The dad and mom of deceased OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji have sued the town of San Francisco and the San Francisco Police Division, alleging that the true reason for his dying was not suicide, however homicide.
The lawsuit, filed in January, alleges that the SFPD lined up the crime, ruling it a suicide with out conducting a radical investigation.
Balaji, who had labored as a researcher at OpenAI, was discovered lifeless in his San Francisco condo final November. Attorneys say Balaji’s dad and mom, Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy, requested additional investigation into his dying however had been informed the case was already closed.
“The lawsuit calls for that the town, police division, and health worker launch public paperwork withheld underneath the Public Information Act,” Joseph Goethals, lawyer for the petitioners, informed Decrypt. He stated that if the paperwork weren’t supplied inside 10 days, and “no legitimate exceptions apply, a lawsuit can compel their launch. We are going to search a court docket order to acquire them.”
The lawsuit claims that SFPD violated the California Public Information Act by unlawfully withholding public data of the case. Attorneys for Ramarao and Ramamurthy additionally argued that the investigation into their son’s dying was rushed and insufficient, with officers ignoring key forensic findings and failing to deal with their requests for additional inquiry.
The lawsuit calls for the fast disclosure of all stories, pictures, and movies, together with protection of authorized prices.
Stated Geothals: “If the San Francisco Superior Court docket doesn’t interpret and impose the legislation accurately, we are going to search recourse with the Court docket of Attraction. We hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Balaji labored for OpenAI from November 2020 to August 2024. In an interview with The New York Instances in October, he stated that earlier than the general public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, he had helped OpenAI collect and use “monumental quantities” of knowledge taken from the web with out permission.
In keeping with the lawsuit, in December, Balaji’s household employed forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Cohen to carry out a personal post-mortem. In his report, Dr. Cohen decided that there was a single gunshot wound within the mid-forehead, barely to the appropriate of the bridge of his nostril.
Dr. Cohen stated that the bullet trajectory was uncommon for a suicide, because it traveled downward at a slight left-to-right angle, utterly lacking the mind earlier than lodging within the brainstem, based on the go well with. Dr. Cohen recognized a contusion on the again of Balaji’s head, which he stated raised additional questions in regards to the circumstances of his dying.
The San Francisco Police Division didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark by Decrypt.
The lawsuit known as out the circumstances of Bilaji’s dying. His physique was discovered per week after The New York Instances talked about the whistleblower in a court docket submitting associated to its lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI.
Regardless of Balaji’s revelations, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pushed again on the New York Instances’ claims. Talking on the newspaper’s annual DealBook Summit, Altman dismissed the allegations. He additional claimed that the publication’s lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI over use of its supplies to coach AI fashions put the paper on the “unsuitable aspect of historical past.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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