Last week, San Francisco startup Fable Studio announced an ‘AI Showrunner’ capable of generating a full-length, fake South Park episode written, animated, directed, and voiced based on a single prompt.
Great piece. I'm also glad you reminded me about Smallville. I've had that in my post queue for months but it was delayed and deserves more attention. I'm glad you gave it a nod. A very interesting and important piece of work.
As to Fable, I've interviewed Edward for the podcast and have interacted with him a few times in the past two years. He is intelligent, creative, and unafraid of bold undertakings. He is the type of person that could make this work.
Granted, Edward and I disagree about the achievability of AGI, which I believe includes, at minimum, humanlike reasoning, agency, emergent abilities, and a sense of wisdom (even if an Alien wisdom) that goes beyond mere intelligence. No need to discuss consciousness which is even farther afield. The listed elements are not strictly computational challenges which provides a tall bar to clear for computational systems. Of course, everyone keeps changing the definition of AGI depending on whether they want to invoke fear, inspiration, or set an achievable milestone for their VC pitch.
I see AI Showrunner as one more copilot for the professional class. While I expect it to require more than a single prompt to create high-quality output, it certainly can help enhance efficiency and creativity. If it works, it will also reduce one more barrier to content creation which I generally see as a good thing.
The striking screenwriters using a tool like this may now be able to create their own shows without reliance on the studio system. That could be a very positive outcome.
The paper about Smallville is a super interesting read, can definitely recommend. Fable I think has shown that it could serve as a stepping stone for a lot more.
I'm jealous of all the people that you get in front of your mic Bret! Every time I write about someone interesting, it turns out you already spoke to them a few months before that ;) All jokes aside, I'm definitely going to give that a listen.
You and I agree on the achievability of AGI and especially with regards to all the gish galloping and dancing around the goal post that is happening. It's this thing in the distance where everybody can stick their fears, hopes and dream onto, but nobody's able to define.
I tend to agree: this is much ado about very little, at least for now. I can certainly see businesses onramping this as a service to folks for a fee, but it'll probably start with a very small user base, and might just be nonviable for a few more years. It'll get there, though.
Development could go faster than expected if major streaming companies like Netflix (who are doing increasingly more original productions) would throw some money at the problem. I could see the development of new tools, based on this novel approach, speed up the creation of animated TV-shows tenfold or more.
I could see this happening as well. My base case is that this technology progresses behind the scenes in the meantime, but any big tech company throwing a ton of cash at this would change the picture dramatically, and quickly.
I'm not so sure it will turn into a nightmare so quickly and I see positives too. This idea of 'what if we can become active participants in the media that we consume' is something that I think is really cool. Being able to take part and be part of a narrative universe that you love (think Marvel, for example) sounds like something a lot of people would love.
Great piece. I'm also glad you reminded me about Smallville. I've had that in my post queue for months but it was delayed and deserves more attention. I'm glad you gave it a nod. A very interesting and important piece of work.
As to Fable, I've interviewed Edward for the podcast and have interacted with him a few times in the past two years. He is intelligent, creative, and unafraid of bold undertakings. He is the type of person that could make this work.
Granted, Edward and I disagree about the achievability of AGI, which I believe includes, at minimum, humanlike reasoning, agency, emergent abilities, and a sense of wisdom (even if an Alien wisdom) that goes beyond mere intelligence. No need to discuss consciousness which is even farther afield. The listed elements are not strictly computational challenges which provides a tall bar to clear for computational systems. Of course, everyone keeps changing the definition of AGI depending on whether they want to invoke fear, inspiration, or set an achievable milestone for their VC pitch.
I see AI Showrunner as one more copilot for the professional class. While I expect it to require more than a single prompt to create high-quality output, it certainly can help enhance efficiency and creativity. If it works, it will also reduce one more barrier to content creation which I generally see as a good thing.
The striking screenwriters using a tool like this may now be able to create their own shows without reliance on the studio system. That could be a very positive outcome.
The paper about Smallville is a super interesting read, can definitely recommend. Fable I think has shown that it could serve as a stepping stone for a lot more.
I'm jealous of all the people that you get in front of your mic Bret! Every time I write about someone interesting, it turns out you already spoke to them a few months before that ;) All jokes aside, I'm definitely going to give that a listen.
You and I agree on the achievability of AGI and especially with regards to all the gish galloping and dancing around the goal post that is happening. It's this thing in the distance where everybody can stick their fears, hopes and dream onto, but nobody's able to define.
I tend to agree: this is much ado about very little, at least for now. I can certainly see businesses onramping this as a service to folks for a fee, but it'll probably start with a very small user base, and might just be nonviable for a few more years. It'll get there, though.
Development could go faster than expected if major streaming companies like Netflix (who are doing increasingly more original productions) would throw some money at the problem. I could see the development of new tools, based on this novel approach, speed up the creation of animated TV-shows tenfold or more.
I could see this happening as well. My base case is that this technology progresses behind the scenes in the meantime, but any big tech company throwing a ton of cash at this would change the picture dramatically, and quickly.
It's not a crime to dream big, but there's no guarantee megalomaniacal dreams won't turn into nightmares.
I'm not so sure it will turn into a nightmare so quickly and I see positives too. This idea of 'what if we can become active participants in the media that we consume' is something that I think is really cool. Being able to take part and be part of a narrative universe that you love (think Marvel, for example) sounds like something a lot of people would love.