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    Jill Soloway based Emmy-nominated ‘Transparent’ on real life

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments1188 Views
    In this Tuesday, June 16, 2015 file photo, Jill Soloway arrives at the Women in Film 2015 Crystal And Lucy Awards at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

    By Sandy Cohen, Entertainment Writer

    LOS ANGELES (AP) --

    Like the characters in her TV series "Transparent," which is nominated at this Sunday's Emmys, Jill Soloway understands the challenges of having a transgender parent: She based the show on personal experiences.

    "I think back about three years ago when my parents came out to me, and the rush of feelings that come with that," Soloway said in a recent interview. "And for me, this kind of odd feeling that I knew I was going to be making a television show about it, but a very scary feeling of how will the world accept all of this?"

    This was before Bruce Jenner's public transformation into Caitlyn; before "Orange Is the New Black" made Laverne Cox a household name.

    "What a crazy, amazing, zeitgeist moment of a world-shift change; a sea change that we never could have imagined we would be part of," Soloway said. "It's flabbergasting. I'm flabbergasted."

    Her hope when she created the show, she said, was to "make it safer for my parent to walk out of her apartment building; make it safer for her to hail a taxi cab or safer for her to stand in the elevator with people who she's never met."

    "I was really thinking about a personal love letter to my parents to try and shift the world ever so slightly," Soloway said. "And it's really shifted the world in a big way, and I'm astonished."

    Tags:AmazonJill SolowayTransparent



    Ex-OpenAI engineer who raised legal concerns about the technology he helped build has died

    Saturday, December 21, 2024
    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

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