Suchir Balaji’s families sued San Francisco officials for allegedly denying them access to information relating to the police investigation into his late November death.
According to the complaint filed in state court, Balaji’s mother and father accuse the San Francisco Police Department of “illegally withholding people information” that may reveal the nature of Balaji’s dying. It comes as the family has  , extremely questioned the situation of Balaji’s dying, despite San Francisco’s medical examiner and police department maintaining that he died by suicide.
In their complaint, the kids asked a judge to push officials to hand over police reports detailing the revelation of Balaji’s figure, which was found Nov. 26 in his Lower Haight room. Their lawyers, Joseph Goethals and Kevin Rooney, took issue with the police department’s say that the records cannot be released amid an ongoing research, suggesting that authorities are acting as if the situation is now closed.
The lawsuit claimed that as they searched for more information about the cause and circumstances surrounding Suchir’s horrible death, Petitioners and their attorneys have been” stymied at every change” in the two plus months since their brother’s passing. ” This complaint, they hope, is the beginning of the end of that blockage”.
Balaji garnered national interest in October when , he told the New York Times , that his previous company of four times, OpenAI, repeatedly flouted national copyright laws by siphoning data from across the net to train , its hit robot, ChatGPT. He claimed that the company’s data collection practices are” not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole” and that they “are not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”
” If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company”, he told the New York Times.
Following the lawsuits brought by artists and newspapers like The Mercury News and The New York Times, Balaji alleges that Microsoft and OpenAI stole their content in violation of U.S.” fair use” laws, which regulate how people can use previously published work.
On Nov. 18, the New York Times named Balaji as someone who had “unique and relevant documents” that would support the outlet’s case against OpenAI. He was one of at least 12 people named by the newspaper in court filings as having information that would be helpful to their case, many of whom were former or current OpenAI employees.
Balaji last spoke to his father, Balaji Ramamurthy, on Nov. 22, the day after his 26th birthday. The former OpenAI employee was  , found dead in his Buchanan Street apartment four days later, after his mother, Poornima Ramarao, insisted that San Francisco police check on him.
Balaji’s suicide has become a subject of international conjecture, fueled by rampant speculation about foul play. Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna called for” a full and transparent investigation in the middle of January,” while billionaire Elon Musk and former Fox News provocateur Tucker Carlson have voiced their opinions on his death.
Since Balaji’s death, academics who study culture and media ethics have expressed concern. Nolan Higdon, a lecturer at Cal State East Bay in Hayward, recently described the subject as” a fascinating baseless conspiracy, especially because it draws people from across the political spectrum.”
A preliminary verdict was made shortly after Balaji’s passing that he had committed suicide, but a final autopsy report has not yet been completed due to ongoing toxicology tests. San Francisco police have repeatedly stated that they have located no indications of foul play and have turned the case over to the medical examiner’s office.
The lawsuit filed by Balaji’s parents on Friday provided information regarding the results of a separate autopsy, which they conducted in December. According to the lawsuit, Balaji died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound that had an “atypical and uncommon in suicides.” However, the lawsuit provided no details of that autopsy’s final findings on the manner of Balaji’s death.
The family has repeatedly declined to give this news outlet a copy of the independent autopsy’s findings, with Balaji’s mother saying on Friday that “it’s not a complete report.” According to his LinkedIn profile, Dr. Joseph Cohen, a Novato-based forensic pathologist who previously worked as Riverside County’s chief forensic pathologist from 1999 to 2010, performed that autopsy.
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