Suchir Balaji, 26, who was found dead in his San Francisco home three months after accusing his former employer OpenAI of violating copyright laws in its development of ChatGPT, “felt that AI is a harm to humanity,” according to his mother.
Balaji’s death on November 26 was ruled a suicide, and Fox News Digital previously reported that the San Francisco Police Department found no evidence of foul play. But the 26-year-old’s mother is urging police to reopen their investigation, saying it “doesn’t look like a normal situation.”
Bereaved mother Poornima Ramarao told Business Insider that a private autopsy commissioned by Balaji’s family and completed in early December produced concerning results. Now, they are working with an attorney to urge the department to conduct a “proper investigation.”
“We want to leave the question open,” the bereaved mother, Poornima Ramarao, told the outlet.
The AI researcher’s death came months after he parted ways with Open AI and raised concerns about the company breaking copyright law in an October interview with The New York Times. He was named in a copyright lawsuit waged against the company by the New York Times which alleged that Microsoft and OpenAI used millions of published articles