Elon Musk has publicly supported Poornima Ramarao, the mother of Suchir Balaji, whose sudden death was discovered in his San Francisco apartment on November 26. Balaji, a former employee at OpenAI and a whistleblower, had raised alarming concerns about the company’s practices before his untimely passing.
Ramarao has rejected the official suicide ruling and is calling for an FBI investigation into what she believes to be a “cold-blooded murder.” In a post on X, she shared details from a private investigator and a second autopsy, both of which contradicted the police’s cause of death. Additionally, she claimed her son’s apartment had been ransacked, with signs of a struggle found in the bathroom and bloodstains suggesting foul play.
)
“Lobbying in SF city doesn’t stop us from getting justice. We demand an FBI investigation,” Ramarao wrote, as Musk voiced his support with a direct statement: “This doesn’t seem like a suicide.”
The death of Balaji, a vocal critic of artificial intelligence, has sent shockwaves through the tech world. He left OpenAI due to ethical concerns over its practices and had accused the company of violating copyright laws. In an October interview with The New York Times, Balaji also warned that technologies like ChatGPT posed a threat to the internet.
Before his passing, Balaji had become increasingly outspoken about the dangers he saw in the AI industry, claiming that AI could be harmful to humanity. “He felt AI is a harm to humanity,” his mother recalled.
The circumstances surrounding Balaji’s death have raised many questions, with his transition from tech innovator to whistleblower against a major AI firm fueling further speculation about the cause of his death.
