Ben Affleck: AI Won't Replace Film, Elon Predicts 2x Lifespans, Robot Surgeons, & End of Money

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1. 0:00

   Good morning Legion. The countdown to NEARCon is on, with just over a month to go until the NEAR community convenes in San Francisco. There will be a virtual hackathon in the run up to NEARCON, as well as a builder side room with a number of technical presentations.

2. 0:14

   Our first story today is straight from Ben Affleck's recent appearance on JRE He has an interesting take on the role of general models that's worth having a discussion about. We'll roll it right now. What I see is, for example, if you try to get ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini to write you something, it's really shitty and it's shitty because by its nature it goes to the mean to the average, and it's and it's not reliable.

3. 0:39

   And it's, I mean, I just stand to see what's right now. It's a useful tool if you're a writer and you're going, what's the thing? I'm trying to set something up or somebody send someone a letter, but it's delayed two days and gets and it can give you some examples of that.

4. 0:52

   I actually don't think it's very likely that it can. It's going to be able to write anything meaningful or, and in particular that it's going to be making movies like from whole Cloth like Tillie Norwood, like, that's bullshit.

5. 1:04

   I don't think that's going to happen. I think it's I think it actually, it turns out the technology is not progressing in exactly the same way they sort of presented it. And really, what it is, is going to be a tool, just like sort of visual facts.

6. 1:16

   And yeah, it needs to have language around it. You need to protect your name and likeness. You can do that. You can watermark it. Your those laws already exist. You can't I can't sell your fucking picture for money. I can't you can sue me. Period.

7. 1:27

   It kind of feels to me like the thing was how earlier where there's a lot more fear because we have the sense, this existential dread, it's going to wipe everything out. Right? But that actually runs counter in my view, to what history seems to show, which is adoption is slow. It's incremental.

8. 1:43

   I think a lot of that rhetoric comes from people who are trying to justify valuations around companies where they go, we're gonna change everything in two years, there's going to be no more work. Or the reason they're saying that is because they need to ascribe a valuation for investment that can warrant the CapEx spend they're going to make on these data centers.

9. 2:02

   With the argument that, like, oh, you know, as soon as we do the next model, it's going to scale up to be three times as good, except that actually ChatGPT-5, about 25 times percent better than ChatGPT-4 and costs about four times as much in the way of electricity and data.

10. 2:18

    So thats when they say, its like plateauing. mThe early AI, the line went up very steeply and it's now sort of leveling off. I think it's because and yes, it'll get better, but it's going to be really expensive to get better. And a lot of people were like, fuck this, we want ChatGPT-4.

11. 2:34

    But as it turned out, like the vast majority of people who use AI are using it to like as like companion bots to chat with at night. And so there's no work, there's no productivity, there's no value to it. I would argue there's also not a lot of social value to getting people to like, focus on an AI friend who's, you know, telling you that you're great and listening to everything you say and being sycophantic.

12. 2:57

    But that's sort of a side issue, I think, for this particular purpose, like the way I see the technology and what it's good at and what it's not, it's going to be good at filling in all the places that are expensive and burdensome, and to make it harder to do it.

13. 3:10

    It's always going to rely fundamentally on the human artistic aspects of it. So as Ben thinks, I can help as a tool, but it's not specialized enough to truly rival high quality film. It will also lower the barrier to entry for others to create quality film or art in the future. So the discussion here is very clear.

14. 3:28

    We'll specialize fine tuned models, find a place in this dialog, and become relevant when people realize that generic models are simply building for the average. Or will I actually replace film and art at all rather than remain a general tool? As Ben stipulates it is today.

15. 3:45

    Our second and final story for today, Elon, with four large predictions on the future of AI. First, human lifespans will nearly double in the next decade. Second, there will be more robot surgeons in three years than all surgeons on Earth today.

16. 4:00

    That is an incredible transformation, if true. Third, we may see high double digit GDP growth. And fourth, the money will lose significance and you won't have to save for retirement. Not sure if that's optimistic or neofeudalistic If even some of these things happen in the coming years, we're in for a highly transformative decade that's likely to rival changes from the last 200 years.

17. 4:23

    Buckle up near us here to make sure that that transformation works for you. We'll do this all again real soon.