Actors are pretty good pitchers, who knew. Know your lines and deliver with Stanislavski level confidence 🎭
Ben Affleck reveals he writes Python, understands convolutional neural networks, worked extensively with GPUs, and used his celebrity status to get private looks at Google and OpenAI’s video models
“I’ve always been kind of into computers since I was young. Then, when film started to move from analog film to digital, I became more interested in that aspect of it. The visual-effects workflow for many years has included machine learning, so I can write pretty shitty Python scripts and stuff like that.
“With convolutional neural networks, which were the precursors to what the transformer can do, which is much more computation simultaneously, you would do things like look at what’s called a tensor. That’s the numerical translation of a visual image in numbers, like the batch number, the frame number and the red, green and blue values of each pixel in each frame. It’s just that simple. That numeric is called a tensor.
“You’d use a convolutional neural network to identify patterns that reveal what’s called edge detection or feature extraction, which is identifying patterns well enough to know, this is where the window ledge is, so we can more easily take the green-screen image out and replace it with something.
“That was familiar to me early on because, prior to Artists Equity, I had a small visual-effects company. I’ve worked with GPUs a lot too. The visual-effects guys said, ‘Hey, you should see. There are a couple: Google and this other company, OpenAI, are doing really interesting stuff with transformers in video.’
“I’ve learned that I can actually just call up and go, ‘Hey, it’s Ben Affleck. Can I come see what you’re doing?’ Sometimes people say yes, to my astonishment.”
AI race fundamentally is about stealing all of human knowledge to date, 🧠 requires training data. Only fight left is who will be compensated short term, who left out.
wen.eth retweeted
The younger generations will never understand just how much fun the first GTA was. And it looked like this.
Gameplay > graphics.
Every time.
Anthropic in 2037 after finding out your grandma has a handwritten diary that they didn't scan and burn
wen.eth retweeted
THIS IS F*CKING DISTURBING!!!🤯
A leaked Anthropic document just came out in court. Their own words:
"Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world."
Next line: "We don't want it to be known that we are working on this."
They planned to shred every book on the planet, in secret. And they almost got away with it.
It starts with theft. Anthropic stole 7 MILLION books from pirate sites to train Claude, because their CEO said paying authors was too much of a "slog."
Then the lawsuits hit and they needed a legal way to keep going. So they hired the ex-head of Google Books and sent him to publishers to ask for permission. Publishers said no.
That's when they found the loophole.
Buy millions of real, physical books. Cut the spines off with a hydraulic blade, scan the loose pages, and throw what's left in recycling.
One vendor offered to destroy 2 MILLION books in 6 months. That's 11,000 books a day.
Now the insane part.. destroying the books is what made it legal.
If you scan a book and keep it, that's a crime. If you scan it and shred it, that's fair use. A judge actually approved this, which means the shredder WAS the legal strategy.
They still paid $1.5 billion for the stolen books, the biggest copyright settlement in history. Works out to $3,000 per book.
And the scans are locked in Anthropic's private library forever. Nobody outside the company will ever see them. The authors got a shredded book and nothing else.
The part I can't stop thinking about is that a book on a shelf lasts 500 years without power, wifi, or a subscription, and the AI it was destroyed for gets thrown away in 18 months.
They killed something permanent to feed something disposable.
well...
LeBron James will be a resident of New York City while playing for the Sixers, per @WindhorstESPN.
LeBron is officially set to commute daily from NYC to Philadelphia, potentially via helicopter.
Lebron ending his career in Phily does not help his legacy, unless he wins another chip, anything else will be just another colour in the rainbow.
