[6] Balaji attended Monta Vista High School and was a finalist for the 2015–16 season of the United States of America Computing Olympiad.
[3] Cofounder of OpenAI, John Schulman, recruited Balaji right out of college, where he spent four years as an artificial intelligence researcher.
[3] Among other projects, he was involved in gathering and organizing the internet data used to train GPT-4, a language model used by the company's online chatbot, ChatGPT.
He said that ChatGPT and similar chatbots are ruining the commercial viability of the individuals and organizations who produced the data that the AI systems are trained on.
In the essay, he mathematically analyzes outputs of large language models such as ChatGPT, and argues that they fail the four-factor test for determining fair use under U.S. copyright law.
In a November 18, 2024 court filing, Balaji was identified by the New York Times's attorneys as one of a number of people who might have "relevant documents" in the copyright case against OpenAI.
After he stopped responding to text messages, they asked San Francisco police to enter his home to conduct a well-being check.
[17] A San Francisco OCME autopsy report was released on February 14, 2025, showing Balaji had died of a single self-inflicted gunshot on the day the police found him dead.
[20] Balaji's death has prompted public and media interest, particularly given his whistleblowing claims and status as a custodian witness in a lawsuit against OpenAI.
His family and close friends report that he had no history of mental health issues or distress, and was in generally good spirits after his birthday that week.
Balaji's parents also claim that a tuft of wig hair found at the scene that did not belong to Suchir represents unexplained evidence.
[19] Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, California Congressman Ro Khanna, and San Francisco Supervisor Jackie Fielder have publicly echoed Balaji's parents' skepticism and calls for an investigation.