Former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji’s mother, Poornima Rao, thanked Elon Musk and for his social media company X where she ‘can bring the truth to the public’.
Rao rued the fact that news media is not covering the incident in an unbiased way.
“Thank you for the X platform where we can express facts concerns openly with out fear of being killed. When news media is not covering, we have X for us to bring truth to public. Wish TV channel would pick up this unbiased,” she wrote in a post on X.
Rao also for Musk for assistance and reaffirmed her conviction that her son’s death was not a suicide in an interview with businessman Mario Nawfal. She also said that her kid was much disturbed by OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit business model.
“The reason he joined OpenAI was his belief that AI will help humanity,” she told Nawfal. “When OpenAI became for-profit, his concerns began to grow.”
The death of Suchir Balaji, an OpenAI whistleblower, has reignited debate over transparency in artificial intelligence development. His family and others, including Elon Musk, have questioned the circumstances surrounding the police-ruled death. Musk has previously expressed skepticism over the official suicide ruling, stating, “It did not seem like a suicide.”
Balaji, a vocal critic of the artificial intelligence industry’s reliance on copyrighted data, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. Authorities initially ruled his death a suicide, but Balaji’s family has raised concerns over the circumstances, citing evidence that suggests foul play. The tragic news has cast a spotlight on unresolved ethical and legal dilemmas surrounding generative AI technologies, issues Balaji passionately debated throughout his career.
Balaji, 25, was widely regarded as a rising star in the tech world. During his nearly four-year tenure at OpenAI, he played a pivotal role in gathering and organising vast amounts of internet data to train AI models like GPT-4, the foundation of ChatGPT. His early enthusiasm for the transformative potential of AI gradually gave way to disillusionment as he witnessed what he called the industry’s “reckless and exploitative” practices.
Earlier, in the aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election, Elon Musk took to X (formerly Twitter) to urge users to take an active role in sharing and fact-checking information on the platform. Following Donald Trump’s projected victory, Musk criticised traditional media’s coverage of the election, claiming it misled the public, and positioned X as an alternative for those seeking accurate information.