Don't panic about AI - it's just a tool

[Andrew Reid]

Filmmaking is an art form. In the realm of creativity, people often crave the authenticity that only real humans can provide. This is why blockbusters often enlist well-known actors to generate interest and why, despite our daily reliance on them, our personal computers don't make headlines in gossip columns.

https://www.eoshd.com/news/dont-panic-about-ai-its-just-a-tool/

[IronFilm]

South Park AI anybody? 

https://twitter.com/fablesimulation/status/1681352904152850437

  https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1682086586593443841 

 

21 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

This is why blockbusters often enlist well-known actors to generate interest

What if we have AI celebrities? 

[Ty Harper]

Don't have time to read the article right now but I'm hoping the title is meant to be sarcastic, lol. 

[PannySVHS]

8 hours ago, Ty Harper said:

Don't have time to read the article right now but I'm hoping the title is meant to be sarcastic, lol. 

I recommend read Andrews article, if you are up for some classic and classy Eoshd reading pleasure. 🙂

[Ty Harper]

@Andrew Reid I think AI will never EVER replace our DESIRE to make art. But as a tool placed in the hands of corporate interests, it will definitely remove art made by humans from the corporate art/entertainment business equation/model - or at the very least minimize it to the point of being irrelevant. Put differently: Is there a world where AI is used as a tool to HELP humans create their art? Yes of course and it's already happening. But, that is separate from the world corporate interests envision, where human creatives are more expendable than ever before (as is being revealed in the ongoing negotiations happening in Hollywood right now). That is literally the battle the WGA and actors are fighting for at this moment. And it is a tsunami of a fight coming to literally every realm of the workforce, and is setting the tone for every union (including my own) hitting the bargaining table in the months and years to come. 

Again AI is a tool that can and will help artists make their art - but it will be interesting to say the least, what monetizing that art will look like for humans in the coming decades. I think there will definitely be a window where human creators (particularly freelance/indie ones) will be able to make some really nice coin using AI if they hop on the AI bandwagon pronto. But I think that is less of a new career path and very much a temporary window that will close as the AI they are using continues to 'learn' and get better from them using it. And the better the AI gets, the more likely consumers will develop a stronger appetite for AI driven content - and the more likely human creators will be erased from the business equation/model. I mean I've watched the Spiderverse films and shows like 'Arcane' - and for the first time ever, I felt like I could (as a critical thinking, media-literate/aware consumer) enjoy a world where the bulk of what I watched was animated (regardless of genre!). That is why I whole heartedly tip my hat off to Tom Cruise for literally risking his life jumping off cliffs, and engaging in a actual seemingly impossible mission of trying to save big screen live-action films as we've known them up to this point.

All that said, I hope I'm so wrong about all of this that I look back at this post in the years to come, and shake my head with utter disbelief, and a massive sigh of relief.

[majoraxis]

5 Stages of Grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.

Looks like the screen actors guild is at stage 3:

From https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/5-reasons-why-the-screen-actors-guild-is-striking-against-studios/ar-AA1e55Mv

"...The studios countered with wanting to scan a background performance, pay the performer for half a day’s work, then use that performance and likeness in perpetuity without consent. The studios also wanted to be able to change the dialogue said by main actors, or even add new scenes, without the actors’ consent. Studios were also interested in using an actor’s likeness, image, and performances “to train new generative AI systems without consent or compensation.”

I think the money is in training AI with the likeness, image, and performances of convicted criminals. My next movie and video game is going to star AI versions Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer (they are both dead, so it keeps licensing costs down I assume?  I wonder?  Maybe the studios already own the virtual rights to their likenesses.)

Bundy and Dahmer meet in prison and realize that they at one time were in same GYM glass, had a crush on the same girl, where both rejected by her, which was the last straw for each of them. It follows the retelling of their lives in parallel until each has their first kill. 

The academy award for best fantasy dark comedy tm goes to: Bundy vs Dahmer: First Kill tm

Disclaimer no humans were hurt or killed in the making of this virtual movie or video game - it just looks, feels and sounds that way... we are not responsible for the therapy costs of associated with recovering from our media experience.

Does anyone else have problem with a move maker/studio using an AI likeness of real serial killers to make horror films or video games?

My point is if being famous is the fundamental value of an actor then we are surround by potential actors who the viewing audience my be just as interested in watching, if AI can do the acting for them...

BTW - I love AI, plan to make the most of it for the benefit of humanity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Michael S]

My 2cents:

Having a netflix subscription and seeing some of what is on offer, a lot of it already feels as if the script was generated using a particular algorithm. There is a market for un-adventurous "killing some time" entertainment and AI can probably help with churning out that kind of stuff.

In other aspects of filmmaking, studios will probably see it as a tool to reduce cost and risk, while artists will see it as a tool to help them generate new ideas, and I think AI can do both. The struggle between studios wanting to play it safe and run a financially stable business and "auteur cinema" wanting to leave a very particular, individual mark on their movies and willing to take risks in the process is not new. That struggle will remain. The studios will always need to offer some room to these people as the studios will eventually always become irrelevant if they just keep churning out uninspired drivel.

I think there are some cultural differences across the world with respect to how authenticity is valued. The example that comes to mind is how in places like Japan or China there are theme parks containing reconstructions of European or American monuments. I still have to see the first of such a park in Europe containing live-size replicas of Inca or Buddhist monuments. Typical for Japan are also the virtual artists or influencers like Hatsune Miku or Imma, the virtual influencer. As Japan is an outlier in many metrics, that doesn't say much about global trends, but I would not be surprised if future generations would be quite used to virtual personas with complete virtual backstories and such. Of course research is already being done on how to construct such a virtual influencer to sell more stuff to people. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2023.1205610/full Maybe there will be a time when all these "content creators" on youtube peddling their ware will be virtual. It might actually be an improvement.

[IronFilm]

22 hours ago, majoraxis said:

I think the money is in training AI with the likeness, image, and performances of convicted criminals. My next movie and video game is going to star AI versions Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer (they are both dead, so it keeps licensing costs down I assume?  I wonder?  Maybe the studios already own the virtual rights to their likenesses.)

You need to have scanned them before they died! (ideally, before they even became infamous)

  

1 hour ago, Michael S said:

Having a netflix subscription and seeing some of what is on offer, a lot of it already feels as if the script was generated using a particular algorithm. There is a market for un-adventurous "killing some time" entertainment and AI can probably help with churning out that kind of stuff.

Yes, Netflix has a TONNE of customer data, they know what appeals to each market segments, and can make films targeted to that market segment even better than Hollywood can. 

That's why you feel "the script was generated using a particular algorithm", because Netflix is intentionally commissioning and buying films in particular niches. 

But what if AI Generated Films takes this to the next level? Not just the next level, but a 100x more levels up?? 

With films being made not just for a particular market segment, but an even smaller micro niche within that market segment? Or even... films specifically made and targeted for you??  (why not? If the costs of making films drops from $1M per film, for even the cheapest of cheap low budget Netflix fare, to merely 1c per film, then this is what will happen)

[MrSMW]

1 hour ago, Michael S said:

Maybe there will be a time when all these "content creators" on youtube peddling their ware will be virtual

Peter Pirate McKinnon is definitely Nexus 6

[Michael S]

18 hours ago, IronFilm said:

With films being made not just for a particular market segment, but an even smaller micro niche within that market segment? Or even... films specifically made and targeted for you?? 

Which is the premise of the first episode of the latest season of the "Black Mirror" series with "Streamberry" as the streaming service experimenting with exactly this.

This is of course also very attractive for advertisers creating virtual influencers or advertisement specifically tailored to each individual to ensure the marketing material pushes all your right buttons to get you to buy the thing they are trying to sell you. The next step of targeted advertisement.

[kye]

Deep Fake Love...  a reality show that basically uses AI Deep Fake tech to torture the contestants...

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/07/25/the-cruellest-show-on-tv-deep-fake-love-goes-too-far-with-ai

I just checked Netflix AU and I have 8 episodes ready to watch.

[IronFilm]

Wow, I didn't think it was possible to sink any lower with trashy reality tv?

O ye of little faith!

What new fresh horrors is this, deep fake AI merged with the worst aspects of "reality" tv? Yes, yes it is 

[KnightsFan]

Nice article! My perspective is as a software engineer, at a company that is making a huge effort to leverage AI faster and better than the industry. I am generally less optimistic than you that AI is "just a tool" and will not result in large swaths of the creative industry losing money.

The first point I always make is that it's not about whether AI will replace all jobs, it's about the net gain or loss. As with any technology, AI tools both create and destroy jobs. The question for the economy is how many. Is there a net loss or a net gain? And of course we're not only concerned with number of jobs, but also how much money that job is worth. Across a given economy--for example, the US economy--will AI generated art cause clients/studios/customers to put more, or less net money into photography? My feeling is less. For example, my company ran an ad campaign using AI generated photos. It was done in collaboration with both AI specialists to write prompts, and artists to conceptualize and review. So while we still used a human artist, it would have taken many more people working many more hours to achieve the same thing. The net result was we spent less money towards creative on that particular campaign, meaning less money in the photography industry. It's difficult for me to imagine that AI will result in more money being spent on artistic fields like photography. I'm not talking about money that creatives spend on gear, which is a flow of money from creatives out, I'm talking about the inflow from non-creatives, towards creatives.

The other point I'll make is that I don't think anyone should worry about GPT-4. It's very competent at writing code, but as a software engineer, I am confident that the current generation of AI tools cannot do my job. However, I am worried about what GPT-5, or GPT-10, or GPT-20 will do. I see a lot of articles--not necessarily Andrew's--that confidently say AI won't replace X because it's not good enough. It's like looking at a baby and saying, "that child can't even talk! It will never replace me as a news anchor." We must assume that AI will continue to improve exponentially at every task, for the foreseeable future. In this sense, "improve" doesn't necessarily mean "give the scientifically accurate answer" either. Machine learning research goes in parallel with psychology research. A lot of machine learning breakthroughs actually provide ideas and context for studies on human learning, and vice versa. We will be able to both understand and model human behavior better in future generations.

My third point is that I disagree that people are fundamentally moved by other people's creations. You write

Quote

Whenever a movie comes out, you’re interested in the humans behind it and the personal endeavour that went into it.

I think that only a very small fraction of moviegoers care at all about who made the content. This sounds like an argument made in favor of practical effects over CGI, and we all know which side won that. People like you and I might love the practical effects in Oppenheimer simply for being practical, but the big CGI franchises crank out multiple films each year worth billions of dollars. If your argument is that the people driving the entertainment market will pay more for carefully crafted art than generic, by the numbers stories and effects, I can't disagree more.

Quote

When the crowds look at a movie poster outside a cinema, do they go for the one starring Brad Pitt or the one starring a made up actor powered by Microsoft Azure?

Groot, Rocket Raccoon, and Shrek sell films and merchandise based off face and name recognition. What percent of fans do you think know who voiced them? 50%, ie 100 million+ people? How many can name a single animator for those characters? What about Master Chief from Halo (originally a one dimensional character literally from Microsoft), how many people can tell you who wrote, voiced, or animated any of the Bungie Halo games? In fact, most Halo fans feel more connected to the original Bungie character than the one from the Halo TV series, despite having a much more prominent actor portrayal.

My final point is not specifically about AI. I live in an area of the US where, decades ago, everyone worked in good paying textile mill jobs. Then the US outsourced textile production overseas and everyone lost their jobs. The US and my state economies are larger than ever. Jobs were created in other sectors, and we have a booming tech sector--but very few laid off, middle aged textile workers retrained and started a new successful career. It's plausible that a lot of new, unknown jobs will spring up thanks to AI, but it's also plausible that "photography" shrinks in the same way that textiles did.

[kye]

2 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

Groot, Rocket Raccoon, and Shrek sell films and merchandise based off face and name recognition. What percent of fans do you think know who voiced them? 50%, ie 100 million+ people?

Great post.  As a fellow computer science person, I agree with your analysis, especially that it will get better and better, and will get so good that we will learn more about the human condition due to how good it will get.  This is also not something new, in the early days of computer graphics, someone wrote a simulation of how birds fly in formation and it was so accurate that the biologists and animal behavioural scientists studied the algorithms and this is how the 'rules' of birds flying in formation were initially discovered. 

I just wanted to add to the above quote by saying that studios have already made large strides in this direction with the comic-book genre films, whose characters are the stars and not the actors that play them.  This is an extension of things like the James Bond films.  These were all films where the character was constant and the actor was replaceable.  

VFX films are the latest iteration of this, where the motion capture and voice actors and the animators are far less known, and when it's AI replacing those creatives to make CGI characters that will be the next step, and then it will be AI making realistic-looking characters.

For those reading that aren't aware of the potential success of completely virtual characters and how people can bond with a virtual person, I direct your attention to Hatsune Miku, a virtual pop star:

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku

Quote

Hatsune Miku (Japanese: 初音ミク), also called Miku Hatsune, and officially code-named CV01,[2][3] is a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media and its official anthropomorphic mascot character, a 16-year-old girl with long, turquoise twintails. Miku's personification has been marketed as a virtual idol, and has performed at live virtual concerts onstage as an animated projection (rear-cast projection on a specially coated glass screen).

She was created in 2007, which in the software world is an incredibly long time ago, and in the pop star world is probably even longer!

But did it work?

Quote

In March 2012, the Nomura Research Institute estimated that the sales of all Hatsune Miku brand goods added up into the region of ¥10 billion since the release in 2007.

That's a figure from over a decade ago and equates to just over USD$70,000,000, which is almost USD$100M in todays money.  I couldn't find any reliable more recent estimates, but she is clearly a successful commercial brand when you review the below.

 

What does this mean in reality though, it's not like she topped the charts.  Here is a concert from 2016 - she is rear-projected onto a pane of glass that was mounted on the stage.

She was announced as a performer at the 2020 Coachella, that was cancelled due to covid.

So, while Japan might be more suited to CGI characters than the west is (although that is changing) - take the Replika story for example.  Replika is a female virtual AI companion who messages and sends pics to subscribers, including flirty suggestive ones.  The owners of Replika decided that the flirty stuff should be a separate paid feature and turned it off for the free version - the users reacted strongly.  So strongly in fact that it's now an active field of research for psychologists trying to figure out how to understand, manage and regulate these things.  It's one thing for tech giants to 'curate' your online interactions, but it's another when the tech giants literally control your girlfriend.

Background: https://theconversation.com/i-tried-the-replika-ai-companion-and-can-see-why-users-are-falling-hard-the-app-raises-serious-ethical-questions-200257

There are also other things to take into consideration as well.  Fans are very interested in knowing as much as possible about their idols, but idols are real people and have human psychological needs and limitations, but virtual idols will not.  The virtual idols that share their entire lives with their fans will be even more relatable than the human stars that need privacy and get frustrated and yell at paparazzi etc.  These virtual idols will be able to be PR-perfect in all the right ways (i.e. just human enough to be relatable but not so human that they accidentally offend people).  

There is already a huge market for personalised messages from stars, virtual idols will be able to create these in virtually infinite amounts.  Virtual stars will be able to perform at simultaneous concerts, make public appearances wherever and whenever is optimal, etc.  

And if you still need another example about how we underestimate technology... 

"Computers in the future may weigh less than 1.5 tons.” - Popular Mechanics magazine, 1949.

[Ty Harper]

I don't know any critical, reputable analysis of AI that disputes how amazing the tech is, in and of itself. The entirety of the convo, union protests, etc, isn't about that at all. It's about protecting the human labor (labor used to power AI tech) from the big corps who have and will continue to use the transformative potential of AI to lay waste to much of the human workforce as we now know it... and not just in the film and arts and entertainment world, but ALL jobs across ALL sectors - including the jobs of the everyday consumers of AI, who won't grasp the larger implications for their own job security until it's too late. As a producer covering this story every week since Chat GPT began to get traction - it's kind of been like watching a reporter in Manhattan covering a tsunami happening in Buffalo - with a tone of awe (even child-like glee) that seems oblivious to the fact that the tsunami is coming their way. 

So unless people on this site have immense personal wealth and/or really really great pensions - I am definitely a bit concerned about the seemingly one-sided tone on here too.

[ntblowz]

Well even employees at Adobe worried too but as usual with management try to sweet talk about it.

 

https://venturebeat.com/ai/adobe-product-leader-says-ai-wont-kill-graphic-design-even-as-employees-worry/

[KnightsFan]

9 hours ago, Ty Harper said:

It's about protecting the human labor (labor used to power AI tech) from the big corps who have and will continue to use the transformative potential of AI to lay waste to much of the human workforce as we now know it... and not just in the film and arts and entertainment world, but ALL jobs across ALL sectors

The problem with any effort to stop technology is that it won't work in the long run. Right now, there are only a handful of companies that have the computing power to run an LLM like ChatGPT, so it's somewhat feasible to control. But once the technology can run on your home PC, there is no amount of legislation or unionization that can control its use.

And that statement is not to say anything is good or bad. The reality is simply that we have very limited ability to control the distribution and use of software.

Switching to opinion mode, I believe that the technology is ultimately a good thing. I think limiting the use of technology, in order to preserve jobs, is bad in the long run. I believe it's better for humans if cars drive themselves and we don't need to employ human truck drivers. It's better for humans to give everyone the ability to make entire movies, simply by describing it to a computer. The big problem is that our economic model won't support it. And I'm not talking about studios and unions--the fundamental problem is that digital goods can be infinitely duplicated at no cost, and every economy is based on shifting finite packages. The same applies to AI, but with the new meta-layer being that the actual, duplicated product of AI isn't a digital good, it's a skillset for producing that digital good.

I don't have all the right words to describe exactly what I'm trying to say. The example I give is that right now, self driving cars are not as good as people. But the moment any car can drive itself better than a human, every car will be able to. We have to keep training new truck drivers to do the same task. That is not true of a duplicatable AI skillset. So to bring this back to my original point, we can try to prevent self driving cars in an effort to protect truck drivers, but someday, someone will still achieve it and at that moment, the software will exist, and unlike a physical product, it can be copied all over the world simultaneously.

So instead of preventing technology or its use, we need to adapt our economic model to better serve humans in lieu of our new abilities.

[Ty Harper]

2 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

So instead of preventing technology or its use, we need to adapt our economic model to better serve humans in lieu of our new abilities.

Again, no one on the picket line or in positions of power within these related protests are trying to prevent AI's use persay, nor is anyone naive enough to think it can be stopped - it's just common sense that when you see something like a tsunami coming that you do everything in your power to protect/prepare yourself. There are infinite versions of this story that feature humans en masse benefitting from AI tech without the savagery being exhibited by the big corps in terms of what they have been willing to offer actors so far. Yes, the vast majority of those alternate/more equitable scenarios would require a completely different economic system - but they do and have existed. Some long before the system we're in right now.  But again, no need to be naive about all of this - capitalism is gonna capitalism - and so while the deals unions across the human work force will broker with corps in the months and years to come will likely be temporary stop-gaps - they will give those who benefit from union protections, a bit of breathing room to prepare for the inevitable changes coming to their respective industries. 

[IronFilm]

On 7/29/2023 at 2:19 PM, KnightsFan said:

The other point I'll make is that I don't think anyone should worry about GPT-4. It's very competent at writing code, but as a software engineer, I am confident that the current generation of AI tools cannot do my job. However, I am worried about what GPT-5, or GPT-10, or GPT-20 will do. I see a lot of articles--not necessarily Andrew's--that confidently say AI won't replace X because it's not good enough. It's like looking at a baby and saying, "that child can't even talk! It will never replace me as a news anchor." We must assume that AI will continue to improve exponentially at every task, for the foreseeable future.

Indeed, just look at the leap forwards in improvement from GPT2 to GPT3

Or each generation from Midjourney V1 vs V2 vs V3 vs V4 vs vV5 (and those 5 generations only took a single year to happen!!!). 

https://aituts.com/midjourney-versions/ 

We might laugh at the efforts of generative AI video right now, but they're no worse than Midjourney V1 was.... 

Perhaps 50/50 odds we'll have the Midjourney V5 equivalent for video by 2028:

https://manifold.markets/ScottAlexander/in-2028-will-an-ai-be-able-to-gener 

Or maybe even higher odds than that... 

https://manifold.markets/firstuserhere/will-we-have-end-to-end-ai-generate-12f2be941361 

https://manifold.markets/firstuserhere/will-we-have-end-to-end-ai-generate-de41c9309e38 

On 7/29/2023 at 2:19 PM, KnightsFan said:

I think that only a very small fraction of moviegoers care at all about who made the content. This sounds like an argument made in favor of practical effects over CGI, and we all know which side won that. People like you and I might love the practical effects in Oppenheimer simply for being practical, but the big CGI franchises crank out multiple films each year worth billions of dollars. If your argument is that the people driving the entertainment market will pay more for carefully crafted art than generic, by the numbers stories and effects, I can't disagree more.

I agree with your disagreeing.

On 7/29/2023 at 2:19 PM, KnightsFan said:

Groot, Rocket Raccoon, and Shrek sell films and merchandise based off face and name recognition. What percent of fans do you think know who voiced them? 50%, ie 100 million+ people? How many can name a single animator for those characters? What about Master Chief from Halo (originally a one dimensional character literally from Microsoft), how many people can tell you who wrote, voiced, or animated any of the Bungie Halo games? In fact, most Halo fans feel more connected to the original Bungie character than the one from the Halo TV series, despite having a much more prominent actor portrayal.

That's a good analogy! 

And if it is carefully/appropriately managed, you can even have a change in voice actor who is doing these characters, and almost none of the fans will notice or care. 

On 7/29/2023 at 2:19 PM, KnightsFan said:

My final point is not specifically about AI. I live in an area of the US where, decades ago, everyone worked in good paying textile mill jobs. Then the US outsourced textile production overseas and everyone lost their jobs. The US and my state economies are larger than ever. Jobs were created in other sectors, and we have a booming tech sector--but very few laid off, middle aged textile workers retrained and started a new successful career. It's plausible that a lot of new, unknown jobs will spring up thanks to AI, but it's also plausible that "photography" shrinks in the same way that textiles did.

Another good analogy. It is indeed very likely, I feel, that the country as a whole will be massively better off and wealthier thanks to AI. But... there will also be huge numbers of individuals (such as those middle aged textile workers) who will be a lot worse off. 

On 7/29/2023 at 4:21 PM, kye said:

There are also other things to take into consideration as well.  Fans are very interested in knowing as much as possible about their idols, but idols are real people and have human psychological needs and limitations, but virtual idols will not.  The virtual idols that share their entire lives with their fans will be even more relatable than the human stars that need privacy and get frustrated and yell at paparazzi etc.  These virtual idols will be able to be PR-perfect in all the right ways (i.e. just human enough to be relatable but not so human that they accidentally offend people).  

There is already a huge market for personalised messages from stars, virtual idols will be able to create these in virtually infinite amounts.  Virtual stars will be able to perform at simultaneous concerts, make public appearances wherever and whenever is optimal, etc.  

We'll be able to have super niche "micro celebrity AI avatars"

At the moment, celebrities need a certain amount of broad appeal. As  you said, they need to avoid offending their fans. So end up appealing to the common denominator, because what might appeal to one section of the fan base could drive away other fans who get offended by it. But once you're freed from the physical constraints, then an "AI celebrity" could cater to any and all of these micro niche fanbases. 

On 7/29/2023 at 4:21 PM, kye said:

"Computers in the future may weigh less than 1.5 tons.” - Popular Mechanics magazine, 1949.

"I think there is a world market for about five computers." ~ IBM's president, Thomas J Watson (said in the early 1940's) 

8 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

The problem with any effort to stop technology is that it won't work in the long run. Right now, there are only a handful of companies that have the computing power to run an LLM like ChatGPT

Nah, my Raspberry Pi can run a LLM. (ok, only a baby-ChatGPT that's quite cut down, and somewhat crippled. But even if I want to run a LLM that's quite close to the power of GPT3, that only costs me much much less than a $1/hr, in fact, more like a handful of cents per hour. It is cheap to run a LLM)

It's predicted as highly like that even GPT4 can be run on consumer grade hardware by next year:

https://manifold.markets/LarsDoucet/will-a-gpt4equivalent-model-be-able 

What you're thinking about, is the costs to train GPT4 from scratch. That's VERY EXPENSIVE! 

But still, it isn't quite as bad as you think. If a government wanted to do it, then absolutely any government in the OCED  could do this, they could do it ten times over. Likewise, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of companies in the world which could train the next GPT4 if they wanted to. (GPT4 would've cost roughly the same order of magnitude as $100M in costs, waaaay out of reach for you and me, but easily within reach of many many other organizations) 

But they won't, because the costs to train their own GPT4 vs the profits they could make (as AI is quickly becoming a very competitive space!) just isn't worth it. 

The good news though, is that costs for training are dropping drastically fast! 

Look at this prediction, it is highly likely that before 2030 it will cost under $10K to train from scratch a GPT3 quality LLM (i.e. any keen hobbyist can do it themselves!):

https://manifold.markets/Gigacasting/will-a-gpt3-quality-model-be-traine 

And that's yet another reason why there are not hundreds of other companies training their own GPT4, why put that risk into it if you're not already an industry leader in this? When your $100M+ investment could quickly within a few short years be worth next to nothing. You need a solid business plan to recoup your costs fast. OpenAI can do that, because they're massively funded with Microsoft's backing, and they have a first mover advantage. 

9 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

so it's somewhat feasible to control. But once the technology can run on your home PC, there is no amount of legislation or unionization that can control its use.

Too late, that genie left the bottle long ago. 

 

[Emanuel]

@IronFilm David, as usual, your posts top no matter how ex aequo happen :- )