Musk says OpenAI-whistleblower Suchir Balaji was murdered. Who was he?
What's the story
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has claimed that OpenAI researcher and whistleblower Suchir Balaji was murdered. The claim comes after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested in a recent interview that Balaji's death was a suicide. Balaji, an Indian-origin researcher who worked at OpenAI for four years, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in November 2024. His family has disputed the police's suicide ruling, citing major flaws in the investigation process.
Career trajectory
A look at Balaji's life
Balaji, a computer scientist from the University of California, Berkeley, started his career with internships at OpenAI and Scale AI. After graduation, he joined OpenAI full-time and worked on major projects like WebGPT and GPT-4 pretraining. His role later expanded to include work on the reasoning team and post-training of ChatGPT. However, he left the organization over ethical concerns about its technologies' societal impact.
Legal battle
Balaji's family disputes police findings
In August 2023, Balaji resigned from OpenAI and publicly accused the firm of illegally using copyrighted material to train its generative AI models. His mother, Poornima Ramarao, has also alleged that "everyone is being silenced" and "no one is willing to speak the truth." She further claimed that even attorneys have been pressured into calling her son's death a suicide.
Business fued
Musk and Altman's ongoing feud
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI but left in 2018 over disagreements with its direction, has since launched his own AI company xAI. The two tech moguls have been publicly trading barbs for some time now. Recently, Altman defended OpenAI's success amid Musk's criticisms and after Musk's offer to purchase the company was humorously rejected by Altman.
Fallout
Rivalry between Musk and Altman
Balaji's death has further complicated the ongoing feud between Musk and Altman. After Altman's interview with Tucker Carlson, Musk tweeted "He was murdered," without providing any evidence. This accusation comes as contrast to the police's initial investigation which found no foul play in Balaji's death.