four years. The Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among several newspapers, including The New York Times, to sue the San Francisco-based startup in the past year. Balaji helped gather and organize the enormous amounts of internet data used to train the startup’s ChatGPT chatbot.

In an interview with the New York Times published on Oct. 23, Balaji argued OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data were used to train ChatGPT. “If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he told the outlet, adding that “this is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”

Meanwhile, in a statement to Business Insider, OpenAI said it was “devastated” to learn of Balaji’s death. The company has been been in touch with his parents, the statement read “to offer our full support during this difficult time.” Open AI “first became aware of Balaji’s concerns when The New York Times published his comments,” the statement continued, adding that it has “no record of any further interaction with him.”

The Prodigal Son

Speaking to The Mercury News at their Alameda County home, Ramarao, herself a former employee of Microsoft who worked on its Azure cloud computing program, said it’s hard to believe that her only child could take his own life. She described him as “an amazing human being, from childhood.” The Florida-born, Bay Area-raised Balaji was “a prodigy from an early age,” his mother said, noting that he “spoke her name at 3 months old, and could recognize words at 20 months.” He “appeared to have a knack for technology, math and computing,” she said. He won several trophies and laurels, including in the 2016 United States of America Computing Olympiad.

Brave Decision

Balaji began working for Open AI in 2020, because he found the  company’s “then-commitment to operating as a nonprofit as admirable,” Ramarao told The Mercury News. But after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, he came to the conclusion that “OpenAI’s use of copyrighted data violated the law and that technologies like ChatGPT were damaging the internet,” Balaji told The New York Times in the October interview.

He left the company in August because “he no longer wanted to contribute to technologies that he believed would bring society more harm than benefit,” he told The Times. “If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company.”

But his mother “wasn’t aware of her son’s decision to go public with his concerns about OpenAI” until The Times ran his interview, Ramrod said. She admitted being initially anxious about his decision, but also expressed pride in her son’s bravery. He kept assuring her he wasn’t doing anything wrong, she recalled.

After leaving the company, Balaji wanted to create a nonprofit, “one centering on the machine learning and neurosciences fields,” Ramarao said to The Mercury News, adding that he had “already spoken to at least one venture capitalist for seed funding.” He also went on a backpacking trip in the Catalina Islands to celebrate his 26th birthday  with several friends from high school Ramarao said. In April, he went with several friends to Patagonia and South America, she added.

The Tragedy

Balaji last spoke to his parents on Nov. 22, Ramrod said, and added that “the 10-minute phone call centered around his recent trip, and ended with him talking about getting dinner.” Her son was “very happy,” Ramarao said. “He had a blast,” she said, about his trip. “He had one of the best times of his life.”

However, when she called him the following day, he didn’t pick up her phone. Assuming he must be busy with friends, she hung up. But when she didn’t hear from him until Nov. 25, she visited his apartment, but got no answer. She told The Mercury News that when she called authorities that evening, she was “allegedly told by a police dispatch center that little could be done that day.” So she followed the next day — Nov. 26 — when the San Francisco police found Balaji’s body in his apartment. However, Ramarao wasn’t told of her son’s death “until a stretcher appeared in front of Balaji’s apartment,” she told The Mercury News. She was not allowed inside until the following day. “I can never forget that tragedy,” she said. “My heart broke.” 

Top photo: Suchir Balaji, right, with his parents, Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy. (Poornima Ramarao Facebook photo)