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Maybe I have some sort of bias, thinking that Hollywood actors are all vapid and shallow. But I’ll be honest, Ben Affleck’s thinking on AI is downright thoughtful and intriguing.

He sat down during CNBC’s Delivering Alpha 2024 investor summit to share his thoughts on AI, movies, and the arts.

Give it a listen:

AI can you write you excellent imitative verse that sounds Elizabethan, it cannot write you Shakespeare. The function of having two actors, or three or four actors, in a room and the taste to discern and construct that is something that currently entirely eludes AI’s capability and I think will for a meaningful period of time.

What AI is gonna do is, is gonna disintermediate the more laborious, less creative, and you know, more costly aspects of filmmaking that will allow costs to be brought down. That will lower the barrier to entry. That will allow more voices to be heard. That will make it easier for the people who want to make Good Will Hunting to go out and make it.

Look, AI is a craftsman, at best. Craftsmen can learn to make … furniture by sitting down next to somebody, seeing what their technique is, and imitating it. That’s how large video models, large language models basically work … nothing new is created.

Affleck’s argument, and it’s a solid one, is that AI as it is now and as it will be for some time, cannot replace the arts, especially movies, because it is only able to imitate and not able to create independently. Yet. For now, it’s a useful tool to take care of expensive parts of filmmaking like sets, design, effects, etc.

You may disagree with his conclusion, but Affleck has clearly thought this through.

I wouldn’t like to be in the visual effects business, they’re in trouble. Because what costs a lot of money is now going to cost a lot less. And it’s going to hammer that space, and it already is … maybe it shouldn’t take a thousand people to render something …

You might be able to get two seasons of House of the Dragon in a year instead of one. And if that happens, according to macroeconomics, in, you know, cultures where there are basically oligopolies competing, what should happen with the same demand and the same span is they should just make more shows …

Eventually, my hope for AI is that it’s an additional revenue stream that can replace DVD, which took 15-20% out of the economy of filmmaking.

The possibilities are mind blowing, for sure. But Affleck really doesn’t worry that it will affect actors, directors, and moviemakers for the worse.

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