Technology

I think the primary gripe with AI is less about having no potential, but about the specific potential for evil being leveraged heavily while "visionaries" lie about or dismiss the (current and foreseeable future) limits for clout and profit.

To use your comparison, CEOs selling solar panels are responding to scepticism about the stability of that supply and its elasticity to fluctuating power demand with vague promises of developing more advanced cells that can operate with less light and throttle the generated power during ebbs in demand. They buy land to install more solar panels, then lobby for the deactivation of other, flexible power sources that could supplement their supply until they can finally start charging more in times of high demand.

They do so because the alternative would be admitting that the product they're selling isn't ready for the market they're trying to enter (or at least not at the scale they're aiming for) and that the solution to their issues requires different technologies which have not yet been developed. They can't admit that because it would upset the investors that trusted their vision. As a famous adage suggests, they probably can't even understand that limit, since their salary depends on not understanding it.

In the same vein, the current CEOs fail (or refuse?) to acknowledge that the generative models today have a fundamental limitation with understanding the semantics behind certain patterns. One infamous phenomenon would be AI hands: We know what a hand is and how it works; a generator can only vaguely imitate the patterns. It doesn't know "hand" or "finger", so it just generates some assembly that vaguely fits its training material.

If we consider the broader and ill-defined field of AI, I can believe that some form of semantic modelling technology could provide a way to connect tokens with abstract concepts and enable a type of reasoning that pure token predictors are incapable of. But we first need to acknowledge that limit, and on that front, we're competing against tech-bros that would rather believe than know and against grifters that would rather sell snake oil than teach medicine.

As much as I also just think AI is just going to make lazy people lazier, and we’ve already seen some effects regarding our ability to problem solve, the real issue is that none of the wonderful utopian AI stuff is going to come true at the rate we’re going. I don’t guve a fat flying fuck how good or bad AI is, I care that it’s being used to spy on us, make decisions no human will ever review, and has already led to mass layoffs without any kind of safety net for those people. I care that it’s raping the environment so some sentient dick-cheese can get worse results than a near-zero effort search would give them. Increased productivity has yet to give anyone more free time, they just axe someone else and overwork whoever’s left.

We are NOT ready for AI at ANY level. It’s a weapon being used against the working class. If you think the issue is with its quality then you need to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and pay some goddamn attention.

Speaking of films, what most anti-AI people can’t see is how AI can lead to a new golden age of film/tv. It can allow people to cheaply and quickly create teasers/trailers/shorts/even full episodes and movies for cents on the dollar compared to before. The barrier of entry was incredibly high, but thanks to AI that is now a possibility for any anyone.

When you look at the utter crap that Hollywood is spewing out these days like Moana “live action” and Supergirl, it’s hard to say that AI couldn’t be used to make better content.

If he’s embracing AI then he is once again on the forefront. AI has the ability to revolutionise the industry in a way that it needs in order to survive - greatly reduce costs and greatly reduce production times.

Movie studios are quickly moving to the same situation that video game developers are in now thanks to ballooning costs and long development times - a situation where if every single game they release isn’t an absolute smash hit seeking 20 million copies at full price, they’re going to go under.

The movie industry is in free fall. AI adoption is one of the only realistic paths forward.

Only because he had to. As soon as it was possible he went cg and blue screens.

He used what was available at the time. For the original trilogy, that was practical effects.

The prequel trilogy was a bit more... Dodgy thanks to eagerly embraced CGI that wasn't fully baked yet.

People famously critiqued the reworked original trilogy due to various dubious creative tweaks. Like waking on Jabba and Jabba just having a funny reaction instead of how you would expect him to react.

Not going to get into the AI debate; I will agree that BAD CGI sucks; there’s so much CGI you never even notice and without it the scenes would be horrible. The main reason “CGI sucks” is because of the shift to go with the lowest bidder who’s then forced to work under horrific timelines and unable to actually do good work. CGI itself doesn’t suck, but it absolutely can when done by a low bidder in 1/4 of the time it needs.

https://youtu.be/bL6hp8BKB24

Crap-looking Special Edition Jabba has awkwardly entered the chat.

Meesah notsah Jamaican racist stereotypesah.

The franchise already went downhill with him still in charge, Disney just finished the Job.

Maybe an AI can read the story too, and they can all leave me the fuck out of it.