Jane Rosenthal attends the AT&T Presents: Untold Stories luncheon, in conjunction with the Tribeca Film Festival, at Thalassa on Monday, April 22, 2019, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
NEW YORK (AP) --
The co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival called on women filmmakers to keep building on the momentum of the #MeToo and Time's Up era.
This year for the first time, half of the films in Tribeca's competition categories are directed or co-directed by women. That's up from 44 percent last year.
Jane Rosenthal, who co-founded the festival with Robert De Niro, told attendees at the Chanel Tribeca Women Filmmakers Luncheon Friday that if a window has now been opened, "it's only because of all of us that that window is going to stay open," and that necessary change will be made.
Rosenthal told the crowd that they "cannot be the exception. We have to be the norm in every business."
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
