Director Charles Ferguson poses for a photo prior to an interview with the Associated Press about his movie 'Watergate" at the 2019 Berlinale Film Festival in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
BERLIN (AP) --
Director Charles Ferguson thought Watergate had never "properly been done." The result is a documentary that explores the American presidential scandal in its full epic span and clocks in at more than four hours.
Ferguson, who directed the Oscar-winning financial crisis documentary "Inside Job," is presenting the film this week at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Titled "Watergate — Or: How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President," it features extensive interviews with surviving players of the 1970s scandal and material from the tapes made by President Richard Nixon.
Ferguson told The Associated Press on Tuesday that while many books have been written and films made about Watergate, "there's never been one place where the entire story was told in a comprehensive way."
Suchir Balaji poses for a photo in Hawaii in 2018. Balaji was a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who died in November 2024. (Balaji Ramamurthy via AP)
Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26.
Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He was well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI's strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products.
"We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," said a statement from OpenAI.
Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26 in what police said "appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation." The city's chief medical examiner's office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide.
His parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy said they are still seeking answers, describing their son as a "happy, smart and brave young man" who loved to hike and recently returned from a trip with friends.
Balaji grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first arrived at the fledgling AI research lab for a 2018 summer internship while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned a few years later to work at OpenAI, where one of his first projects, called WebGPT, helped pave the way for ChatGPT.
"Suchir's contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn't have succeeded without him," said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman in a social media post memorializing Balaji. Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said what... Read More
