- cross-posted to:
- movies@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- movies@lemmy.world
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Who is surprised by this?
He was making slop versions of his own movies before AI.
Exactly, the guy has done shit for decades!
I hate AI as much as the next person but the Pandora’s box is open. A lot of people don’t want to admit it but AI, despite its current limitations, does have potential. Many people say that AI hit its limit and peak but i would not be very dismissive of it yet. Plenty of technologies were hindered by the limitations of their time but gradually overcame those. It took renewable energy at least fifty years to overcome the storage problem, their respective technical limits (solar panels for example did not have great photovoltaic system) and upfront cost before it became more commercially viable.
I disagree with the “Pandora’s box is open” angle because my beef isn’t with the technology, but how it’s being used in practice. It’s a socioeconomic problem, but a technological one.
Cory Doctorow articulates it much better than I can[1]:
"Now, if AI could do your job, this would still be a problem. We’d have to figure out what to do with all these technologically unemployed people.
But AI can’t do your job. It can help you do your job, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to save anyone money. Take radiology: there’s some evidence that AIs can sometimes identify solid-mass tumors that some radiologists miss, and look, I’ve got cancer. Thankfully, it’s very treatable, but I’ve got an interest in radiology being as reliable and accurate as possible.
If my Kaiser hospital bought some AI radiology tools and told its radiologists: “Hey folks, here’s the deal. Today, you’re processing about 100 x-rays per day. From now on, we’re going to get an instantaneous second opinion from the AI, and if the AI thinks you’ve missed a tumor, we want you to go back and have another look, even if that means you’re only processing 98 x-rays per day. That’s fine, we just care about finding all those tumors.”
If that’s what they said, I’d be delighted. But no one is investing hundreds of billions in AI companies because they think AI will make radiology more expensive, not even if that also makes radiology more accurate. The market’s bet on AI is that an AI salesman will visit the CEO of Kaiser and make this pitch: "Look, you fire 9/10s of your radiologists, saving $20m/year, you give us $10m/year, and you net $10m/year, and the remaining radiologists’ job will be to oversee the diagnoses the AI makes at superhuman speed, and somehow remain vigilant as they do so, despite the fact that the AI is usually right, except when it’s catastrophically wrong.
“And if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist’s fault, because they are the ‘human in the loop.’ It’s their signature on the diagnosis.”
This is a reverse centaur, and it’s a specific kind of reverse-centaur: it’s what Dan Davies calls an “accountability sink.” The radiologist’s job isn’t really to oversee the AI’s work, it’s to take the blame for the AI’s mistakes."
Even with the technological limitations that AI faces at the moment, we could be doing so much more with it. I love this radiography example because so many of us have experienced someone in our life getting cancer. AI is absolutely capable of improving the rate at which we are detecting cancer at an early stage, which would absolutely save lives. Instead what we’re getting is that it is being used as an excuse to heap more work onto doctors and radiographers, worsening the situation for everyone.
I do agree with the broad strokes of what you’re saying, because absolutely it does take time for any new technology to integrate itself into society and become useful. However, I don’t believe that AI in its current form is capable of becoming commercially viable (and by “in its current form”, I am talking about a paradigm that demands excessive building of super resource intensive datacentres)
Edit: forgot to add the citation [1]: https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/
1 ↩︎
I think the primary gripe with AI is less about having no potential, but about the specific potential for evil being leveraged heavily while “visionaries” lie about or dismiss the (current and foreseeable future) limits for clout and profit.
To use your comparison, CEOs selling solar panels are responding to scepticism about the stability of that supply and its elasticity to fluctuating power demand with vague promises of developing more advanced cells that can operate with less light and throttle the generated power during ebbs in demand. They buy land to install more solar panels, then lobby for the deactivation of other, flexible power sources that could supplement their supply until they can finally start charging more in times of high demand.
They do so because the alternative would be admitting that the product they’re selling isn’t ready for the market they’re trying to enter (or at least not at the scale they’re aiming for) and that the solution to their issues requires different technologies which have not yet been developed. They can’t admit that because it would upset the investors that trusted their vision. As a famous adage suggests, they probably can’t even understand that limit, since their salary depends on not understanding it.
In the same vein, the current CEOs fail (or refuse?) to acknowledge that the generative models today have a fundamental limitation with understanding the semantics behind certain patterns. One infamous phenomenon would be AI hands: We know what a hand is and how it works; a generator can only vaguely imitate the patterns. It doesn’t know “hand” or “finger”, so it just generates some assembly that vaguely fits its training material.
If we consider the broader and ill-defined field of AI, I can believe that some form of semantic modelling technology could provide a way to connect tokens with abstract concepts and enable a type of reasoning that pure token predictors are incapable of. But we first need to acknowledge that limit, and on that front, we’re competing against tech-bros that would rather believe than know and against grifters that would rather sell snake oil than teach medicine.
As much as I also just think AI is just going to make lazy people lazier, and we’ve already seen some effects regarding our ability to problem solve, the real issue is that none of the wonderful utopian AI stuff is going to come true at the rate we’re going. I don’t guve a fat flying fuck how good or bad AI is, I care that it’s being used to spy on us, make decisions no human will ever review, and has already led to mass layoffs without any kind of safety net for those people. I care that it’s raping the environment so some sentient dick-cheese can get worse results than a near-zero effort search would give them. Increased productivity has yet to give anyone more free time, they just axe someone else and overwork whoever’s left.
We are NOT ready for AI at ANY level. It’s a weapon being used against the working class. If you think the issue is with its quality then you need to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and pay some goddamn attention.
This should really be a critique of capitalism. The problem is that the plutocracy is very good at using your anger and rage against you.
The issue is, though, is that AI is a force multiplier, and it’s being used as a force multiplier for evil.
We are NOT ready for AI at ANY level. It’s a weapon being used against the working class.
Indeed.
If you think the issue is with its quality then you need to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and pay some goddamn attention.
Given the sizeable demographic of Lemmy being in IT, I understand the hate because it takes away creativity and literal jobs of programmrs but for many sectors, AI cuts down time consuming “secretary work” especially in documentation. It has also been useful in drug discovery and proven to be more accurate at diagnosis than doctors (there are already surgical robots but i am not sure how precise they are).
Whether you like to admit it or not, AI is here to stay. As to whether it will have a net positive to society, only time will tell. I’m just preparing for contingencies like many Gen Z do, picking trades to AI-proof their job security.
There are absolutely no robots doing surgery autonomously. That would be one of the most insane things to do from a moral standpoint, but also from a liability standpoint. Every robot that exists for surgery is highly specialized and rigorously tested and trained upon for obvious reasons.
But, then to come out and say that AI is more accurate than doctors is also incorrect. That is simply not true. An AI can, in highly controlled settings and for specific diagnoses, at its best do not even as well as a specialist in the field, and that is for highly curated tests that give the AI as many advantages as it can get. Again, at best, it can act as a second opinion currently.
Like, it is hard to take people seriously about AI when they lie about its best case scenario. It sucks at everything except killing the environment and getting people to kill themselves, and even if everything all of its defenders said about it was true, it is still a nightmare.
Funny how every generation says the next tool will ruin art until it becomes invisible. AI will not magically write great films any more than CGI did. The real question is who owns the tools, the data, and the final cut. That is where this gets interesting.
Speaking of films, what most anti-AI people can’t see is how AI can lead to a new golden age of film/tv. It can allow people to cheaply and quickly create teasers/trailers/shorts/even full episodes and movies for cents on the dollar compared to before. The barrier of entry was incredibly high, but thanks to AI that is now a possibility for any anyone.
When you look at the utter crap that Hollywood is spewing out these days like Moana “live action” and Supergirl, it’s hard to say that AI couldn’t be used to make better content.
There is really a purposeful ignorance to the whole fuckai movement. Like the OP article treats “AI is notorious for stealing from humans” as a settled argument, like if you don’t agree with that statement it’s a moral failing. There is no disagreements in their echo chambers any more, only good vs evil. But as we know, only a Sith deals in absolutes lol.
Or “a technology that’s being used to remove the human element from the process” yeah it - once it actually does look better and is more controllable - can drastically reduce how much human labor is needed.
But that argument has two sides, and thee author is basically making a pro-capitalism argument. Films and movies SHOULD belong to the capitalists, who control who can make movies and expensive entertainment, they get to control the narrative, and obviously anything that won’t make money never sees daylight. Yeah it’s nice that people work on movies, but it incredibly expensive.
If their argument was that we should build a socialist movie industry, with a separate institution with separate elections printing money to produce movies and art and the voters get to vote and influence what is being financed - yeah that would be nice. But who can even imagine some system today any more?
Instead we are already seeing plenty of amateurs making shitty AI movies and slop, but eventually the tools will get better and the best new directors will produce worthwhile art.
And the argument against is of course “no current AI is a dead end here someone said it over there, it won’t get better, only slop!” and then they treat THAT as a settled argument and a moral failing to think we’ll see progress. Do these people now have eyes to see? People struggle to tell if a scene is AI generated or not, but someone it’s not good enough and a filmmaker saying “yeah cool” is worthy of being scolded?
Just the last months we’ve seen breakthroughs in computing hardware and in software with full 27b models compressed to “terniary” fitting on a smartphone. The AI bubble is grotesque and will pop. The advancements in AI models will remain.
All this hatred and rage should be directed against capitalism and the plutocrats, but it’s being misdirected and turn out counterproductive.
The most straightforward AI policy we should push is to mandate AI metadata tags for images, video and text that must remain when editing. So you can immediately see a watermark or icon on an image or video in the browser. But do we hear this anywhere?
The issue is that AI is a force multiplier, and it’s being used as a force multiplier for evil. That’s a really big problem. It’s being used to destroy society, so of course people have problems with it.
George, blink twice if they found compromat on you!
Its weird that he really was on the forefront once because he did physical effects with interesting camera shots. it felt new and different.
AI is not going to give you that, it will suck. CGI sucks already too.
Oh well not like he is relevant. A new hope was at least interesting, but its been nothing after that anyways.
If he’s embracing AI then he is once again on the forefront. AI has the ability to revolutionise the industry in a way that it needs in order to survive - greatly reduce costs and greatly reduce production times.
Movie studios are quickly moving to the same situation that video game developers are in now thanks to ballooning costs and long development times - a situation where if every single game they release isn’t an absolute smash hit selling 20 million copies at full price, they’re going to go under.
The movie industry is in free fall. AI adoption is one of the only realistic paths forward.
Needs to survive? Are you kidding me? Good stories, good direction. You don’t need 47 million dollars to make a movie.
Can you show me that “the movie industry is in free fall”? I have seen many fantastic movies lately.
I guess you could consider AI to be a form of animation, but I really don’t see them improving anything if they keep churning out the same crap for the big budget movies.
AI has the ability to revolutionise the industry in a way that it needs in order to survive - greatly reduce costs and greatly reduce production times.
Do you know what those words mean?
AI is being used as a force multiplier, and it’s being used as a force multiplier for evil. It’s being used to replace jobs, to put hundreds, thousands, and eventually millions of people out of work. At scale, it takes up more power than entire cities do, and the data centers and power station upgrades that it requires at that scale ends up with companies literally demolishing entire residential areas, forcing people out of their homes.
AI is not worth the trade-offs and the massive sacrifices required for it.
I do. It has the ability to revolutionise the dying, spiralling out of control movie industry. How? By cutting costs dramatically, and by reducing production time. What would usually take 2000 people for $200mil might now be doable with 50 people and $200k. That’s revolutionary technology.
AI is not “destroying society” 🤣
He used what was available at the time. For the original trilogy, that was practical effects.
The prequel trilogy was a bit more… Dodgy thanks to eagerly embraced CGI that wasn’t fully baked yet.
People famously critiqued the reworked original trilogy due to various dubious creative tweaks. Like waking on Jabba and Jabba just having a funny reaction instead of how you would expect him to react.
Nothing he added was pointful. All of the CGI retouches of the original trilogy were pointless CGI effects for the sake of having pointless CGI effects. At one point in the Mos Eisley sequence a huge pack animal walks through the frame, obscuring almost all of it. Why? Because it was some computer generated shit to throw in!
Only because he had to. As soon as it was possible he went cg and blue screens.
Not going to get into the AI debate; I will agree that BAD CGI sucks; there’s so much CGI you never even notice and without it the scenes would be horrible. The main reason “CGI sucks” is because of the shift to go with the lowest bidder who’s then forced to work under horrific timelines and unable to actually do good work. CGI itself doesn’t suck, but it absolutely can when done by a low bidder in 1/4 of the time it needs.
Funny he uses Michael bay as an example in that video. Nothing will put me to sleep faster than a Michael bay movies effects.
I get your point though, it’s a tool when used artistically and with skill can be fine.
The only good CGI is one that holds up well after decades, and that’s basically only the CGI in the POTC 2 and 3 movies
Old Man Succumbs to Chatbot Flattery, volume 25841.
But also, Lucas was always exchanted by cgi, even when it looked way worse than practical effects.
Crap-looking Special Edition Jabba has awkwardly entered the chat.
I have always thought ai was like the Jar Jar Binks of computer programs.
Meesah notsah Jamaican racist stereotypesah.
Of course he did. He loves updating his classics every time some “new technology” comes along to let his freak-flag fly.
We’ll be seeing a re-re-re-re-release of A New Hope shortly where he uses an AI generated Boba Fett and Solo giving them a scene or two to develop a backstory.
He became irrelevant the moment he sold the Star Wars franchise to Disney, and it’s all been downhill from there (both for him and the franchise). Fuck him.
The franchise already went downhill with him still in charge, Disney just finished the Job.
Could be because I’m old then. The last Star Wars movie I enjoyed was episode 3 (all first 6 episodes are great, in my opinion), every movie after that has so much politically driven bullshit and so little ro do with the original lore that the last movie I watched was “The last Jedi”. When I watched “The force awakens” I knew it was already getting ridiculously fucked, but still gave “The Last Jedi” a chance, only to end up regretting it. Haven’t watched any of the movies since. I keep all 6 original movies in my Jellyfin server and binge them about once a year or so.
While I agree that Disney Star Wars makes the prequels look good, they certainly weren’t great.
I keep all 6 original movies in my Jellyfin server and binge them about once a year or so.
I keep every singe Star Wars movie (even multiple edition for the OT) and TV show on my plex and haven’t watched any off it since the Mandalorian S3 (which was quite bad).
I only watched the first season of the Mandalorian. I think it was a massive waste of my time that would have been better spent watching more anime, lol.
I think it was a massive waste of my time that would have been better spent watching more anime, lol.
Why not both?
Lol I love how tone death Disney is with SW series tho. Andor is a anticapitalist and antifa story, told through the lens of some kid who was kidnapped when the Empire was ravaging his homeworld. I think the best storyline is when Cassian is wrongfully imprisoned and escapes within a week while stirring up revolts and enlightening prisoners.
Guy with famously bad takes has bad take.
Instead of interviewing a rich, famous, busy person, wouldn’t it be easier to ask an AI to pretend to be that person, and interview the AI?
Or even to ask the AI to just write both parts of the interview itself? Wouldn’t that just be helping interviewers get the stories they want to share out into the world?
Maybe an AI can read the story too, and they can all leave me the fuck out of it.
i mean, he was there all along. he pioneered the all green screen wave of automation in movies. the abuse of green screen was the slop before ai was around. to him it’s just cutting out all the vestiges of imperfection still greasing the machine
“Goes to the Dark Side”
Someone never saw the rerelease of the original series.
Lucas’ best work was under an editor, whenever he got the full reigns, the product suffered.
His ex-wife was one of the best film editors in history.
The prequels got a breath of respect with how bad the sequel trilogy wound up. J J managed to rehabilitate George.
How to tell who invested heavily in AI with one easy trick.
This is not the intelligence you are looking for…
