Production and entertainment company m ss ng p eces has added VR pioneering director Jessica Brillhart to its immersive roster. Her latest project is Beethoven’s Fifth, a VR collaboration with NASA’s JPL that is an official selection at SXSW 2018.
Brillhart comes from a background ideally suited for technology and storytelling. After graduating from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Brillhart joined Google as its first in house director working on many award-winning shorts and documentaries as part of Google’s Creative Lab. She made the jump into VR, joining the Google VR team where she played an instrumental role in developing and field testing the 16-camera live action VR rig known as Google Jump.
She’s become one of the leading thought leaders in the VR space giving memorable talks at events like Google IO, Oculus Connect, and The New Yorker TechFest among others.
“Jessica’s leadership as a filmmaker in VR has helped push the entire industry forward. Her work can be profoundly serious or hilariously playful, and will always provoke you to ask the right questions,” said Kate Oppenheim, managing partner at m ss ng p eces.
Brillhart said, “I have been a big fan of m ss ng p eces for a long time now. I’ve always admired their curiosity, attention to detail, sense of humor, and guts. After many years of friendship it really feels like coming home, and I’m excited about what we’ll be able to create together.”
Changing OpenAI’s Nonprofit Structure Would Raise Questions and Heightened Scrutiny
The artificial intelligence maker OpenAI may face a costly and inconvenient reckoning with its nonprofit origins even as its valuation recently exploded to $157 billion.
Nonprofit tax experts have been closely watching OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, since last November when its board ousted and rehired CEO Sam Altman. Now, some believe the company may have reached — or exceeded — the limits of its corporate structure, under which it is organized as a nonprofit whose mission is to develop artificial intelligence to benefit "all of humanity" but with for-profit subsidiaries under its control.
Jill Horwitz, a professor in law and medicine at UCLA School of Law who has studied OpenAI, said that when two sides of a joint venture between a nonprofit and a for-profit come into conflict, the charitable purpose must always win out.
"It's the job of the board first, and then the regulators and the court, to ensure that the promise that was made to the public to pursue the charitable interest is kept," she said.
Altman recently confirmed that OpenAI is considering a corporate restructure but did not offer any specifics. A source told The Associated Press, however, that the company is looking at the possibility of turning OpenAI into a public benefit corporation. No final decision has been made by the board and the timing of the shift hasn't been determined, the source said.
In the event the nonprofit loses control of its subsidiaries, some experts think OpenAI may have to pay for the interests and assets that had belonged to the nonprofit. So far, most observers agree OpenAI has carefully orchestrated its relationships between its nonprofit and its various other corporate entities to try to avoid that.
However, they also see... Read More