387: His Parents Demand Answers... Did OpenAI Cover-Up Suchir Balaji's Death?

My AMEX Blue Cash Every Day card is my go-to accessory. When I shop, I can earn 3% cash back on U.S. online retail purchases. Try out the Blue Cash Every Day card. Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash explore dash b c e. Terms and cash back cap apply. Hey, what is up everybody and welcome back to MyleHarr podcast. It is me, Josh, Anian. Hello. Hello. Happy to be here. We're happy to have you and Janelle's here, of course. Hello. And when you're watching this, most likely I and Kendall are actually hopefully home with our new baby because yeah, this is a prerecorded episode for our leave. But nevertheless, a very important one at that. This case actually popped up on my radar a while ago and I kind of forgot about it for a little bit and then it kind of resurfaced. I don't even know how. I think I just came across it online sort of randomly. And especially with all the... I think it kind of revolved around some of the latest stuff with OpenAI and some of the new chatGBT models that came out. But what popped up was this OpenAI whistleblower, Suchir Balaji, who mysteriously died. And there's a lot of controversy surrounding his death. His parents believe that he was murdered for whistleblowing on OpenAI and what they were doing. And the authorities ruled that he took his own life. So it's one of those very, very sensitive cases where you really have to take a look at the evidence, take a look at the facts, of the case, which we will, because there is also just so much misinformation online. Absolutely. I think that's kind of the big thing here. And we were discussing beforehand, if all you're getting, which very well could be the case with what happened here, if all you're getting is the misinformation, this clearly looks like a case of murder. And I think the thing that's being missed in all of this is not only... For one, I understand where the family is coming from. But I think with the online discussion, what's being missed in all of this is not only Suchir's fantastic work, I mean, he was one of the found... Well, not founded, but one of the people who built ChatGBT. But also his serious concerns about the company, I think, that even though that is, according to these theories, why he died, I do see that that's kind of fading into the background as opposed to being front and center, like this is basically what he died for, regardless of what you think happened to him. Yeah. And I think, with any case like this, it's always really difficult to navigate because obviously, at the end of the day, I'm never going to say a parent is not in the right to believe, whatever they want to believe about their child's death. And who are we to say otherwise? Like at the end of the day, all we can do is take a look at the facts and the information that we have as far as what the official authorities said, what the medical examiner's report said. But is there always a possibility of a grand conspiracy? And I think, God, with everything else going on in the world, and Epstein even gets mentioned in this episode as well, with the people working at OpenAI and their ties to him, I don't think anything's out of the question. You have to keep an open mind and you have to, and I totally respect and understand where his family's coming from because you just never know. You never know at the end of the day what may have happened, what type of cover-up may have happened. Is it, do I think that it'd be very difficult to do this? And is there, per se, enough motive for somebody to do this? It's kind of hard to say. I mean, we'll get into it and sort of lay out the different theories here. But overall, sutures seem like such a bright individual, extremely smart, an AI researcher, which I think most of us are like, what does that even mean? How do you research AI? So a promising young individual had all sorts of things coming up in his life, plans, he was highly sought after in the tech world. And so his loss is felt by many. And there's a lot of people who are still grappling with the fact that he's gone and they feel like they didn't get the complete story. And you'll see, there's definitely some things here that are maybe cause for concern or maybe warrant more investigation. And that's how the family feels. They feel like a complete investigation wasn't done, that things were sort of brushed under under the rug. Conclusions were jumped to pretty early on, which that's, I always get a little weary when authorities jump straight to the conclusion that somebody took their own life, because I don't know that that's always the right answer, but also you negate the fact that you're not necessarily looking for other clues that may point to any alternatives. And so I think those situations are always tough, right? One, I think, you know, we've seen in other cases, you know, where that is the immediate boom, we figured it out. It's this case, often, not oftentimes, but we have seen it where they'll just jump to that conclusion to file it away, basically, there isn't enough evidence to pursue other avenues. So this makes the most sense off rip, boom, put it away. And so I can understand, like, just in a vacuum, like seeing this and being like, that's what the authorities did here. Right. And in a lot of these situations, and especially with the Blagi family, they seek out second opinions on investigative reports, autopsy, things like that. And when you have other experts and professionals telling you a different story, that's only going to further perpetuate, you know, a different theory. And that just happens. So I understand where everybody's coming from here. But at the end of the day, let's take a look at the facts, let's take a look at the theories. There's a lot to sift through to get to sort of the bottom of things here. But it is definitely a bit odd considering the things that he was working on. And, you know, if you know anything about open AI and Sam Altman, you're kind of like, can we trust this guy? I don't know. Well, the thing too, that's crazy is that open AI was a non-profit for the longest time. That's when when Suthur got started, that's part of the reason why he was interested in it. Because it was looking at AI research more of this open-ended way. And that didn't last. That did not last. No, they saw a business opportunity and then it became a for-profit right company. And so when you kind of think about it from that angle, you can kind of see maybe there's some motive to keep people who are trying to hurt the bottom line, right, quiet, to silence them. And so yeah, it's this one, we'll mess you up. There's a lot of things to consider and think about here. But that being said, let's go ahead and get into it and start by talking about Suthur. Who was he? What was his background? What was his life like before open AI? So if we go back to the beginning, Suthur Balaji was born on November 21st, 1998 in Florida. But he was mainly raised in Cupertino, California, where both his parents worked in the tech industry. His father is Balaji Ramamorthy and his mom is Pornima Ramarrow. And they really fostered his work with technology and computers from a super young age. And they said a sense of momentum defined Balaji's young life. So this was something, if you have tech parents, they're going to get you into tech early. Absolutely. Which I plan to do with my kids because I was in the tech industry for a while before becoming a podcaster. And I miss it sometimes because it's exciting. It's constantly evolving. And it's just fun to nerd out about computers and shit. So but at the age of 13, Suthur had already built his first computer, which is awesome. And in high school, he was invited to the USA Computing Olympiad training camp in South Carolina, where he studied complex programming and algorithms with only two dozen of the country's top computer science students. So that says a lot. I mean, this dude is brilliant. Absolutely. Computer science is no joke. It is probably one of the toughest subjects, I think, out there. It is essentially learning a whole other language. And there's a million computer languages. And so it's very complex. It's very analytical. And lots of mathematics involved. It's very difficult. The event that he went to in South Carolina was incredibly prestigious and selective. It's very hard to get picked to do this. It's invite only in at last the entire summer. Ayush Gupta, who attended the camp alongside Suthur, was surprised to hear that he was from the Bay Area. Given the camp selective nature, Ayush thought he had met all the other talented young programmers through various local coding classes and events. He said, I came to learn that he was almost entirely self taught, which is just that much more impressive. Right. To self teach yourself programming and algorithms and stuff is it takes a certain type of mind to be able to do that. I couldn't do it even if someone sat me down and tutored me for my entire life. Yeah, seriously. I tried it for I did very, very low level classes in computer programming. And even those were really, really difficult to wrap your head around. It's and everybody that I've ever worked with who are serious programmers are just cut from a different cloth. It's absolutely you have to have a certain type of brain to understand this because to most of us, it just looks like a bunch of numbers and letters on a screen. We have no idea what's going on. In addition to camp where he placed 31st, he also ranked seventh in the passenger screening algorithm challenge sponsored by the TSA, which awarded him $100,000. He also won first place in both the 2017 Pacific Northwest Regional and Berkeley Programming Contest at the age of 14. So chair even published a paper about chip design when just like, what the hell? How do you do that? That's just so impressive. And I mean, obviously, he's got his parents. I'm sure his parents played a huge role in his education and knowledge and definitely would help give you sort of a leg up on other kids who maybe didn't have tech parents. But still, to even be able to wrap your head around it that young is super impressive. After high school where Suchir continued doing high level coding and computer programming, he took a gap year to enter the job market as a software engineer at Cora and then eventually attended UC Berkeley. At Berkeley, Suchir was accepted into the Excel Scholars Program, which is another very selective program. Excel Scholars is described as a bridge to Silicon Valley and works to foster young talent intent on working with tech startups across the nation. During college, Suchir spent his summers interning at OpenAI, which as we've been talking about is now the infamous tech startup that created chat GBT. And he worked at Scale AI. And during these days, Suchir became obsessed with the idea of building AGI or artificial general intelligence, which is long theorized by those in the tech sphere. AGI would take the chatbot capabilities of other large language models to the next level, rivaling human cognition and ability to cure diseases and halt aging, which that's the really exciting and positive part of artificial intelligence is if we can program it and continue to feed the algorithms and continue machine learning, it has great potential to do a lot of good for humanity. Well, and it's like this idea of AGI is, as we'll talk about, people in the tech industry will convince you, it's right around the corner, it's right around the corner. But it really is like this far off concept still, it's something that we could potentially build to. But it's more of science fiction than chatbot than chat GBT is right now, because I think in there's this great book Neuromancer, where like there is this AGI that is so powerful that they actually have to split it in half and move it to two separate sides of the matrix. The book coins the term the matrix, by the way. And so that's the other future of it, is like this all powerful thing that could be used for great good, or vis-a-vis the Zizians, their version of AGI is used for bad. Our overlord could enslave all of us. Yeah, that's the other thing too, is that the media loves to pump out like sentient AI is like here already. And the reality is we're still quite a ways off from that being a thing, especially on that scale of being able to just know everything or fully surpass, which you hear anytime any of these tech guys, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, or whatever go on any sort of interview, they're always alluding like, oh yeah, we're just a couple years away. We've got it hidden away. Or it's already been done and there's been other Google whistleblowers who have said that Google's already has it done. The Google AI is actually already sentient and we're fucked basically. And they're keeping it under wraps, which maybe, maybe not, I don't know. But it seems like if you talk to people who are reasonable, logical, who know this, this world, well, they're saying that we're still quite a ways off from from getting there. So cheer was eventually recruited right out of college by open AI co founder John Shulman in 2021 and almost immediately, so cheer became a rising star in the field of artificial intelligence. According to John, so cheer became an essential contributor to the project that eventually led to the creation of chat GPT. He continued his work on open AI's pre training team, where she gathered and organized vast amounts of internet data that was used to train GPT for which would serve as the foundational language model for open AI's flagship product, which would become, you know, free to use, but then, you know, obviously sell subscriptions with it as well. However, it was during this work that suture began to seriously reconsider the kind of information he was feeding into the algorithm. He realized that as you train the machine on newspapers, internet posts and books, it would often just spit out the writing verbatim and that plagiarism was an essential element of chat GPT's output. And this realization only became clear as journalists, newspapers and authors sued open AI for copyright infringement, which this whole thing is really interesting because it was probably about, I don't know, maybe two years ago, there was a company going around to like content creators and podcasters asking for us to give them access to like our raw data files for our podcast to train their models. Just so crazy. They're like, what the hell? And they're like, we'll pay you. But I'm like, hell no. No, dude. No. I even noticed like when while researching this, the AP news articles that is talking about this lawsuit and everything, at the bottom, they even say like, we have entered into a deal with open AI to allow them to train their bots on our material. And so it is just so crazy how widespread and almost like normalized it is. Now, of course, because of what we're about to discuss, there's legislation, or at least there's some form of like monetary benefit for entering into these partnerships. But in the beginning, it was really just the Wild West. It was just like, oh, yep, fucking go on the newspaper, take whatever you want. Yeah, they're just stealing people's work. Right. And I'm trying to justify it too. They're trying to like, well, it's not actually just copying it. But then the outputs were showing that that wasn't the case. That in fact, it was just re-urgitating the information, maybe slightly changing it up, but not enough to completely become fair use or any sort of legitimate, you know, type of way. So on top of that, turmoil at open AI proved to Suchir that the people he was working for were not concerned about the ramifications and issues that came along with chat GBT. At first, the turmoil with open AI began with a brief power struggle that actually led to the firing of CEO Sam Altman. However, only days later, he was rehired by the company with a whole new board of directors. Among this new board of directors was Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard University, former Treasury Secretary, and one of Jeffrey Epstein's closest friends until Epstein's death. Larry's full name Larry Summers is mentioned in the Epstein files 5,621 times. That's concerning. That's very concerning. That's the company you keep at open AI. So it's like that fact right there that would cause people to be like, are they trying to cover up, protect something more? 5,000 times. I'm sure there's some emails in there that are pretty questionable. Many, many. There's a long exchange of Larry telling Jeffrey, like, oh, thank you so much for hooking me up with that. He says woman, but basically alluding to the fact that Jeffrey hooked him up with this person so Larry could cheat on his wife. Oh, wow. And Larry was fully aware of what Epstein was doing. Wow. That's really disgusting. Yeah. Who knows what else? Who knows? Who knows? So the reason why Sam was actually ousted from the company in the first place was extremely vague, even to employees within open AI. The company made only unspecified allegations that Sam had not been, quote, candid with the board. The turmoil at the company also highlighted the differences between Sam, who was a champion of AI regardless of the costs or ramifications, and former board members who had expressed deep concerns about the safety risks posed by AI and the general public's increasing reliance on it. One of the four board members who actually originally ousted Sam, Ilya Sudskhevur, seemingly did a 180 over the few days that Sam was fired, saying that he regretted the decision. While no one knows exactly why, rumors suggested that they did not want the company to tank or for their employees to turn to Microsoft, who is one of the largest investors in open AI. At the same time, board members did not want to step down and mass, as Sam demanded, nor did they want to install new board members who wouldn't be willing to stand up to the company's leadership. In the end, most of the original board left the company. Now, in the wake of this very strange episode, the board's only two women, Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner, had both expressed serious concerns about AI's safety. And because there are no regulations on AI rollout, companies decide entirely what the technology is built on, who it's released to, and how it affects people for better or worse. And this wasn't the first time open AI experienced executive turmoil. The company, which was initially founded as a non-profit, went for profit, leading to a fallout that ousted former board member Elon Musk, who's kind of held a grudge ever since. The company's board is technically not for profit, the people on the board, but with a net worth of $3.1 billion, it's not exactly like Sam Altman needs a massive payout from his company. So with the company in turmoil in the background of all this other stuff, Suchir was already considering leaving the company for a host of reasons. He said he was also broadly concerned about the rollout of AI, of open AI's products, in addition to Chad's GPT's tendency to cite false information known as hallucinations. He also still had concerns about it basically just being a plagiarism machine. Suchir said, it doesn't feel right to be training on people's data and then competing with them in the marketplace. I don't think you should be able to do that. I don't think you were able to do that legally. Yeah, that's an ethical dilemma too. Your AI is competing with the work that you stole, the authors of the work that you stole. That's pretty messed up. And he knows this first hand because he was giving it the information. He was one of the researchers training it. So this is just one element from his quote, bag of issues with the company. But that copyright infringement was something he could actually do something about. Now, this was a very unpopular opinion within AI research and it actually still is to this day. Suchir said that the entire community was accustomed to just pulling data from the internet, but he said they will have to change and it's a matter of time. Suchir severed ties with open AI in August 2023, stating that it was pretty obvious that Chad's GPT caused market harm to copyright holders. He said, if you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company. And he actually left the company the same day as co-founder John Shulman and they celebrated together with colleagues at a bar in San Francisco at dinner and drinks. And while John wasn't as openly critical as Suchir during his exit, he did state though that he wanted to focus more on the ethics of AI with a competing company, Anthropic. John did express that Suchir had told him earlier in the year of his plans to leave open AI. He said that Suchir didn't believe that AGI was right around the corner like the rest of the company seemed to believe and Suchir expressed interest in getting a doctorate and exploring some more off the beaten path ideas to build intelligence. Then on October 23, 2024, Suchir was profiled in a New York Times piece directly whistleblowing about his concerns regarding Chad's GPT's copyright infringement. And the piece stated that at the start of his tenure at the company, Suchir did not consider whether open AI had legal right to build the products based on preexisting internet data. He thought and was assured by leadership that open AI was allowed to use any internet data regardless of whether it was copyrighted or not. So I'm like, wouldn't anybody be like, wait a minute, hold on. I mean, and I wonder if like again at the beginning when it was not for profit that it's a little different than it's almost like they're building this product just like, well, we're not going to make any money off of it. We are just doing this for research purposes, basically. That's a little different than when Chad's GPT comes around. Now we're directly making money off of this shit. Right. Well, you could kind of compare it to sort of Wikipedia's model. There's copyrighted information contained within Wikipedia. However, they do cite and give credit to the original authors of that information and they're not for profit. Right. Well, and even like I think about the Google AI just when you make any given search, it will tell you exactly where it's pulling the information from, even if it gets it wrong. You can go to the sites and see what it's saying. Which Chad's GPT does that too. If you put in a search in Chad's GPT now, it will tell you, it'll give you a little link. It's super tiny. It's like the smallest little, I'm like, it doesn't even give you the full URL either. It's like the tiniest little button next to the line of information of where it pulled it from. But they do do that now. But yeah, the fact that they're just thinking like, oh, we'll just pull from the internet and maybe they're hoping nobody would notice. And they just slide right in and start making money. However, after Chad's GPT's initial release in 2022, he reconsidered his company's approach. He realized that they were actively violating the law, and he believed that Chad's GPT was damaging to the internet and society at large. He no longer wanted to contribute to technologies he thought would do more harm than good to the public, which has a lot about suture. He's got morals, he's got ethics, and he's not just taking, he's not just doing this for the money, he's not just doing this for, you know, to become famous or anything like that. This is, he genuinely cares about this technology, and he wants to see it used correctly and used for good if it can. And I think it's important to know that he was making between like 300 and 400k. Yeah. So that's also- He's got a great salary. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, there's a lot of money in this world. One of my favorite apps and one that I use almost every single morning is the Rocket Money app. You know, you've heard us talk about it before. 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As the New York timepiece notes, many researchers who worked at OpenAI and other tech firms have cautioned that AI technologies and products could cause serious harm. We've all heard it. If you've been on the internet, you've probably run across a clip of somebody asking one of these guys, should we be worried? What's the worst thing that could happen? Especially if you watch Tucker Carlson. Especially if you watch Tuck. If you watch Tuck, he's definitely finding out what the fears are for sure. I would say not quite as awesome as Tucker Carlson, but true and on that when they discuss what's happening in certain other spheres of various industries, including engineering is a big one, there's actually becoming a shortage of people who know how to design airplanes. Because now they just rely on AI to do it for them. And while they're building preexisting airplanes, they're not being able to do it themselves, nor are they able to push the industry forward anymore. Because again, it's just pulling from previous designs. That's scary. Yeah. Yeah, all these industries are slowly losing human contact. It's like human innovation could stop and that's a concern. And just what are we going to do? Literally, what are people going to do for a living? And of course, the people in control of the AI will tell you, well, we won't need to work. The AI is just going to do it all for us. It's just going to be kickback, relaxed. You can go be on the farm. Yeah, yeah. Go do what you're passionate about because your AI bot will do it for you. And I think most of us are very skeptical to that idea, because it sounds great in theory, but the practical application of that I feel is not going to turn out so good. So to many, this harm is theoretical, suggesting that AGI or more advanced systems could cause serious damage, like creating new bio weapons, or literally destroying humanity as we know it. But again, Sucir felt like the dangers and threats were far more immediate. He said that chat GBT was destroying the commercial viability of individuals, businesses, and internet services that created digital data used to train its system. Think that's pretty accurate. Yeah. For sure. He said that this is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole. Open AI, of course, disagreed with Sucir's statements to the time saying we build our AI models using publicly available data in a manner protected by fair use and related principles, and supported by longstanding and widely accepted legal precedents. We view this principle as fair to creators necessary for innovators and critical for US competitiveness, which that's the other sort of caveat to this is they would argue that countries like China are already, this is the new space race. The AI race is the new space race, and so there's concern amongst these US AI companies that we are going to be left in the dust by China, and in order to protect ourselves as a country, it's a national security issue at this point, we need to have capabilities in AI that's equally as smart, if not more advanced than theirs. Well, and it reminds me of our billionaires episode is that the other coveted thing that all these AI companies want is the defense contract. That is the big thing. Yes. So that's actually what we want. They want that trillion dollar budget access. Exactly. So by framing it as this geopolitics problem, that becomes closer in reach. Yeah, not only that, I mean, that gives them a lot more support when it comes to politicians and the lobbyist groups and government, the powerful people of this country. And so that's the way they spin it. Suchir stated that when they first began working with the company, they had treated their work as a research project. That's how I'd heard about it originally, was is this research project into AI and it's this cool thing. We shall support it. But that didn't last long. It's now for profit business. And even though the company had recently changed this filing status, Suchir and other researchers did not view their work as competing with existing internet services. The initial project he worked on, GPT three, was not a chatbot, but rather technology that enabled businesses and software developers to use AI to build other software applications. So Shear said, with a research project, you can generally speaking train on any data. That was the mindset at the time. But of course, with the release of chat, GBT, and his propensity to recycle previously used language, Suchir felt like it had breached the fair use doctrine. And of course, open AI, you know, they did not agree with that whatsoever. The fair use doctrine, if you're not familiar as four factors, if the character of the use is transformative, the nature of the use, the amount and substantiality of the portion use and the effect on the market at large, open AI said it had substantially transformed the works to train the model, and that it was not competing in the same market as a direct substitute for those works. Debatable. However, Suchir explained that when a system like GBT four learns from data, it creates a complete copy of the data. And from there, open AI can train the system to generate text that is not a copy. However, according to him, open AI taught the system to do something that wasn't an exact copy. And wasn't exactly transformative. So Suchir said that the outputs aren't exact copies of the inputs, but they are not fundamentally novel. And he actually posted a mathematical analysis to his blog to prove his point. You can still access his blog. It's very complicated because he's a very smart guy. So Suchir is straight up said to the New York Times that chat GBT violated the law because it directly competed with the copyrighted works it had learned from. He said that the larger problem is that the service replaced the internet sources it has learned from like news and novels. It generated false and made up hallucinations. The internet is changing for the worse. That's what Suchir said directly. Suchir said the only way out of this is regulation. And that's exactly what he intended to do. In December of that year, the New York Times filed a federal lawsuit against open AI and Microsoft seeking to end the practice of using its stories to train chatbots. Suchir joined in on the lawsuit after he left the company. The attorney representing the Times E&B Crosby said these bots compete with the content they are trained on and cited examples of chat GBT spitting out large portions of the New York Times articles. Most glaringly, the AI spat out a Pulitzer Prize winning investigation into New York City's taxi industry that had taken 18 months to complete. While the lawsuit did not specify any exact amount of damages, the Times stated that it sought to hold open AI responsible for billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages. And it wasn't just the big names suing the company for these copyright claims. In July 2024, two journalists and friends Nicholas Gage and Nicholas Bazbanes sued the company for using decades of their work without attribution. Gage said it's highway robbery and Bazbanes said we work too hard on these tomes. I don't blame them at all. No dude. I'd be pissed. Fucking pissed. You spent your whole life and Bazbanes I think even talked about like one of his novels that was used was like he had left his job. I think it was with the New York Times at the time. He turned down like a hundred thousand dollars so he couldn't work on and write this novel. And now chat GBT is just fucking sucking it up. Yeah. Yeah. Clearly an issue. Right. So their suit was actually incorporated into a broader class action case against open AI led by prominent authors such as John Grisham, Jody Picot and George RR Martin. Let's go. Let's go. Game of Thrones up in here. Gage said publications are going to die. Newspapers are going to die. Young people with talent are not going to go into writing. I'm 84 years old. I don't know if this is going to be settled while I'm still around, but it's important that a solution be found. Yeah. What do you think about this? I mean, as somebody who is a writer, it's very possible that people just don't get writing degrees anymore. No. I do completely see that. And I think it's scary for the reasons I said before. Aside from just competing in the market, it's a skill. It's like a genuine skill that you can use for your entire life. And I think, not to sound so high and mighty, but I think it makes you a more well-rounded person to be not necessarily a talented writer, but a capable writer. And I think if you lose that skill, it's akin to losing some form of your humanity, really. Well, if you think about it, I mean, the arts and writing are foundational skills of human beings. Right. We have gotten this far because of our ability to evolve these skills and going all the way back to the early philosophers and the very early days of civilization. And so, the fact that there's a real risk of this being eliminated altogether, and it's not just writing. I mean, even just in our world, I get blasted with emails and people trying to sell me AI solutions for every part of my business at this point. I mean, it's writing, it's research, it's editing. There's all these companies that are popping up that are trying to that are scooping up these models and teaching them how to do all of these creative skills that humans have done for the longest time. And can they do them as well now? I mean, I've tried some of these things out and they don't do it as well at all. But will they get better? Yeah, for sure. People are using them and people are feeding it data and so it will get better. And then, what do we do then? You know what I mean? It's an issue on so many different fronts. Yeah. I mean, I knew this one author who when I told, we lived in the same apartment building and we were walking our dogs outside one day. And he asked me what I did. I was like, oh, you know, I write, I work on a podcast. And he was like, oh, that's so sick. I write books. And then he told me how he uses chat GPT. Now, I won't say his name because then people will not buy his books, but he uses chat GPT to basically create his timeline, like basically the plot of his story. And then he'll he's like, no, I fill in all the other stuff though. But I'm like, if you are using something else to create the story, what are you doing? Do you not like doing this? Right? Yeah. Well, and how original is that content? That's what you just don't know. If you're asking chat GPT to create anything original, you have no idea of no clue what data it's been fed to even be able to think of that. Right. Because that's the thing I, a lot of us either don't know or forget about is it's not just creating that it's not a sentient mind that's that's has an imagination that's creating this content. No, it's, it's, you're feeding it inputs and it's giving you outputs based on your inputs and it's pulling from a vast database of information to create this whatever you're asking it. And I don't know, seems like a slippery slope. It's and my question to people who use it like at the board game shop, a lot of Dungeon Dragons, Dungeon Masters, you know, people who write the story, who leads it's blood into dungeon and I was, it's just my same question. Like, do you not enjoy doing this? Like, why do you want to fucking fish this off to a chat bot? Like that this is the fun. This is this is the thing. And I think just like on a more worldwide level, like as a writer, if you do rely on chat GPT or any chat bot, I, you know, I can understand certain applications. I'm kind of a hard line. No, but I think you kind of you you you lose your ability to to articulate the world around you if you have to like filter it through this this program first. Well, what are we going to do? We're going to be going to the store and buying books authored by GPT, right and Claude and Gemini, like, what kind of world like what who wants to read that? I don't want to read a book written by Alexa. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's just like we're going to lose so many things that are just special to and important to what makes us human, right? And it's just it's going to be all meaningless because it can all be replicated and spit out whenever you want, whenever you want. There is a huge issue right now, specifically with children's books on Amazon. It's like kind of a hustle culture thing that dudes are doing where they're just like publishing like hundreds of chat GPT created children's books on to like the Amazon marketplace and you know, tired parents who want to give their kids like a book to read, they'll see it, they'll buy it for a dollar hand to their kid. And it's like, it's like you're raising children on this with no fault to the parents because they don't know what they're buying. They're just trying to get something for their kids to spend their time with. But it's like it's already happening with like the most fragile minds among us. Music even, right? It's already infiltrated music. I mean, there's so many like TikTok creators I've seen that are using AI to create different versions of classic songs. And they sound pretty good. Like some of them sound like, all right, this is this is kind of cool. And like in that way, it's kind of fun and cool. But it's like, this is also just taking away from every musician that's ever lived and especially those that originally created these works. And I don't know, it's just such a bizarre time to be alive because it feels like it's slowly seeping into every facet of our lives. I mean, even with the Google search, you can't avoid it. You know, that even even I say like I'm hardline, whoop, but I have to admit, I Google search all the time and boom, there it is. You know, and that's not chat GPT, of course, but it is everywhere. It is impossible to avoid it. It's just going to become a world of we have no idea what's real once not right. We're already or we're just going to accept the artificial world as real, right? Because we're going to have no other choice. That's just all we're being served. That's all. And it's already happening on social media. If you scroll on Reels for a little bit, you're going to get served up to the shape. It's like every other video is an AI generated video. There's so many times now, like I feel like even six months ago, if an AI video popped up, you could kind of tell pretty easily like, Oh, that's AI. It's so hard. It's very hard. There are so many times where I'm watching something and I'm like, is that AI or is that real? I literally cannot tell. And it's crazy how it's advancing so rapidly. Well, and like we mentioned before this race between China and the US, one of my favorite filmmakers, this Chinese filmmaker named Jia Zhang, who I find to be a Titan and like very secure in his moral and he's willing to do all this stuff. He just put out sponsored by Seed Dance, the new Chinese like video AI. He just put out a short film made with Seed Dance. Made with Seed Dance. And it's really upsetting to see people you kind of look up to. And same to Janelle's point, like you couldn't really tell. I mean, the point of the video is that he made it with AI, but you couldn't tell that really. It's so good. It's so good that you couldn't tell. It's crazy. Even not just on YouTube. There's people that are creating like fan fiction movies of our favorite IPs. And I can't remember what the title was, but I watched a fan fiction AI generated movie that was like an extension of the Lord of the Rings. Right. And it was unbelievable. It was so cool. I was like, this is awesome. I'm like, God, this is awesome. And so it's like in that way, we can continue like creating, you know, we won't need, you don't need vast amounts of money to create anymore. But it's like, is that good? Right. I mean, because like even on the Lord of the Rings front, like, yeah, it's not a direct continuation of the story, but that's basically what George R R Martin, like he was inspired by the Lord of the Rings to do something different with Game of Thrones. And that I see as a natural evolution, as opposed to just being like, let's see what happened when Eregor. Yeah, yeah. Here's another storyline. You know, it's like, yeah, that's a great example of somebody being inspired by another writer and, you know, maybe take some concepts or, you know, some, but creates their own very, very successful IP that people come to love and cherish, you know, forever. I think, you know, some of these works will be here, whether or not GBT takes over or not, but it is a wild time to be alive. It really is. It's like, I feel like it's only a matter of time before, I mean, I'm sure there are like AI artists on Spotify and stuff that. Oh, there are the velvet sundown. If anyone has accidentally added their shit to your music, that is a fully AI artist. God. Yeah, it's a tough time to be in the arts, especially. Yeah, it really is. So yeah, so cheers. Honestly, he's fighting the good fight. He's fighting the good fight. He's trying to make sure that people know what the hell they're actually doing. Well, and in the wake of his high profile departure from the company, whistleblowing claims, all this shit's going on, he was able to maintain a pretty normal life. He frequented house parties in San Francisco and Minecraft nights, and he was approached by numerous startups, all hoping he would join their teams as they now accomplished and seemingly fearless AI researcher. Still, Sucir was more interested in pursuing independent ideas. Sucir was thinking deeply about the human brain. He shared a draft with his friends and fellow researchers, which showcased his thoughts on the state of AI. He believed that AGI would not emerge from simply scaling up our current AI models, but from building systems that learn like a human would, something that would motivate learning out of curiosity rather than just simple memorization. Yeah, that's that's an interesting thing to think about changing the way that the AI models actually input the information and so essentially teaching it how to have an imagination and discover and become curious to explore other ideas and concepts as opposed to just feeding it. So that yes, it's sort of like this one to one ratio all the time, input in, input out, input, very computer-minded versus the way that a human thinks. That's crazy. And also it just goes to show how fucking smart Sucir is because he was trying to mathematically prove that this is possible, that you could create a program with an imagination. I mean, that's crazy. It's hard to even wrap your head around. I can't. Yeah. So in November 2024, for his birthday, he actually, he was joined by high school friends on a trip to visit Catalina Island off the coast of California. In photos, he was seen smiling while wearing a large green backpack. According to those who were with him on the trip, Sucir acted completely normal during the week-long trip. When he returned home to San Francisco, Sucir called his father on November 22, the day after his birthday. He ordered takeout, settled into his apartment, and made plans to visit Las Vegas with his family. Everything seemed completely normal, especially given that he had potentially exposed the largest AI firm in the world as a plagiarism dealer breaking the law. Unfortunately, this actually would be the last time Sucir ever spoke with his family. Which leads us to November 26, 2024. Sucir's parents called the San Francisco Police Department after not hearing from their son for four days. His mother paced outside of the front of the building while firefighters crowded into the doorway. Although she was worried, she didn't fear the worst. She even asked the firefighters if they could check his toiletries once they got inside. Sucir might be traveling and just forgot to tell them. However, once the first responders briefed the door to Sucir's unit, they said the smell of death flooded the hallway. Officers can be heard on the body cam footage saying, is there any chance of? Yeah, no, as they entered the bathroom. Sucir's body was in there with a single gunshot wound to his forehead. And given the nature of Sucir's high profile status in the tech world, theories immediately spread online that Open AI somehow had him killed. These theories only gained more momentum after the San Francisco Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide the very same day. After posting Mao Sucir's death for weeks, his mother, Pornima, made a shocking update on Twitter. And she wrote, We hired a private investigator and did a second autopsy to throw light on the cause of death. It's a cold blooded murder. She explained that Sucir taking his own life would not align with his happy mood. And these claims immediately took off after Elon Musk, who had been a long time rival of Sam Altman, commented, This doesn't seem like suicide, which Elon Musk obviously reaps benefits from making Sam Altman and Open AI look bad. Absolutely. So of course, he's gonna put that out there. But here's a clip of Pornima speaking with News Nation about her fears before Sucir's death. Let's take a look. Dead danger. I sensed a danger moment. I saw that I knew something was there, mother instinct. So when you saw the New York Times article, you felt danger. Yeah, I felt something there. I know something is going to happen. As a mother, I could sense it. But later it just vanished. I used to talk to Sucir each time he comes home. And every time he said, No, don't worry, don't worry. But in his journal, he's written a make ready built thread because of New York Times. What did he write? A credible credible threat credible threat. Because of New York Times. Because of that interview. That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, he was genuinely pretty worried. And, you know, say what you will about that, you know, a lot, a lot can be taken from saying like I'm a credible threat. But it still shows that he was worried about what was going to happen to him. Maybe it was just professionally. But, you know, it still shows that he was fucking worried. Right. Which is totally understandable for Pornima to take it the way that she did. Right. Because I mean, it kind of lines up with everything else that was going on. And suddenly a host of others began posting about the suspicious nature of Sucir's death. When he was found dead, Sucir had left no note or any indication in his apartment that he intended to take his own life. His friends, who had just seen him days before, said that he seemed perfectly happy and excited to move forward with his own research. Plus, he's planning to testify against open AI in the New York Times lawsuit. On top of that, the medical examiner's office took 11 weeks to release its complete autopsy, which is a bit strange, especially considering they ruled it a suicide so quickly. Right. So that is definitely a bit strange. Since Sucir's death, his mother hired and fired numerous attorneys and private investigators across the United States and India, commissioning at least six known independent reports into his death. This included the private autopsy she cited in the original tweet. Pornima has never shared that autopsy in full, but the family's former attorney, Joe Gertol, said, I would not characterize it as conclusively proving murder. Which is kind of interesting as well. It's like, it doesn't specifically point to murder, but maybe it's something else, or maybe there's not enough there to determine either way. Right. It cast doubt. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. And in one of the family reports, Bloodspatter analysis claimed that Sucir was not shot initially, but was wounded by an unknown object or even electrocuted before walking around the apartment, leading to blood getting everywhere. However, there is no indication of blood anywhere, but just outside and inside the bathroom as seen in the body cam footage. Because that footage has been released. We're not going to play it because it's uncensored and very graphic. But I watched it and from what I could see, because they show the officers going through his apartment and his apartment is kind of a mess. It's messy. It's definitely in disarray. But I didn't see any furniture necessarily knocked over. There had been a physical struggle. And it is very clear that the blood seems to be isolated to the bathroom and the bathroom door area unless there's others that just can't be seen without luminol or something like that. But it is very apparent if you watch the footage where most of the Bloodspatter actually is. A Michigan firearms consultant claimed that the lack of soot on Sucir's forehead near the wound indicated that he was shot from at least two feet away. The official autopsy stated that any soot would have been obscured by changes associated with post-mortem decomposition. It's also important to note that gunshot residue was detected on both of his hands. A third report made by an Alabama toxicologist said that Sucir more than likely than not took the drug GHB before his death. Pornima noted that this meant his attacker sedated him before his death. Which it could go either way. I mean, he could have been drugged or he could have taken it just on his own. I know like thinking back to the Diddy episode, GHB was kind of a favored drug that Diddy allegedly used in his serious crimes. The official autopsy concluded that low levels of the drug in a system were likely due to a natural decomposition process. The toxicologist acknowledged that this could also be a plausible explanation and the report also noted the presence of amphetamines. Now the most cited of Pornima's independent reports is a typo-written 28-page document written by Dinesh Rho, a pathologist based in India. Which is possible that there's so many typos because English is in his first language. I think that's definitely something to consider. But Dr. Rho admitted that his investigation was entirely based on photos of Sucir's apartment taken after his death. It's not to say that a pathologist can't make a pretty well-educated guess or make an opinion on a case because this happens all the time. Because it's kind of the only option that you have at that point is like that's all they have to go off of. The scene is clean. Right. Because it's already, the autopsy has already been done and it's all been processed. But again, this expert is saying otherwise, which is only going to sort of add fuel to the fire. And in Pornima's mind, who does she trust at this point? She doesn't trust the San Francisco authorities and so she's hearing that no, from multiple experts that she's hired that something else happened here. Right. I completely understand where she's coming from just because, like you said, she doesn't trust these authorities at this point. And I think it's very important to note how the tech industry shapes San Francisco's politics. I mean, we'd like to not imagine that influences all the way down to investigators. I'm not sure that's the case, but San Francisco's tech industry is what allows the city to do what it does and that will inherently affect how certain things are handled within city government. Right. I do understand in any of these types of cases, parents' frustration with law enforcement and the level of investigation conducted at these types of scenes because what we see oftentimes is that they walk in, they see what they see, and they automatically just go, unless there's glowing red evidence at the scene, oftentimes they go straight to the conclusion that they took their own life. However, they oftentimes don't take the time to reconstruct that even though they believe that's what happened. They don't reconstruct, well, how did they take their life? Let's actually reconstruct that and make sure it matches up with the actual forensic evidence here. And so I think that oftentimes, and again, it happens sometimes, and I think in those cases, you often see the families sort of come to terms with what happened a little bit easier as opposed to especially when you have all these external factors going on with Suchir, but I think it would have helped for them to actually lay out like, here's how it happened, here's how we know that it happened this way as opposed to sometimes just sort of wrap it up and get out. This is what happens. We found the gun because then you allow for others to come in and poke holes in it, and they're essentially poking holes in the official investigation, not investigating it enough because it does raise doubt and suspicion when you don't actually lay out, well, how did he do this? Let's walk through it. And I don't know why they don't do that because it seems like that would be a really smart thing to do. And I think the San Francisco medical examiner later on kind of realizes that like, oh, shit, we should have offered more reassurance at the start when they do release the autopsy as we'll get into it. But in the beginning, yeah, it's just kind of, again, within hours, they're saying this is what happened. And I don't think that exactly inspires confidence. Right. And we ruled out that this was murder. And maybe they said, well, we didn't find any evidence that there was an assailant or intruder or anything like that. But again, scenes are staged. There's plenty of cases where suicide scenes have been staged, or they've been assisted suicides or something like that, where law enforcement just didn't consider those possibilities, and they skipped right over it. And somebody has walked free who may be responsible for that person's death. So it's just, I think it's something that they need to be more careful about. Absolutely. Right. Especially in a situation like this, I mean, could have saved them a lot of headache, but also could have provided a lot of reassurance to the family of like, no, we'll show you the evidence. We'll show you exactly how we believe this went down and leave it at, you know, if they don't want to believe that, then that's, that's the right, but give them a little more reassurance. Agreed. Totally agreed. So Dr. Rowe said that Suchir may have been standing or bending over or crawling or sitting before he was shot. He said that a known person may have gained access to Suchir's unit, and that quote, food and chocolates strewn, that's one of the misspellings, indicated the possibility of fights, resistance or rage. He even said that a photo of dried blood in the bathroom showed a tuft of wig hair that belonged to the assailant. And I don't know, I mean, I don't know if you can really make that judgment based on a photo. Yeah. I haven't seen the photo, but you, yeah, that's, it's pretty bold thing to say without actually seeing the scene or the physical evidence itself, right? Right. So since the San Francisco medical examiner took so long to complete and release Suchir's full autopsy, for a while, the only thing the public had to go on was his mother's independent reports, no matter how far fetched. And due to the high-profile nature, the medical examiner released a detailed letter to Suchir's family explaining their investigation and why they decided suicide was the most likely cause of death. Like we were saying, I think they kind of realized, oh, shit, we hurried up in the beginning of this, we really need to explain ourselves now that it's reached international proportions. Right. Yeah. And it's a little too late at that point. Right. It's hard to walk it back and people have already had time to make up their minds or, you know, spend a different theory. Right. So it's very difficult to try to clear that up after the fact. Right. So the medical examiner wrote, The office of the chief medical examiner found no evidence or information to establish a cause and manner of death for Mr. Balaji, other than a suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. They determined that the bullet traveled front to back and downward, consistent with a self-inflicted trajectory. And there was this fact, nearly a year before his death, Suchir purchased the gun that was used in his death and his DNA was found on the firearm. In addition, the bullet found at the scene was determined to have come from Suchir's gun. Key fob records and video surveillance of his building showed no one entering his apartment and there was no signs of four century. Suchir's windows could only open a maximum of four inches and this would be attacker would have to scale four stories to even reach them. On top of that, Suchir had a considerable amount of alcohol in the system, more than two times the legal driving limit. Pornima claimed that there were no receipts for alcohol or empty bottles found within his apartment. And it's also important to note that Suchir's door was dead bolted from the inside and again, no signs of force entry. Which that detail right there is huge. Yeah. Dead bolted from the inside. So if somebody came in with him, how'd they get out and dead bolted? Right. You know, after they murdered him. They'd have to exit through the window. Right. Which is impossible. Right. So that yeah, that's a that's a pretty big, big detail there. So computer records indicated that Suchir had been researching information concerning the human brain consistent with his independent AI research. However, this letter and full report only emboldened Pornima further. She wrote on Twitter, there are tons of inconsistencies in their decision. We are fighting for justice. Pornima's current attorney, Phoenix Thautum, even wrote two local newspapers reporting on the medical examiner's letter saying, any statement suggesting that the San Francisco office of the chief medical examiner conducted a full autopsy consistent with accepted forensic standards is materially misleading. The medical examiner's office wrote back that they conducted a quote, thorough medical legal investigation in this case, consistent with established standards and protocols. The office stands by its independent forensics findings and conclusions. Pornima stuck to her beliefs. Doing an interview with Tucker Carlson in January 2025. She believed that Suchir could not have done what the medical examiner and investigator said he did. She maintained that he was happy and could not have killed himself. She said, how does someone so courageous do a cowardly act? Here she is on Tucker's podcast explaining what happened immediately after the investigation. I'm so sorry. That is really, I mean, that is, I didn't know things like that happened. That is awful. It's a gated community. He had a gun with him to protect himself. What more can be expected in America than the slave? It's a very reputed apartment complex, not that it's cheap or something. They have four or five units, four or five buildings, I mean to say. Did the officers at the scene give you any indication of how they thought your son died? At four o'clock, they came to the leasing office and the medical examiner said he shot himself. He killed himself. It's a suicide. At that moment, I raised to them, look, my son went into New York times. He's a whistleblower and he's dead. Doesn't look suicide to me. They just didn't want to listen. He bought a gun. It belongs to him. Nobody went into the complex. Nobody came out. He was all by himself and he's a suicide. And how long it took? Can you believe it? 40 minutes to investigate. 40 minutes to determine the cause of death. And at four o'clock, they give me the keys for the apartment and they say you can collect the body tomorrow. Like right from that moment, I see fall play. Proper formalities were not followed. And the next day, they released the body within 24 hours without doing the complete autopsy. They removed the bullet. They did a CT scan. They should return the body to us. Then we just checked with the funeral home and we discussed with them. And then they also said, looks like doesn't seem normal. There's something very unusual here. You should do a second private autopsy. The funeral home suggested that. Yes. And even we were thinking. Both of us were also thinking. Funeral home also suggested we were shattered, obviously, right? We were completely shattered. We just didn't know what's going on and seeing a son like that. And they said like his eyes are gone with the gun wound. Don't see his face. To my point earlier, she said it took them all but 40 minutes. Right. And I think that that is one of the big pieces of this case in many cases like this where they should have handled this more carefully. They should have provided more reassurance when she's voicing her concerns and she's bringing to their attention as she just said that my son is a whistleblower and I'm concerned that foul play was involved that they should have want the extra step to provide more information or help her do more to help her make sense of what happened and why. Like why they think that not just his gun's there and he's dead. Boom. That's it. Right. It's just it wasn't enough. I completely agree there. And I think again, I think that's kind of why they release that letter and they're trying to like because they didn't realize I'm sure even at the scene, right? She's saying my son was a whistleblower. I don't think they took that seriously. I don't think they took any of what she was saying initially seriously. And regardless of what you feel happened, I think that's still unacceptable conduct for investigators to see a grieving mother have serious concerns and still just release the cause of death 40 minutes later. Right. And what they should have said is, totally understand your concerns. We'll look into it. We're not stopping here. We'll rule out all other possibilities before we officially wrap this case up. And because I think even that and just even taking a little bit extra time to look at all other possibilities here would have maybe helped her, but just to send her home with this little information and then release the body as she said. And she's taking, she's going to the funeral home and they're distraught. They're emotional. They're just trying to wrap their heads around what just happened. They've just lost their son unexpectedly. I mean, there's so much happening all at once that they really need to do a better job of in these situations. It just seems like a major miss opportunity to fill that role of being a support in times like this, whether or not, I get it's just their job. It's what they're, they're just following their standards and protocols, but it's, it just seems like a little more should have been done. Agreed. Totally. To, to help the situation. But then Dr. Roe, which is the same doctor that said that there was a wig hair, released a second report saying that Suchir had a history of depression and was undergoing treatment. Suchir's father, Balaji Ramamorthy, had remained quiet throughout the ordeal, but eventually told local news that Suchir had fear and anxiousness after he blew the whistle on Open AI's malpractice. Pornima eventually said that Suchir had begun taking antidepressants after he left Open AI, but was not actively seeing a therapist. And it's important to note here that while people tend to show warning signs of suicidal actions, it is known that close friends and family can often miss them. And additional studies have found that when high achievers or perfectionists become depressed, they are particularly at risk of taking their own lives. In addition, four and five adults who take their own lives do so without leaving a note. But still, despite these admissions from Suchir's family and studies to back up the medical examiner's findings, those online still believe that Open AI killed Suchir for whistleblowing. And the most common of these sources comes from Pornima's interview with Tucker Carlson, in which he said, I don't think any honest person at this would include this was a suicide. Which, you know, if you know anything about Tucker, you know, he loves a conspiracy. Yes. And he says all sorts of wild things. He does. And I think he's kind of had a bit of a cultural rehab lately. With this also, there was that interview with Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, where he's like, oh, he's going at him. He used to be Fox News's guy now, he's going at him. But, you know, it's still, it's still tuck. It's still, I mean, he had the guy on who said he had sex with Barack Obama. You know, right. He's still an entertainer. Right. At the end of the day, he's still got views to get. So I mean, that's, that's what it's about at the end of the day for him, I think. But he brought up Dr. Rose's initial report numerous times saying that there was blood all over Suchir's apartment. And as we said, this just isn't true. You can literally look at the body cam footage. And it's very clear that there's not just blood spatter all over the place. And there's no signs of a struggle as far as we can see. It's a messy apartment, but you're not seeing chairs overturn and broken furniture and, you know, clear signs that this happened. But of course, he never gives up on a viral moment. Tucker then had open AI. Sam Altman himself on the show and Tucker asked him point blank, which I will say he's got. Balls. He's got balls. Straight up. He doesn't give a fuck. He puts in that Zen and he's ready to go. He's ready to go. Yeah. As soon as that Nick hits the brain, nothing's stopping him. So let's take a look at this clip. This is pretty wild. I remember coming across this too. This was, I was like, wow, okay. There were signs of a struggle, of course. The surveillance camera, the wires have been cut. He had just ordered take out food, come back from a vacation with his friends on Catalina Island. No indication at all that he was suicidal. No note and no behavior. He had just spoken to a family member on the phone and then he's found dead with blood in multiple rooms. So that's impossible. Seems really obvious. He was murdered. Have you talked to the authorities about it? I've not talked to the authorities about it. And his mother claims he was murdered on your orders. Do you believe that? I'm asking. I mean, you just said it. So do you believe that? I think that it is worth looking into. And I don't, I mean, if a guy comes out and accuses your company of committing crimes, I have no idea if that's true or not, of course, and then is found killed and there are signs of a struggle, I don't think it's worth dismissing it. I don't think we should say, well, he killed himself when there's no evidence that the guy was depressed at all. I think, and if he was your friend, I would think you would want to speak to his mom or... I did offer. She didn't want to. So do you feel that, you know, when people look at that and they're like, you know, it's possible that happened, do you feel that that reflects the worries they have about what's happening here? Like people are afraid that this is like... I haven't done too many interviews where I've been accused of like... Oh, I'm not accusing you at all. I'm just saying his mother says that. I don't think a fair read of the evidence suggests suicide at all. I mean, I just don't see that at all. And I also don't understand why the authorities, when there are signs of a struggle and blood in two rooms on the suicide, like how does that actually happen? I don't understand how the authorities could just kind of dismiss that as a suicide. I think it's weird. You understand how this sounds like an accusation? Of course. And I mean, I certainly... Let me just be clear once again, not accusing you of any wrong doing, but I think it's worth finding out what happened. And I don't understand why the city of San Francisco has refused to investigate it beyond just calling it a suicide. I mean, I think they looked into it a couple of times, more than once, as I understand it. I saw the... And I will totally say, when I first heard about this, it sounded very suspicious. Yes. And I know you had been involved in... Was mother asked out to the case? And I don't know anything about it. It's not my world. She just reached out cold? She reached out cold? Wow. And I spoke to her at great length and it scared the crap out of me. The kid was clearly killed by somebody. That was my conclusion. Yeah, I just talk is... Oh man. So many things he's just spouting out with no knowledge. None whatsoever. I mean, not only repeating the blood in multiple rooms, but just not even offering to entertain the official findings, which I understand, but... Yeah. I mean, he's 100% alluding to a cover up. And I just don't understand. He's trying to come from this neutral place, but he's very clearly accusing Sam to his face that either he or somebody at his company was involved in this with no evidence whatsoever, so that he could get this. I'm honestly surprised Sam went on his show. Me too. Me too. Considering all things, but... You know, I think especially for Mr. Altman, he's not exactly got the best reputation right now either. And so I think any sort of avenue for him to discuss this, he saw it as like, all right, fuck, I gotta do this. Also, Tuck being such a Twitter guy as well, Twitter is still very well used within these spaces, the tech spaces. So I think he's like, I gotta go on Tuck's show specifically. Plus, if he says no, how does that make him look? Right. If he's like, no, I'm not gonna... They'd be like, why? Yeah. I'm not gonna hide. You know, that's a little suspicious. Like, oh, he doesn't want to talk about it. He's clearly hiding something. He's clearly covering it up. Yeah. It's just... It's like, what does this really achieve? Right. What does this do? Views. Right. Which, yeah, he got loads of views on this. Tens of millions across the internet. I mean, it was clipped. It was spread everywhere. People are commenting. I never thought I'd agree with Tucker Carlson. You know, it's like... But, you know, I think I could see how if you just watched that and you knew nothing about this case or the facts of the case, like, yeah, you'd be like, go Tuck. Go Tuck. Like, you get him. You make him fess up. But, I mean, once... When you actually know the evidence or even just watch the body cam footage or even look at any sort of documents or reports or photos of the crime scene, it's very clear that we don't... There's not enough there to necessarily say it absolutely wasn't suicide. Right. I think that him saying that is... With the platform that he has and saying it so confidently when he clearly either just ignoring the facts or he's just ignorant to the fact he has no idea what's going on, is very dangerous because it's going to perpetuate theories and rumors and also things that are potentially damaging to the cases a whole and even to the family. So, Sam has continued to deny any wrongdoing, of course. So, there's that. But on the very famous and always accurate podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, Elon Musk. Oh, man. Elon, he took an opportunity to continue talking about Sam's involvement saying, look, I don't know if he's guilty, but it's not possible to look more guilty. Shots fired, you know. And again, Elon has got a... I mean, aside from just hating Sam for years now, he's got a monetary benefit potentially if he casts Sam's company in a bad way. And across Twitter specifically, or X, the death continued to be spoken about California representative and tech supporter, Ro Khanna, called for a full and transparent investigation by the FBI. The tech meme page, Autism Capital wrote, they're really offing whistleblowers in these streets, LMAO. Tech influencer and big Twitter guy, Mario Nwafil, tried to cash in on the speculation, writing posts like, was OpenAI whistleblower killed? So, that's the thing too, you know. There was even false reports shared across social media that the SFPD had reopened its investigation. This is false because they never closed the case in the first place. And Tasteless Idiots created shitcoins named after Suchir in an attempt to make money off a young man's death, which is just fucking evil. Fuck the old man. It's just, ugh, the internet man. And due to Tucker Carlson's interview with Sam Altman, the medical examiner's office began receiving calls directly citing the interview. So now, yeah, it's just a mess. One voicemail said, the medical examiner is a mafia thug who's either complicit in compromise or he's been paid off. This is disgusting, the corruption at your level is appalling and shocking and everyone's waking up to it. So, casting very, very bold allegations with what evidence? Other than rumors and gossip they heard online. And Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson, yeah. Typically, I'm very much in support of people casting doubt on investigations because, you know, we've seen, especially with the kind of stuff that we cover, you know, an unsolved case goes unsolved because of malpractice at the investigation level. And so, I understand like reaching out, but to cite these sources and then make basically direct threats at officials, I think that's taking it a step too far. Right. Because I mean, yeah, I 100% agree with you. I think, is it okay to question it? Absolutely. Absolutely. But you gotta look at both sides. You know, you gotta look at both sides and you weren't there. Right. Like, what do you even know at the end of the day? And so, is there corruption there? Is there a cover up? Maybe. And like, I'm all for it. If the FBI wants to come in and investigate. Absolutely. Because I think they probably should come in a lot of cases and take a look at how things are handled because, yeah, they're probably not as thorough as they need to be. But yeah, to go after the medical examiner himself, who we have no proof whatsoever that he did anything, he or she did anything wrong is definitely a bit much. It's good old, you know, internet fucking drama at the end of the day. Witch hunt. It's like, you know, witch hunt for somebody and that's what Tuck does best. Yep. So, meanwhile, Suchir's father has actually remained less vocal. While he often joined Pornima in interviews, he sat silently. He once shared an AI image of Suchir's face superimposed on Abraham Lincoln next to JFK, MLK, Jesus Christ, and Charlie Kirk. And beneath it, it was the phrase, all because of words. Within the San Francisco tech scene, many still believe Suchir was murdered. An anonymous Y Combinator founder, which Y Combinator is like a startup community, they stated, I think most people who have really looked into the facts of the case think he was murdered. It's such a strange sequence of events, there are too many missing pieces. Others in San Francisco, specifically those aligned with NIMBY or not in my backyard politics have pointed to the city's crime rates and said Suchir's death may have been a freaked act of violence. One important thing to note is that Suchir's death coincided with growing dislike of open AI, especially as chatGPT's popularity increased. Many who have been looking for an additional reason to criticize the company have joined Pornima's cause. Pornima has continued to say that Suchir was murdered. She and her husband sued the SFPD in 2025, alleging that they withheld information relating to Suchir's death. However, Pornima dropped the case. She then sued Suchir's apartment building for withholding evidence, though the status of this case is unknown. Open AI made a statement about Suchir's death, stating that he was a valued member of our team and we are still heartbroken by his passing. Out of respect, we won't be commenting further. Pornima also sued the city of San Francisco to release additional records on his death, though the city says they don't have anything else. Former Open AI founder John Shulman said, Suchir had certain traits that made him exceptional as an ML engineer and scientist. He had exceptional attention to detail which led him to notice subtle bugs or logical errors that would cause incorrect or misleading results. He had a knack for finding simple solutions and writing elegant code that worked. He'd think through the details of things carefully and rigorously. He stood out as one of the strongest contributors, even at Open AI, which was already a highly select group. Suchir's family is still gathering evidence to prove that he was murdered. The San Francisco standard prepared a long form piece on Suchir's death and presented it to Pornima, though the information did not change her mind. She said that her evidence would show to struggle made her, quote, happy that my son fought for his life. He didn't just give up. You can learn more about the family's evidence for believing Suchir was murdered through their website, Suchir.org. Pornima said, It was a very rough year, but now we have come to terms that he's lost his life for a cause. I wanted to also just read a little bit of the info from the parents' lawsuit because it is kind of interesting. They maintain that there has been a vast effort to conceal his alleged killing, which involves tech companies, law enforcement, the news media, and the people even who rented the apartment to him. This is a grand conspiracy. A lot of people would have needed to be involved to pull this off. But the lawsuit claims that the defendants fired the apartment manager immediately after he disclosed CCTV footage to Bellagio's parents, installed an exhaust fan in the apartment without notice, and provided only two days of video surveillance footage despite requests for seven days. The lawsuit alleges that the property manager initially provided the parents access to garage CCTV for a week and then falsely claimed that the cameras were not working. They believe that they engaged in a pattern of concealment and obstruction that interfered with both the police investigation and plain to his private forensic review. They also alleged that the apartment complex failed to safeguard packages addressed to Bellagio that disappeared after his death and may have contained evidence related to his whistleblower claims. A neighbor reportedly saw packages addressed to him in the package room a month after his death that subsequently vanished. As we mentioned earlier, Bellagio's parents dispute the finding and have retained independent forensic experts who claimed they have identified evidence of foul play. However, they've declined to release the results of that autopsy, which that is curious to me as well as what do that autopsy say? Well, and if their former attorney is to be believed, it's, you know, it doesn't conclusively prove that he was murdered. And I also understand, like, from even though I think it's shady, the real estate company behind his apartment complex, is certainly being shady. And I think the reason for it is probably because this San Francisco, it was a high end sort of like Pornima said, it, you know, wasn't, you know, the super nice place, but it is a luxury apartment. And I think part of the reason they are trying to keep this under wraps is because it's like, we don't want people to know a that's something like this could happen. But also be that any of these other issues they're mentioning, the packages, the surveillance camera, that these aren't up to snuff. Yeah, obviously, like that's that's going to be not great for marketing. No, right? Nobody's going to want to stay come rent and pay. Hello, money to live there if they feel like it's unsafe or a murder potentially happened in their apartment building. So is it so is it fair for them to potentially go after them for not being, you know, not having these things up to standards? I don't see why not. Like, absolutely. I mean, because yeah, it could have provided more information there. But we do there is some CCTV footage that was that did come out. And we know we've even shown you a screenshot of him entering his apartment that you know, that day and he's alone. He's alone. And so is there more, you know, they're insinuating that there's more that there's potentially, you know, footage of somebody else arriving to the complex, gaining access to his apartment. But also like, have any of the neighbors said anything like about that about anybody else coming to his apartment is just all we know is the packages thing is kind of odd. But I think it's just very difficult to say, you know, that he was murdered. I think it's, I think it's difficult to definitively say that I think, is it some is it does this case warrant more investigation? Sure, absolutely. I think there's enough weirdness to it that why not? I mean, I again, I always go back to how long the investigation took. It was 40 minutes. And I think that's just not enough time to adequately rule out all other possibilities. And you leave the door open for these types of things to happen. And it's totally understandable that they'd want to they would want a more conclusive investigation conducted. And now an investigation done by the FBI, you know, sort of a third party to come in and, and rule out corruption and a cover-up and everything like that. So I think unfortunately, this one spiraled out of control and obviously the nature of Suchir and who he was and his prominence and, you know, being in the media and things like that absolutely did not help this at all, unfortunately. But I hope for the parents' sake that they are able to find what they're looking for and that they can, you know, one day find some peace with this if they can. So however they need to do that, I'm totally in support for. I don't think we can trust anybody these days and especially those in politics and those in these tech companies. And I think you have to be wary of everybody and what everybody says. And we definitely want to hear from you out there. What do you think happened? Where do you, which side do you land on? Do you think there's enough there to potentially point to sort of this grand conspiracy of murder and, you know, all these people being involved was open AI involved? Or do you sort of fall on the lines of the most likely scenarios that he sadly took his own life? I think, I think most of us here are kind of leaning that direction. I think I need to see more evidence to kind of go the other way. But again, at the end of the day, I wasn't there. I haven't reviewed, you know, all the evidence and everything. I only have seen what I was able to see online. And so I can't obviously 100% say one way or another. I think you have to leave the door open though. Do any possibility at this point. And we'll definitely be leaving resources for anybody who may be struggling with your mental health. You know, just the nature of this episode is pretty, pretty dark and and serious at that. I mean, it's no joke. And I think things can happen and things can happen really quickly. And it's impossible to know what somebody's going to do. And so we'll definitely leave links for resources below. And of course, Pornima's page for her son, where you can look at what they're what they're doing now. I think there's a petition on there that has been out there for a while. They were trying to petition the FBI and even the White House to do something about this. So we'll link all that for you below. But let us know your thoughts. And we'll see you guys next time.