Live data from Hacker News

Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

twitter.com

101–110 of 187 posts

Re: Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

#101
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should I bother to read something you didn't bother to write? The answer seems obvious: because it's better. Obviously it isn't better now . But it's easy to imagine a day in the not-too-distant future where AI can shit out 1000 hours of content that is better in every way than what humans create. And it will even feel more human than the human made stuff because the AI will have learned that we like that. What…

Can AI write really funny jokes? honest question

Reminds me of a short story "Jokester" by Asimov :)

Re: Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

#102

I'm not in the industry and I can tell he's failing to conceive many possibilities. I don't understand why he's being praised, I guess confidence impresses people.

While AI will ( and does) reduce the burden of writers, it’s going to -kill- celebrity acting in most cases.

In doing so, it will turn directing on its ear in a way that many talented directors will not be able to adapt to.

Directors will become proxy actors by having to micromanage AI acting skills. Or Perhaps they will be augmented with a team of “character operators” that do the proxy-acting. Either way, there will be little point in paying celebrity actors and their extravagant salaries for most roles. Instead, it might turn out that skilled and talented generic, no-name actors can play any role, then have the character model deepfaked onto them… which could actually create a large demand in lower paying jobs for character actors, possibly actually being a kind of boom in the acting business.

Lots of possibilities, but the director is going to take center stage in this new reality, while celebrity actors will have to swallow hard as they are priced out of their field.

Re: Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

#103
post #83
post #65

Maybe the main actors, the stars of the movies are safe for now. But background actors who just sit in the background or have some small extra role will be decimated, because those roles can be replaced with AI. Since many actors start with small roles or background work, it will have an effect on the industry if entry jobs are eliminated. In the long run even the main stars can get into trouble, because it may be tr…

80% as good for 1/10000th the price is quite the offer.

100 percent as good for 1/100 the price is where celebrity acting is headed. They will take roles for exposure and make their money on their brand, like influencer cattle. It will be the only way to compete with the human wave of extremely talented but unknown talent that currently can’t get parts, but who can absolutely wreck an audience as a human canvas upon which to render a studio owned character likeness.

Ben went and drank his own celebrity exceptionalism cool-aid.

Re: Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

#104

Excellent art might be attributed less to genius and more to a selection process and creator-audience feedback loops. We might be falling into a bit of survivorship bias when missing that excellent art is the product of a variety of processes, not just human inspiration. Machines can probably replicate much of that process, for better or worse.

Artists are very rarely concerned with their audience. Good Art, capital A, is the unique expression of a singular consciousness - you can't produce that by catering to an audience. That's just a product (see Warhol).

Yes, art is a product, particularly in the context of this conversation about AI.

Very little is the unique expression of a singular consciousness.

Art being "good" is subjective and the audience is the source of that valuation.

Re: Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

#105

I'm not in the industry and I can tell he's failing to conceive many possibilities. I don't understand why he's being praised, I guess confidence impresses people.

> I'm not in the industry and I can tell he's failing to conceive many possibilities.

It's also possible that because you're not in the industry, you don't understand the problem domain well enough.

Tech bros love to think they're just so much smarter than everyone in other industries, but it rarely ends up being true. We saw this with Blockchain; this distributed consensus protocol was supposed to solve all the problems with money transfers, settlements, and securities across the world and uh... did none of that. But tech bros sure did love to talk about how the blockchain doubters just didn't understand the technology, without considering that maybe they didn't understand the problem space.

Re: Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

#106

My favorite quote on this topic is "Why should I bother to read something you didn't bother to write?" Especially when you're talking about fiction and reading/watching for enjoyment, what does it matter if you can shit out 1000 hours of AI content? Maybe it's good to keep babies entertained? Studios have gotten so into the habit of treating "content" as a fungible commodity, but the fact is that even blockbuster mov…

We already have procedurally generated content in games - and quite a few of those seem to be pretty popular.

In specific genres of game where the developers put a lot of effort into the mechanics to facilitate procedural generation, yes it's interesting. You can't tell me Dwarf Fortress was fast and easy to make because fortresses are procedurally generated.

Re: Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

#107
post #89

Was it? He concludes that LLMs will never write Shakespeare, or create original work of that caliber, or animate an actor the way Ben Guinness could have done it. I'm paraphrasing but isn't this confirmaation bias from a guy now heavily vested in making movies? Move 37 was so astonishing the world champiion Go player, hardly known for theatrics, got up and left the table. It was considered an insanely "original" move…

Idk. LLMs may effectively emulate human creativity up to a point, but in the end they are writing literally the most predictable response. They don’t start with an emotion, a vision, and then devise creative ways to bring the viewer into that world. They don’t emotion-test hundreds of ideas to find the most effective way to give the viewer/reader a visceral sense of living that moment. While they can read sentiment,…

>There is a reason why AI output is abrasive to read. It is literally written with no consideration given to the reader.

>No model of mind of the effect that it will have on the receiver, no interesting and unusual prosaic twists to capture your attention or spur your imagination…. Just a soulless, predictable stream of simulated thoughts that remarkably often turns out to be useful, if uninspiring.

An LLM can produce text about the humliation and pain of being picked last on the recess kickball team. But it never had that experience. It can't. It has zero credibility about the subject. It's BSing in exactly the same way that sports fans pretend they can manage their favorite team better than the current staff.

Re: Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

#108

My favorite quote on this topic is "Why should I bother to read something you didn't bother to write?" Especially when you're talking about fiction and reading/watching for enjoyment, what does it matter if you can shit out 1000 hours of AI content? Maybe it's good to keep babies entertained? Studios have gotten so into the habit of treating "content" as a fungible commodity, but the fact is that even blockbuster mov…

This is the classic expression of the fallacy that the value of something is based on the cost to create it from the seller, not the benefit it brings to the buyer.

I don't think that's true at all. Duchamp's "Fountain" is an example of something that is profoundly impactful, didn't "cost" him anything, yet an AI could never reproduce it.

Re: Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the classic expression of the fallacy that the value of something is based on the cost to create it from the seller, not the benefit it brings to the buyer.

Additionally, there are lots of examples where cheaper production has produced an inferior product yet the difference in price causes the inferior product to usurp in superior product. Building materials exhibit this effect frequently: plaster vs. drywall, asphalt vs. slate, balloon framing vs structural masonry, etc. In media, TikTok exemplifies this effect. People watch fewer movies (expensive, high quality) and wa…

Cheaper movies in terms of cost are often better than expensive movies because they have a humanity that shows through. Let me know when an AI can make a Jon Carpenter movie

Re: Ben Affleck's surprisingly comprehensive take on LLMs for video

#110

My favorite quote on this topic is "Why should I bother to read something you didn't bother to write?" Especially when you're talking about fiction and reading/watching for enjoyment, what does it matter if you can shit out 1000 hours of AI content? Maybe it's good to keep babies entertained? Studios have gotten so into the habit of treating "content" as a fungible commodity, but the fact is that even blockbuster mov…

Sequelitis and remakes have persuaded me that some people really want intellectual baby food. I'm worried that the majority really just wants content to pass the time. Let's hope creative indie movies will continue to flourish, as we may just end up depending on them.
Post reply on HN