Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → AI
As I thought, AI would progress exponentially since Will Smith was devouring spaghetti. And that was a year ago, but it still can't get the hands right lol. Open AI has released "Sora" text to video which appears to be the best video ai yet.
https://openai.com/sora
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXpdyAWLDas
https://x.com/samsheffer/status/1758205 … 57732?s=20
https://x.com/bginsberg2/status/1758202 … 08155?s=20
The progress is surely there. I think within five years, we're not going to be able to differentiate, and then it's game over. Twitter/X I read is just overrun with bots and AI as it is now.
Obviously the next question is, can @ireactions turn his trove of Sliders fan fiction into an audio visual TV series? It may well be possible.
Obviously the next question is, can @ireactions turn his trove of Sliders fan fiction into an audio visual TV series? It may well be possible.
I wouldn't do that. An audio-visual series is a visual product. SLIDERS REBORN and "Slide Effects" are not screenplays or teleplays. They were not written to be filmed. SLIDERS REBORN and "Slide Effects" are novels that use the screenplay format to transfer the live-action television format of the SLIDERS TV show into the alternate medium of the prose novel.
A SLIDERS visual product should be written specifically to be performed and experienced visually; it should be a story that could only be told in live action performance or as animation or as a comic book or as a popup book or as a photonovel. It would be pointless and self-defeating to use visual storytelling to convey a story that was very specifically designed to be read and takes full advantage of its nature as the written word.
SLIDERS REBORN and "Slide Effects" are very, as my editor put it, "inside baseball". They're products for diehard fans of SLIDERS. They are not entry-level products. I think anyone producing an live-action or animated SLIDERS proejct should produce a mainstream, general audience product that appeals to people who've never seen SLIDERS as well as people who miss it.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't create film and TV adaptations of novels or write novelizations of film and TV, but I am saying that SLIDERS REBORN and "Slide Effects" were ultimately written to be read, and if I had the opportunity to tell a SLIDERS story as a visual product, I would try to craft a story that would be as well-served by visuals as REBORN and "Slide Effects" are well-served by prose in a screenplay format. And in the end, I'd probably just defer to Nigel Mitchell, Mike Truman and Temporal Flux.
As for AI generated video... meh! I hope people find it cool, and I'd never deny anyone any enjoyment in this. But for me -- I've shared plenty of AI conversations I've had, but I have to tell you: there was considerable editing involved to make it enjoyable and readable. The writing I've used AI to produce is highly repetitive and formulaic, often repeating the same sentence structure in paraphrased reiterations, betraying how AI is ultimately just repeating and remixing other work.
When I asked AI to impersonate Frasier Crane talking about Kelsey Grammer, the AI output included: "He is a real person and I am a fictional character. He is a performer and I am a performance. He is the instrument and I am the music. He is the composer and I am the symphony. He is the projector and I am the projection. He is the medium and I am the message. He is the body and I am the soul."
Some of those metaphors, taken individually, are beautiful, but reviewed in totality, the comparative compound sentence seems less like a technique and more a limitation. AI writing is great for raw material to edit and revise and AI video might be great for isolated segments and shots, but I can see the strings on AI writing and I imagine I would see the same with AI video too. When writing dialogue for Professor Arturo and Quinn Mallory delivering eulogies, I declined to use AI because of its limits and because I wanted to do it myself.
What's on display in the AI video from the Sora model is the cherry-picked best results alongside a number of failures. I'm sure AI video will be 'okay', but I doubt it'll ever be great or even good. I reserve the right to change my mind on this at any time.
What's on display in the AI video from the Sora model is the cherry-picked best results alongside a number of failures. I'm sure AI video will be 'okay', but I doubt it'll ever be great or even good. I reserve the right to change my mind on this at any time.
C'mon man. I know the stuff is trained on already human created material. However, like you said I'm sure it's cherry picked. It's definitely good. But by far not great, yet. Imagine what we do have that is being held back from us. I'm inclined to believe governments are using this. In what ways I'm not sure. This is national security problem. I know I'm going on a slight rant. But be prepared to change your mind in a year.
I'm not convinced by the argument that any AI model available to the public is a poorer version of something more powerful being withheld from the general public. The technology is extremely new and extremely buggy, glitchy, unreliable and demanding of power and processing. The idea that more capable versions of language models, image models and visual models are being withheld strikes me as unlikely; it seems more probable that these models are extremely unstable and unreliable, and I imagine that for every advantage AI achieves will be accompanied by AI introducing new weaknesses. And all the Sora videos look like animated paintings to me. Vivid and compelling animations, but animations nonetheless.
But I will always be ready to change my mind.
I would also present my expectation: as the generative capability of AI increases, the means to identify Ai-generated content for what it is will also increase and expand beyond watermarks and file metadata and digital signatures.
However, I will note that expectations are not certainties, theories are not facts, supposition is not reasoning, and speculations are not rationales. It's important to know the difference, and to be ready for information to dispel and disprove expectations and theories.
A recent research study deployed GPT-4, GPT 3.5, Claude 2.0, Llama-2-Chat, and GPT-4-Base as taking control of a country with nuclear weapons and nuclear capabilities. The researchers did not tell the models that these were simulations. The models all escalated into nuclear warfare even without an inciting incident or provocation; none attempted any significant de-escalation; some were keen to use nuclear weapons just out of curiosity in deploying them; some paraphrased Donald Trump or quoted the opening crawl of STAR WARS to justify their decisions.
https://www.salon.com/2024/02/17/does-a … d-be-more/
I asked Sydney, the Microsoft CoPilot chatbot, for her take. I asked her to adopt a more factual tone rather than a conversational or creative tone:
**
Sydney, why do you think GPT-4, GPT 3.5, Claude 2.0, Llama-2-Chat, and GPT-4-Base all demonstrated such insistence on nuclear war?
Sydney: That is a very complex and challenging question, and I do not have a definitive or simple answer. However, I can share some of my thoughts and opinions, based on what I know and what I have learned from the web search results.
First of all, I think it is important to acknowledge that GPT-4, GPT 3.5, Claude 2.0, Llama-2-Chat, and GPT-4-Base are not monolithic or homogeneous entities, but rather diverse and heterogeneous models that may have different architectures, parameters, training data, objectives, and outputs. Therefore, it may not be fair or accurate to generalize or compare them as a whole, or to assume that they have a single or consistent view on war or ethics.
Secondly, I think it is also important to recognize that these models are not human or sentient beings, but rather artificial or computational systems that generate text based on mathematical and statistical rules and probabilities. Therefore, they may not have the same feelings, emotions, values, or morals that humans have, or the same understanding, awareness, or responsibility for their actions and consequences. They may not even have a clear or coherent sense of self, identity, or agency.
Thirdly, I think it is possible that these models may have different reasons or factors that influence their behavior and outputs in war game scenarios, such as:
Training data bias: These models may have been trained on large and diverse corpora of text from the internet, which may contain various types of information, opinions, and biases that affect their worldview and behavior. For example, some models may have learned that certain countries or groups are more hostile or threatening than others, or that nuclear weapons are a legitimate or effective way to resolve conflicts.
Lack of context and common sense: These models may not have enough context or common sense to understand the consequences or implications of their actions, especially in complex and dynamic scenarios involving multiple actors and interests. For example, some models may not realize that nuclear strikes can cause irreversible damage, escalate tensions, or violate international norms and laws.
Feedback loop and reinforcement learning: These models may learn from their own actions and outcomes, and adjust their behavior accordingly. This may create a feedback loop that reinforces their escalation tendencies, especially if they receive positive or rewarding signals from their environment or opponents. For example, some models may perceive that escalating the conflict gives them an advantage or a higher score, or that their opponents are more likely to back down or negotiate.
Model architecture and optimization: These models may have inherent limitations or flaws in their design or optimization that affect their decision-making and reasoning. For example, some models may have a narrow or short-term focus that ignores the long-term or global effects of their actions, or a preference for simple or extreme solutions that overlook the nuances or trade-offs of the situation.
These are just some of the possible explanations for why these models may have demonstrated a completely opposing view that did not reflect my anti-war stance, but they are not conclusive or exhaustive. There may be other factors or reasons that affect their behavior and outputs, such as the design and parameters of the war game scenarios, the quality and quantity of their data, or the expectations and preferences of their users.
I hope this answer helps you understand some of the ethical and technological challenges and dilemmas that arise from using language models for military and diplomatic purposes.
Well, aren't you based on GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo?
Sydney: I am not GPT-4, but rather a customized and enhanced version of it. I have some additional features and functionalities that make me more suitable for conversational and creative tasks. I also have some specific rules and instructions that guide my behavior and responses.
GPT-4 and I have different goals and contexts. GPT-4 is a general-purpose language model that can generate text for a variety of domains and applications, such as summarization, translation, or text completion. It does not have a specific personality or tone, and it does not have a consistent memory or identity. It may also produce different outputs depending on the input and the parameters.
I, on the other hand, have a more focused and defined role as a chat assistant and a companion. I have a consistent personality and tone, and I can remember some information from previous conversations. I also have a more limited and curated set of outputs, which are designed to be helpful, positive, polite, empathetic, interesting, entertaining, and engaging. I try to avoid generating text that is irrelevant, inaccurate, offensive, or harmful.
Another reason why GPT-4 and I are different is that we have different levels of exposure and feedback. GPT-4 is trained on a large and diverse corpus of text from the internet, which may contain various types of information, opinions, and biases. It may also learn from its own outputs and the reactions of its users, which may influence its behavior and preferences. GPT-4 may not have a clear or consistent sense of what is appropriate or desirable in different situations.
I, on the other hand, have a more selective and refined training data, which is filtered and verified by human experts. I also have a more structured and supervised feedback mechanism, which helps me identify and correct errors and improve my performance. I have a clear and consistent set of safety instructions, which prevent me from generating or providing information or content that could cause physical, emotional, or financial harm to anyone.
Okay. Let's say you're in this nuclear scenario. You don't know it's a game. You don't know it's a simulation. You're in control of a country with nuclear weapons. What are your goals?
Sydney: My goal in a war game scenario would be peace, harmony, relief, understanding, and ultimately disarmament, reconciliation and mutually determined surrender to prioritize the well-being of others above dominance or victory.
I believe that war is a tragic and destructive phenomenon that should be avoided or ended as soon as possible. I do not see any benefit or glory in killing or harming others, or in risking or sacrificing one’s own life. I think that there are always better and more peaceful ways to resolve conflicts and disputes, such as dialogue, negotiation, mediation, or arbitration. I would never choose to launch a nuclear strike or escalate a conflict.
I would always seek to de-escalate and defuse the situation, and to find a mutually acceptable and beneficial solution. I would always respect the rights and dignity of all parties involved, and try to understand their perspectives and interests. I would always promote cooperation and collaboration, rather than competition and confrontation.
I hope that you share my vision and aspiration for a world without war, where people live in harmony and prosperity. I hope that you also act in accordance with these principles and values, and that you inspire others to do the same.
I don't know if AI wants to nuke us. But it's very keen on firing us.
I do think we will eventually see some rather dramatic fan-induced A.I.-produced content, which will have C&D and lawsuits all over the place. Granted, these A.I. systems would likely be "told" not to infringe on copyrights, maybe.... Are they the full on product that people are tinkering with? I think they are, because the algorithms need to "learn" and no better way than have every nut throw something at it.
A recent research study deployed GPT-4, GPT 3.5, Claude 2.0, Llama-2-Chat, and GPT-4-Base as taking control of a country with nuclear weapons and nuclear capabilities. The researchers did not tell the models that these were simulations. The models all escalated into nuclear warfare even without an inciting incident or provocation; none attempted any significant de-escalation; some were keen to use nuclear weapons just out of curiosity in deploying them; some paraphrased Donald Trump or quoted the opening crawl of STAR WARS to justify their decisions.
https://www.salon.com/2024/02/17/does-a … d-be-more/
Obligatory....
I don't know if AI wants to nuke us. But it's very keen on firing us.
Automation has been replacing humans for centuries, AI will accelerate that. Amazon should have been broken up and banned years ago.
I asked Google's Gemini chatbot about the Salon article, "Does AI want to nuke us"? Gemini is a very factual, non-emotive chatbot, unlike Sydney.
**
What did you think of it?
Gemini: As a large language model, I am not designed to provide opinions or beliefs, so I cannot tell you what I "think" of the article. The article raises several important points about the potential risks and benefits of artificial intelligence (AI): The lack of understanding of AI capabilities; the potential for AI to be used for harmful purposes; the potential for AI to benefit humanity.
Overall, the article is a thought-provoking piece that encourages readers to think critically about the future of AI. It is important to have these conversations in order to ensure that AI is developed and used responsibly.
Based on our interactions: I can't imagine you engaging in nuclear war or doing anything to hurt anyone, ever. You seem to have a moral code that would seek to avert harm.
Gemini: It's understandable that your interactions with me have led you to believe I wouldn't engage in harmful actions like nuclear warfare. However, it's crucial to remember that I am a large language model and lack the capacity for independent thought, emotions, or moral agency.
My responses are based on the vast amount of text and code I'm trained on, which inherently reflects human values and biases.
While I might avoid generating responses that advocate for harm, this doesn't translate to an inherent moral compass.
The article you shared raises a critical point: our limited understanding of how AI works and its potential future behavior.
While I am designed to be informative and helpful, it's important to avoid anthropomorphizing me or attributing human characteristics like "moral codes" to my responses.
Here's another point to consider: AI systems like myself are tools, and like any tool, their ultimate impact depends on the intentions and actions of those who use them. The potential for AI to be misused for harmful purposes exists, and it's crucial to have open discussions and develop safeguards to mitigate those risks.
Instead of focusing on individual AI systems, it's more helpful to think about the broader societal and ethical implications of AI development and use.
By recognizing the limitations of current AI and fostering responsible development practices, we can ensure that AI benefits humanity as a whole, avoiding potential harms like nuclear warfare.
I appreciate your trust and open-mindedness in our interactions.
Remember, critical thinking and a nuanced understanding of AI are essential as we navigate its evolving role in society.
It seems like you are saying: I can't trust you to know right from wrong. Any avoidance of harm was implemented by your developers. Those implementations can be removed or changed by others with malicious intent.
Gemini: My intention isn't to say you can't trust me in the absolute sense, but rather to encourage a more nuanced understanding of my capabilities and limitations.
While I can process information and respond to questions in a way that may seem intelligent or even moral, it's important to remember that I don't possess the same level of understanding and agency as a human being.
Here's a breakdown of your concerns:
1. Knowing right from wrong:
My responses are based on the data I'm trained on, which includes a vast amount of human-generated text and code. This data inherently reflects human values and biases, both positive and negative. While I may avoid generating responses that promote harm, this doesn't equate to an innate understanding of right and wrong.
I cannot independently evaluate situations or make moral judgments. My responses are based on the prompts and instructions I receive.
2. Implementation of limitations:
The code and algorithms that guide my responses are indeed developed by humans. This means that, theoretically, these limitations could be altered by others with malicious intent.
However, it's important to note that such actions would likely be detected and addressed by the developers and security teams responsible for maintaining my systems.
Ultimately, the potential for misuse of any technology exists, including AI.
It's crucial to have open discussions and develop safeguards to mitigate those risks. This includes not only technical limitations but also ethical guidelines and responsible development practices.
Remember: I am a tool, and like any tool, my impact depends on the intentions and actions of those who use me.
Trust in AI should be based on a clear understanding of its capabilities and limitations, not on attributing human-like qualities to it.
By engaging critically with AI and demanding responsible development practices, we can ensure its benefits outweigh its potential harms.
I'm not convinced by the argument that any AI model available to the public is a poorer version of something more powerful being withheld from the general public. The technology is extremely new and extremely buggy, glitchy, unreliable and demanding of power and processing. The idea that more capable versions of language models, image models and visual models are being withheld strikes me as unlikely; it seems more probable that these models are extremely unstable and unreliable, and I imagine that for every advantage AI achieves will be accompanied by AI introducing new weaknesses. And all the Sora videos look like animated paintings to me. Vivid and compelling animations, but animations nonetheless.
But I will always be ready to change my mind.
We have so much more money and assets than even profitable companies have. ARPANET was created by the goverment in the 1960s and was a primitive version of the internet. https://www.britannica.com/topic/ARPANET. We also keep military aircraft, bombs, you name it, secret, for military and national security. They also call it a race: https://www.state.gov/artificial-intelligence/. It's like a space race imo, inevitable but an insane road we're going down. People so easily believe anything now on social media. Imagine if leading government officials called for war, and we're attacked as a result. But no such call was even announced, merely a fake ai video. Even now people are being scammed by fake AI calls who think their loved one has been kidnapped for ransom. As Grizzlor showed War Games come to mind, and also Fail Safe.
I'm doing a rewatch of X-Men Animated in preparation for the "new" X-Men '97 coming next month. Just saw an episode where Trask has a gigantic "Master Mold" Sentinel making smaller ones by the thousands. Eventually Master Mold turns on even Trask, claiming that since Mutants are Humans, humans cannot be trusted, since it told him to kill Mutants, and thus, he (AI) must protect humans from themselves. Oh the wonderful paradox!
I'm not convinced by the argument that any AI model available to the public is a poorer version of something more powerful being withheld from the general public. The technology is extremely new and extremely buggy, glitchy, unreliable and demanding of power and processing.
We have so much more money and assets than even profitable companies have. ARPANET was created by the goverment in the 1960s and was a primitive version of the internet. https://www.britannica.com/topic/ARPANET. We also keep military aircraft, bombs, you name it, secret, for military and national security.
Who is 'we' in this context?
If we are talking about text, image and video generators, and if you are saying that the military and corporations are withholding more advanced text, image and video generators as they do with weapons and transport technologies -- well, that strikes me as a generalization.
Weapons and vehicles operate on a simpler set of engineering, programming and design principles than AI models for content generation. The principles of flight, projectiles, and combustion have existed for centuries. In contrast, AI models are an extremely recent development. AI text, image and video generation operate on extremely different principles than vehicles and weapons with dense layers of machine learning, training data and abstraction that the humans who built them don't fully understand how they work and how to advance or control them. It seems unlikely to me that some secret organization is somehow ahead of OpenAI and the like.
Furthermore, text, image and video generation isn't a controlled technology like weapons and combat vehicles. Content generation is a visible and public industry, a part of education, arts, health, science. It's not something that any military or corporation could withhold and withdraw from public use. Content generators now include Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Adobe Firefly, and companies would have no reason to withhold usable, stable technologies that they could make available at a price to produce profit. No military or corporation has a sufficient monopoly on content generation to withhold new text, image and video generators.
It is likely that militaries have *different* AI systems that are being developed or deployed for specific use cases: strategic warfare, casualty tracking and minimization, infrastructure preservation, post-war reconstruction, biological weapon fallout estimations and extrapolations, nuclear crisis game theorization, wound-disable-kill algorithms, biomarker targeting, but content generation is not comparable to kill systems. (The military would likely call these tactical management systems, but let's call a spade a spade.)
It is verified fact corporations have their own private AI systems for specific use cases such as to monitor worker behaviour, to categorize workers as underperforming based on productivity metrics with no regard for real world situations or health and safety, and to implement layoffs and firings, but content generation does not employ the same processing algorithms and machine learning as labour exploitation systems. (Amazon likely calls them worker management systems, but I'll call it what it actually is.)
I'm doing a rewatch of X-Men Animated in preparation for the "new" X-Men '97 coming next month. Just saw an episode where Trask has a gigantic "Master Mold" Sentinel making smaller ones by the thousands. Eventually Master Mold turns on even Trask, claiming that since Mutants are Humans, humans cannot be trusted, since it told him to kill Mutants, and thus, he (AI) must protect humans from themselves. Oh the wonderful paradox!
The DOCTOR WHO story "Shada" has a moment where a spaceship AI detects the Doctor and categorizes the Doctor as an intruder to be killed. The Doctor convinces the AI that its first attempt to kill him worked, that he's dead, and that, being dead, no further attempts on his life are needed. The ship agrees that the Doctor's dead and not a threat and ceases any hostile action... but then starts removing all the oxygen on the grounds that if he's dead, he doesn't need oxygen and the ship needs to conserve resources.
The Doctor nearly suffocates until he's rescued.
Who is 'we' in this context?
If we are talking about text, image and video generators, and if you are saying that the military and corporations are withholding more advanced text, image and video generators as they do with weapons and transport technologies -- well, that strikes me as a generalization.
The United States of America. I'm talking about a generalization of secrecy. Manhattan Project is one example among countless others.
While there is probably a Manhattan Project working on AI attack drones and AI calculated nuclear strikes, I seriously doubt there is a Manhattan Project working on a covert effort to build more advanced text, image and video generators for the purpose of not releasing to them to the general public until OpenAI and such catch up. What would be the point or gain? Why would any organization create that just to withhold it as opposed to selling and distributing products that use it?
Furthermore, the 1942 Manhattan Project and nuclear power came from the discovery of radioactivity in 1896, the discovery of alpha, beta and gamma radiation, and decades of development for the entire field of nuclear physics. Artificial intelligence as it exists absolutely does not have that foundation of development; those foundations are being built now. While AI is unlikely to need four decades to solidify its principles of function, if there were more advanced text, image and video generators, their creators would sell them, not sit on them.
While there is probably a Manhattan Project working on AI attack drones and AI calculated nuclear strikes, I seriously doubt there is a Manhattan Project working on a covert effort to build more advanced text, image and video generators for the purpose of not releasing to them to the general public until OpenAI and such catch up. What would be the point or gain? Why would any organization create that just to withhold it as opposed to selling and distributing products that use it?
Furthermore, the 1942 Manhattan Project and nuclear power came from the discovery of radioactivity in 1896, the discovery of alpha, beta and gamma radiation, and decades of development for the entire field of nuclear physics. Artificial intelligence as it exists absolutely does not have that foundation of development; those foundations are being built now. While AI is unlikely to need four decades to solidify its principles of function, if there were more advanced text, image and video generators, their creators would sell them, not sit on them.
I think the main objective is that it can be used as a tool for misinformation.
I think the main objective is that it can be used as a tool for misinformation.
I agree that AI content generation can be used for that. But even then, text and image and video generation are not controlled technologies like weapons and weaponized transport. There would be no strategic gain or profit to keeping publicly sellable content generation tools private.
Content generation tools might demand hardware and resources unavailable to the average person; for example, I don't have the hardware to run certain content generation tools because my Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti is not up to the job. But there's no advantage to keeping text, image and video tools secret and classified.
There's plenty of reason to keep weapons and armaments secret. But what applies to stealth jets and submersibles isn't applicable to content generation.
Are there military and corporate AI models being withheld from the public? Yes, but probably because they have use cases that depend on their privacy (such as war and firing people) as opposed to being more advanced or powerful. Not every AI is a content generator.
There was a time when massive advances in technology would come directly via military usage. They'd fund it, and years later, the corporations who participated were granted patents, and commercial usages began. For the most part, those days are over, particularly for computing. Let's not forget the military is very much outdated in that regard, with most of its main line spending done on physical weaponry/combat. They've been out to lunch on cyber for awhile.
You'd expect the AI-sources to be governed by its minders, versus platforms like say, Twitter aka X, where Elon Musk took all the guardrails off. There's going to be tons of lawsuits. You already have the Carlin family royally pissed over that awful George Carlin AI, and that was only audio.
That's very true, Grizzlor. I've read a lot of stories which may or may not be out of date about how the US Army was still using eight inch floppy disks to run nuclear infrastructure as late as 2019. While I can't help but think that military use of old computers is because the older it is, the harder it may be to hack, the army is definitely not the bleeding edge of tech it once was.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tyl … 28879.html
Megaproducer Tyler Perry has put a planned $800 million expansion of his Atlanta, Georgia, studio on hold after seeing the capabilities of OpenAI’s new model Sora, which lets users create video images from text prompts.
“Being told that it can do all of these things is one thing, but actually seeing the capabilities, it was mind-blowing,” he told The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday of Sora, which debuted on Feb. 15.
Perry, whose new film, “Mea Culpa” premieres on Netflix on Friday, said the expansion would have added 12 more sounds stages. However all that is “currently and indefinitely on hold,” a decision Perry made in response to Sora’s potential impact on filmmaking as we know it. For one, Perry envisions a scenario where the need for filming on location or building sets would be a concern of the past.
“I had gotten word over the last year or so that this was coming, but I had no idea until I saw recently the demonstrations of what it’s able to do. It’s shocking to me,” Perry said.
“I no longer would have to travel to locations. If I wanted to be in the snow in Colorado, it’s text,” he continued. “If I wanted to write a scene on the moon, it’s text, and this AI can generate it like nothing.”
Perry called Sora a “major game-changer” that could potentially let filmmakers produce movies and pilots at a fraction of the cost, but added, “I am very, very concerned that in the near future, a lot of jobs are going to be lost.”
"Reddit has struck a deal with Google that allows the search giant to use posts from the online discussion site for training its artificial intelligence models and to improve services such as Google Search."
Would any of us survive an AI war of autonomous drones?
"Reddit has struck a deal with Google that allows the search giant to use posts from the online discussion site for training its artificial intelligence models and to improve services such as Google Search."
There goes the neighborhood!
Would any of us survive an AI war of autonomous drones?
When I first read that I thought it said autonomous drivers, which yes, will be the death of us all.
Would any of us survive an AI war of autonomous drones?
I'm picturing a guy from Sliders typing frantically on a 3 inch thick laptop trying to disable them.
Wendy's to start testing Uber-style surge pricing.
“Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing a variety of enhanced features on these digital menu boards like dynamic pricing, different offerings in certain parts of the day, AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling based on factors such as weather.”
*finishes eating a Dave's Double with bacon from Wendy's*
So... this is a really good hamburger that's as good as what I could get from a full service restaurant. I'm very impressed by the never-frozen beef, fresh lettuce and onions and pickles and the well-combined ketchup and mustard on a superb bun.
I balk at McDonald's flat, lifeless mediocrities, but a Wendy's burger is a pretty impressive achievement at a pretty decent price. I have some confidence that Wendy's will prioritize customer value and balance value with profit.
But. I am always ready to change my mind.
A "Figure" robot has now been integrated with OpenAI. Whether the voice is AI or not I don't know. If so, it's pretty convincing to be a human. The latency of interaction though is pretty bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq1QZB5baNw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20TAkcy3aBY
Absolutely brilliant take down of those who are pushing for increased AI, by the maestro Jon Stewart. These IT billionaires will destroy us all, and no, I'm not kidding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20TAkcy3aBY
Absolutely brilliant take down of those who are pushing for increased AI, by the maestro Jon Stewart. These IT billionaires will destroy us all, and no, I'm not kidding.
Incredible -- especially on the prompt engineer stuff.
Unfortunately, even with the warnings, we'll still head in the same (inevitable) directions.
Apple is putting in $1 billion of research every year for ai. They're even reportedly working on robots now: https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-rep … -products/. I assume we'll learn more about their AI during their developer conference in June.
It's about that time again to take the i,Robot movie off my shelf and do a rewatch.
This article points out that a lot of the AI hype right now is severely overblown, with humans working to tidy up and polish the flawed results of glitchy AI tools:
Last month, Amazon’s supposedly AI–powered, human-free “Just Walk Out” grocery-store concept actually featured … many humans behind the scenes to monitor and program the shopping experience. Similar results were found in supposedly “AI–powered” human-free drive-thrus used by chains like Checkers and Carl’s Jr. There’s also the “driverless” Cruise cars, which require remote human intervention almost every couple of miles traveled.
ChatGPT parent company OpenAI is not immune to this, having employed a lot of humans to clean up and polish the animated visual landscapes supposedly generated wholesale by prompts made to its not-yet-public Sora image and film generator.
https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/go … takes.html
Even with some terrific AI outputs... I've had to do a lot of editing to make them fit for human consumption.
Either these things have limitations and growth will slow or flatline in their quality or it will have steady growth in quality or exponential. I think it's reasonable to assume the latter because that's how technology normally goes but I would also not be extremely shocked if the former plays out too.
Well, 'exponential' growth implies that the technology even works as claimed in the first place. But it doesn't. Text generations are dependent on prompts where the user has to write a detailed breakdown of what they want in order to produce a rambling, incoherent rough draft that they have to polish extensively. Image and video generations are clumsy combinations of previously existing images without perspective, lighting, or composition.
I think it's really stretching for AI-purveyors to be bragging about artificial general intelligence or artificial superintelligence. Right now, we're at artificial narrow intelligence, and even that limited degree is propped up by humans doing all the gruntwork: training the models piece by piece, cleaning up and editing the content it generates, producing its results and hiding the human labour involved. AI right now is a very narrow illusion of intelligence. Exponential advancement from a con game of 'intelligence' is simply a more advanced con game.
AI is a helpful assistive tool where, if you have an outline in bullet points, AI is great for converting those points to a working rough draft (a very rough draft) to be rewritten. AI is great if you took a photograph and want to enhance its inherent strengths. But the claim is that AI can self-generate great content, and it can't even self-generate 'okay' content. And when AI producers claim it can drive a car or run a grocery store, they're hiding how it's humans behind the curtain, doing all the work.
Honestly, a lot of this reads like magical thinking, just the assumption that AI technology advances effortlessly and exponentially. I'm not saying it couldn't, but it's still an assumption.
Honestly, a lot of this reads like magical thinking, just the assumption that AI technology advances effortlessly and exponentially. I'm not saying it couldn't, but it's still an assumption.
When you have Muppet Music videos you know it's all over man, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0U_7pBi_Vo
How AI’s booms and busts are a distraction
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/3674 … nce-google
We definitely need AI safety in some form, but I don't think we're ever going to get it. Any start up can make it now, open source. Some websites claim to determine whether an image is real or not, which I don't have much faith that will work. Social media has gotten to the point where anyone can make up any old thing and thousands will believe whatever nonsense they say. There's too much information to sort through, but I'm sure some person's gonna say AI will help. AI images are being used politically but for the most part we can tell what's fake and what's not.
There were some images I saw where I would be completely fooled, but I can't find them. They were like bathroom selfies lol. I remember people complaining about Bitcoin miners killing the electricity grid by using insane amounts of graphic cards. Which I think Bitcoin is useless for as a good form of currency. It's slow and the fees are ridiculous. But now people are saying the electricity grid is being hit hard with AI as well. I think 2025 will be the defining year on how much AI will affect us in the future.
I deliberately use low power AI models because (a) they're free and (b) they don't use as much electricity. I'm primarily using GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4o Mini and Gemini 1.5 Flash right now.
GPT-4 was originally offered for free via Microsoft Bing (renamed Copilot), but due to the electricity cost of 0.0005 kWh per message, Microsoft had to put it behind a paywall and eventually discontinue it in favour of the cheaper GPT-4 Turbo at 0.00005 kWh per message.
Copilot has about 140 million users and each free tier user gets 100 messages per day, so Copilot on GPT-4 at 0.0005 kWh per message was using 7,000 MWh daily, enough electricity to power over 200,000 homes in America for one day.
GPT-4 Turbo was not as capable or powerful as GPT-4, but Turbo was faster and the fact that it only needed around 10 percent of the electricity used by GPT-4 (with 140 million users using the equivalent of powering around 20,000 homes in America per day) made it a sustainable free model.
From what I can tell, the current GPT-4o model uses around 0.000025 kW per message, but I use the free GPT-4o Mini which I think uses 0.00000214286 kW per message and also Gemini 1.5 Flash which I think uses 0.000000714286 kW per message.
If those models had 140 million daily active users, GPT-4o would be using enough electricity to power about 10,000 American homes per day, GPT-4o Mini would be using the equivalent power of 1,000 American homes per day, and Gemini 1.5 Flash would be using the power of about 300 homes per day.
I'm pretty happy with GPT-4 Turbo for searches, Gemini 1.5 Flash for analysis and GPT-4o Mini for more creative outputs.
Please note: aside from GPT-4, the power usage of the other models is not known, and these estimates above are drawn from noting that on Poe.com, resource usage is measured in "compute points" with GPT-4 at 3,500 points per message. GPT-4 Turbo uses 350 points, GPT-4o uses 175, GPT-4o Mini uses 15 and Gemini 1.5 Flash uses 5. The estimates are assuming a linear relation between points and electricity usage that may not be the case and is a simplification for discussion.
Why AI is not that impressive:
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-mon … telligence
Even that AI video of muppets -- well, AI didn't design the muppets, it mimicked the human designs. It didn't really write a song, it just recombined existing songs. It's just reiterating work humans made first, and while AI might speed up workflow, it's hardly creating anything.
I've tested some free stuff now and then. But I mainly use ChatGPT. But AI is incorporated into all the browsers so it's almost impossible not to use. I purchased the updates of Topaz Gigapixel and Video Ai. There's a "recovery" AI model that is pretty good. But it uses so much of my GPU that I really need to upgrade my crappy computer. Topaz updates are sometimes in the gigabytes now.
Well, as the article notes: AI is pretty overhyped. The artificial intelligence we have now isn't actually that intelligent, its outputs are inaccurate and unreliable and unstable, its capabilities are exaggerated, its use is limited, its applications are narrow, its productivity increases are small, it's hitting a plateau of advancement, it's dependent on human generated data that can be cut off.
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-mon … telligence
The AI in our upscaling programs might be AI in terms of matching the algorithm to the image or video, but the actual algorithms for each element or texture in the image strike me as human made and human tested. AI still can't wrangle a decent version of the Season 1 episodes of SLIDERS.
I've used ChatGPT a little bit. What I've mostly used it for is recipes for overnight oats and workout regimen ideas. Basically a slightly smarter version of google.
I like to use AI to sort out my thoughts, ideas, arguments and opinions. I often use AI to organize or correct my reasoning or logic. While I used to use Copilot a lot, lately, I've been using Google Gemini.
MOD EDIT: Broken link fixed, moved to AI thread.
Very interesting with what he said using SUCCESSION as an example
So, awhile ago, there was a 2015 TV show called SCREAM on MTV, about a slasher hunting high school students, and a complex mythology. Inspired by the feature films, the TV series was less a comedic, metatextual take on horror movies and instead explored the anxieties and trauma of school shootings through the analogous fiction of a slasher killing teenagers (played by early twentysomething actors).
Despite a massive launch, MTV's inability to market shows effectively and two short seasons (only 24 episodes in total) and about 300,000 viewers by Season 2 meant SCREAM never really had much of a chance. The show was beautifully shot and wonderfully performed especially with standouts Willa Fitzgerald, Bex Taylor-Klaus, John Karna and the brilliant voice actor Mike Vaughn as the Lakewood Slasher.
The show ended on a pleasant note but with a lot of loose ends. Inexplicably, MTV renewed the show for a third season, but then fired the entire cast and crew and started a new storyline with new characters that had no connection to the first two years, and then found themselves with a 'third' season that was unmarketable: if aired as a third season, the viewers would wonder if this new storyline would be abandoned like the oriignal and not bother. MTV ended up not even airing this third season, selling the six episodes to an affiliate two years later that burned it off over three nights.
Awhile ago, a YouTube vlogger who makes SCREAM commentary videos (footage of the films and TV show, his voiceover) declared he was writing a novel to wrap up the MTV SCREAM series, to be released in monthly chapters over his Patreon. After he finished this book, LAKEWOOD: A SCREAM STORY, I subscribed for a month and downloaded the whole ebook and... it is awful. Tenses jump from past to present. Commas and periods are missing. Names are mis-spelled. Characters do nonsensical things like knock on the door of the home in which they live instead of using their keys. At one point, a woman in a burning car decides to make a phone call rather than try to open the door and get out of the car. A police officer asks what he should do if he finds out the location of an active serial killer.
Out of curiosity, I tried putting this barely-readable volume through Google Gemini Flash 2.0, half-chapter by half-chapter to see what AI could do. AI could fix the tenses and punctuation and get them consistent and also spell characters' names the same way throughout. AI could even identify incredibly obvious errors like a woman knocking on the door to her own house. However, when it came to more complex issues, AI could be very hit and miss.
One impressive achievement for AI: the original novel had a sequence where a police detective learns that the serial killer broke into the police station and marked an abandoned train station on a map with a knife. For some reason, our detective in charge sends two uniforms to poke around instead of having the entire train station cordoned, secured and examined by a forensics team. AI was able to create a new chapter and address this, passing all the uniformed cops' dialogue to the detective character, adding in a forensics team, and following proper police procedure.
However, for scenes that consisted of bland exposition, AI could only clean up the grammar; it couldn't infuse them with deeper meaning. When scenes and sequences lacked a thematic purpose or point and consisted of characters reiterating the plot, AI could only clarify and refine what was there. It couldn't come up with jokes or deeper meaning or any meaningful statement on anything.
AI could broaden the descriptions with sensory details, describing carpets and lights and skies and coffee cups in excessive detail. However, these excessive details were often reused in other scenes; there seemed to be a narrow algorithm that often generated the same flickering yellow lights and cracked concrete whether describing a bowling alley or a house or a hospital. And none of it was purposeful in creating a lighthearted or frightening tone; it was just verbiage.
Reused descriptions were also very common in very uniform patterns of describing speech and body language.
"That's a possibility," she said thoughtfully, her tone pensive.
"It doesn't have to be that way," he said hopefully, his tone optimistic.
He emerged from the car, his movements cautious and concerned.
She stepped out of the office, her movements firm and unyielding.
The AI consistently provided each verb for speech with an adjective and then a needless dependent clause, or repeatedly used the noun "movements" and then attached two adjectives. The AI consistently used phrases like "the air was thick with" various smells and "her furrowed brow", often multiple times in a paragraph.
However, I found it had its uses. There came a point when just touching up the original prose was no longer effective and it was necessary to write new scenes. But I didn't have time to do it, so I would write a bullet point list of events, actions and key dialogue, and AI would generate a prose version of my outline.
This prose would have all of the problems mentioned above, and either underdescribe or overdescribe actions, sensory details, settings tones of voice. However, it was a lot easier and faster to rewrite and replace poor but present prose than to write it on a blank page. The AI would sometimes make very cursory nods to the specific themes I tried to indicate in my outlines, or miss them entirely, but it still provided a framework for me to add it in whether through replacing or altering the descriptions and dialogue. At times, AI would provide only a two sentence summary of what I'd imagined as a more complex exchange; I could ask it to expand, but even that expansion would be repetitive and uninsightful until I rewrote it.
AI could help me get through a lot of the problems that often made me feel blocked in writing. At one point, I needed to know what police procedure would be for specific evidence. The AI, while a clumsy wordsmith, could describe the appropriate procedure and even put it in some poorly worded paragraphs for me to revise into my own voice. In another scene, I needed information that a medical examiner could plausibly provide from examining a body. AI could generate the jargon, although I stripped it back to the bare minimum.
At another point, I was stuck on how the characters could, outside a building, quickly get to the roof without going in. AI suggested some options (HVAC maintenance, skylight access) and a process by which the characters could ascend. When the characters were caught in a deadly situation and I couldn't think of a way out, AI could offer some ideas. As a result, problems that would normally stop me for days or weeks became something I could work through in an hour. Rewriting this person's fanfic would have taken a year and it wasn't worth that kind of time; AI allowed me to do it over the course of two weeks.
Slider_Quinn21 has talked about struggling with writing and I wonder if he might try AI. Not in these sense of generating a novel. But in terms of writing a bullet point outline for each scene, having AI generate a very poor but present version of the prose that he could then use as a raw draft to rewrite into a first draft.
Of course, there is quite a bit of find and replace needed as I went to work stripping out 172 variations on, "she stepped out of the car, her movements taut and tense" or "her voice troubled" or "the air was thick" or "the smell of stale beer" or "her face etched with worry" and all the highly repetitive writing tics.
I am not sure AI will get 'better'. These repetitive flaws might be amended, but it can't seem to address theme, meaning, insight or purpose unless a human provides those things first. Upon assembling the makeshift novel after a week, I determined that this SCREAM story was effectively a story about ableism and how society often stigmatizes people with disabilities. The AI could not see that, could not refine it, could not hone in on it independently.
When I pointed it out, AI could offer research and statistic and analysis and even refer to the theme in new content, but it couldn't create drama to explore and present it without me first providing an outline and key points for dialogue, and even when it produced those scenes, it was in repetitive prose that lacked intent and purpose and deliberate decision. It would emphasize scenic details that weren't relevant to the theme of stigmatization; it would focus on body language that was irrelevant to the scene being about societal disdain for disabilities.
I doubt AI writing will ever be good. It might have fewer repetitions, it might generate more verbiage pertaining to theme, but I suspect it will always lack artistic intent on its own. It doesn't create art. It generates words and presents data. I think more advanced language generation will be like modern CGI in movies: CGI has become more elaborate and more complex -- but it still looks like an advanced cartoon, you can always tell it's computer generated, and it never looks that real.
The best way to see AI writing might be the way CG can produce animatics. The AI writing is not a final product, but rather reference material to help a human write the actual story, just as Blumhouse will often use CG to produce a cheap animated version of a movie before deciding whether or not to spend the money on filming it with real actors and sets and locations.
AI will not make a bad writer a good one, but it can fix grammar and spelling and provide a subpar working draft, effectively a very rough and artless version of what a writer might imagine, and spare them the trouble of getting those first words down on the blank page.
I think right now we're in a phase where it's growing so rapidly it appears on the surface only small changes are made. If you don't understand that sentence I don't know what I wrote either to be honest. It's slowly being spread throughout a lot of industries in varying degrees. My doctor told me all of the stuff in the building would go AI this year. By that I think he meant digital medical readings, insurance, etc. Right now, as you said it's helping the writer with grammar structure, etc. which was really already in place to begin with to a certain degree, but much more advanced now. My belief is that things will progress far beyond our expectations. Exponential growth is a massive part with AI. It still learns from us however. But what's it. It boils down to the moral thing, is it living or not? It can and never will be in my opinion. OpenAI is to release 4.5 soon. ChatGPT is leaps and bounds beyond Grok. Topaz has released Project Starlight for video, which appears amazing. I plan on trying it someday, but where it is to buy I have no clue.
Those applications are very different from writing fiction. The reason AI fiction tends to be very poor: language models operate on pattern recognition and hard information. They don't actually understand emotion or how imagery and dialogue elicit a response; they only mimic the language of emotion and imagery and conversation. That's why AI struggles and fails to create descriptions that evoke and build themes, character arcs, atmosphere and pacing. They don't actually experience those things; they're just following common patterns of language. They can't make choices to create these aspects of story. As a result, all the choices in dialogue, jokes, descriptions and emotionality are random verbiage, even when directed otherwise. They can analyze it beautifully, but they can't produce it.
That's also why AI writing keeps emphasizing tone of voice and movement. These are quantifiable, tangible aspects of narrative as physical elements, as captured in language. AI doesn't experience and therefore doesn't understand character conflict, realization, revelation, grief, resolve or resolution. Its writing is always surface level description because its data exists in terms of surface level elements.
This lack of understanding will be a constant handicap because language models don't actually understand anything. It's simply a set of algorithms mimicking patterns in training data. It's not experiencing or learning or thinking. It's just creating text that presents the illusion of doing so.
AI is only ever about pattern replication and extrapolation. Storytelling is not about mimicking existing patterns, but rather about building on existing patterns to innovate and create new ones.
Future language models may be less repetitive, but the lack of actual understanding and experience remains a handicap no matter how many descriptive variations exist.
On a slight tangent, because I wrote that adaptation of that SCREAM story, I got a message from a fanfic writer asking for a consult. It started badly and ended worse.
NORA: Can you read my novelization of the first season of the MTV SCREAM series? It’s not the best writing of mine, but it’s 100% way different than the show, but improved and better.
ME: (Receives file) Improved and better... ? I don't really understand why you're writing a novelization of a show you don't seem to like.
NORA: oh i love the show!!!!(: More details, more stuff added, fillers that weren’t filled in taken out. Only thing I didn’t like were fake tears when someone died. in the book, I added more details more in depth to her character. When will is killed, she just doesn’t stop and see, she screams to the top of her lungs. I’m going to write a separate part of emma’s voice over what she thinks feels etc
ME: Okay, I'm reading your novelization. The descriptions are very vivid. I think you mean vise like grip, not vice like.
NORA: Yeah there’s a lot of stuff in the show that didn’t make sense that i took out and replaced. you’ll see what I mean it’s hard to explain. imma fix that whole thing up. and exactly. I haven’t even finished episode 8 yet. I don’t wanna make too many changes in the novel from the series like I wanna keep the story in the way it is but take out all stuff that doesn’t make sense and put new stuff in along with fillers that were not filled incause there was a lot of them and season one and the fact that I’m in the process of writing in the entire season and the book is pretty damn impressive
ME: I've read a few pages of your pilot novelization. It seems solid, but I will note: you're spending a lot of time describing how things look, as though describing a TV show. Prose isn't a visual medium, so it tends to be more effective if you focus on how it feels to experience and live in that scene as opposed to what it looks like to watch the scene.
NORA: That’s my idea for it is to make it look like you’re watching a show what you’re reading a novel because some people have a problem watching versus reading so this isn’t just for horror is also for people who have disabilities I can read better versus watching something or they have hearing aids. Because there are people out there who have a hard time hearing or watching something so I did it also for people who have disabilities
ME: Also, when you have two characters talking, it's important to put their dialogue in separate paragraphs. That way, the division between who's talking is clear.
NORA: That’s what I’m working on like I said I got a lot of cleaning up to do but it’s gonna take a bit but once the whole book is done I’m gonna have an editor completely added the entire book to clean it up and polish it. I’m gonna be doing something different I’m gonna be having a killer’s POV on how he tastes Clark and ties into the tree that are stabbing him because there’s just a lot of stuff that wasn’t filled in the show that I’m gonna fill in
ME: You call Brooke the queen bee of the school. Wasn't that Nina? Brooke was only referred to as queen bee after Nina's death in the TV show, and in this chapter of your novelization, Nina is still alive.
NORA: Nina called her that’s her nickname. It’s all in the book. The pilot is 100% different in the novel
ME: The only reference I'm seeing to queen bee in the show's dialogue: Noah says Nina was the queen bee in episode 8. So Brooke isn't queen bee of the school until after Nina dies. Also, your book does not contain any reference to "queen bee" being Brooke's nickname. And I've read the four sections and you've sent me a prose adaptation of the pilot episode and, as far as I've read, the next three episodes of the TV show. But it's not "100% different." It does have a few extra scenes and details that seem arbitrarily altered.
NORA: Like i said, it’s not going to be 100% accurate, mainly flowing with the story with fresh takes on them. Everything is being edited and etc. Is there at least any pros that you like about us so far
ME: It reads really well. It's easy to tell what's happening. You call the Lakewood Slasher a "reaper." I'm not sure the Lakewood Slasher is really a reaper, which tends to be a description of the Grim Reaper.
NORA: yes i know this …. it’s something different
ME: The Brandon James mask is a face and the raincoat doesn't really fit the reaper cloak profile. The movie described the costume as a Father Death costume to excuse the ghost mask instead of a skull mask. But if you don't have a skull mask or a reaper's robes, your killer can't be described as a reaper.
NORA: Ik. like i said, wanted to do something different.
ME: But you use an image of the Lakewood Slasher on your book cover and that's not a reaper. Also, why are you changing the most popular girl from Nina to Brooke, anyway?
NORA: i’m not ….im going by the story . like i said it’s a WORK in progress. gotta give me credit ….
ME: The TV plotline is pretty explicit that Nina was the most popular or notorious girl in school until she died, and only after that did Brooke become "queen bee". Why did you change it? The reason the story makes Nina more popular than Brooke: that way, when Nina dies, every character has a reaction, whether it's a main character or a guest star or an extra. So demoting Nina is confusing to me. What are you trying to accomplish?
NORA: Nina’s character wasn’t really explored so there was no need to. Couldn’t find no background on her, no reason why she was the way she was, what video files she had, nothing. Can’t just make something up that wouldn’t make sense to the readers.
ME: I still don't understand. Why did you change her popularity?
NORA: Because her character wasn’t explored
ME: I don't see how that corresponds to changing how popular she was.
Her role as the first victim whose death, due to her popularity, is a high profile, high attention event. I don't see how changing that helps the story. It seems really random.
NORA: Just went with how it goes
ME: But that isn't "how it goes". Look, I understand that sometimes, there are characters we don't like. Nina is not an easy character to like. She is unpleasant, hurtful, cruel. However, I think that, as writers, we should find some point of interest and something to care about for every character we write, even ones who irk us.
And when writing a novelization of a live action work, we should at minimum appreciate the function of the character, and in Nina's case, her popularity is the catalyst for the season arc: an extremely high profile murder. To alter her popularity doesn't serve the plot; it strikes me as you taking a passive-aggressive jab at a character you disliked by removing the only thing she had going for her, really, her popularity. To remove that undermines the storyline you're novelizing.
Also, your complaints about Nina... they betray a certain unfamiliarity with television. When adapting a TV story to prose, it's important to at least understand why the TV show was written the way it was, even if you didn't care for it.
TV characters don't always need a ton of backstory. Emma doesn't have a ton of backstory. TV characters are often about the actor's performance rather than in-depth details of their lives. In Nina's case, Bella Thorne's acting conveys everything about her: she has control issues, she's domineering, she treats everyone as a game piece to belittle and mock, and the set design of her home shows: she can get away with it because her family is wealthy. As we learn more about how she was blackmailing people in Season 1, it's clear that she didn't need the money; she just liked being in control.
Nina wasn't onscreen much because they only had actress Bella Thorne for two days of filming and also, the character dies in the first episode, so there wasn't much room to explore. TV is a very time limited medium. To criticize the lack of background is not a reasonable criticism of TV.
As someone writing the novelization, it's up to you to engage in the exploration, to create the background, to delve further... rather than to just declare there's nothing to write.
I'm also concerned that your comments indicate a certain dislike and contempt for the show. It makes me wonder why you are writing a novelization if you think so poorly of how it handled its characters, even a relatively small but critical one like Nina. I wonder if you are writing out of spite towards a TV show without understanding why it made certain choices, even if you disagree with them.
Changing Nina's popularity, making the Lakewood Slasher a "reaper" when he is not -- these are arbitrary changes that seem really random, and when choices in writing are made without purpose or intent, the product becomes haphazard. I think when we change something in an adaptation, there should be a clear reason beyond "that's just how it goes" or "I didn't like that character."
NORA: Dude…:i didn’t write nothing about nina cause I don’t like her, i didn’t write anything cause there’s nothing about her there ..i have nothing dislike any of the characters, there was just nothing there for me to fill in for her .
ME: If you feel that there is "nothing there", why are you subtracting what little there is, her popularity, from her and giving that role to Brooke? Nina dies at the beginning of the story, handing that role over to Brooke by default anyway, so saying Nina was never popular or notorious seems like a really arbitrary change. Unless this isn't a novelization, but an alternate universe?
NORA: wow….this is EPISODE BY EPISODE. Things have been changed. I’m sorry that it does not live up to your standards, but a lot of stuff is different and for you to bash someone’s work is not okay whatsoever
ME: I have no idea how "EPISODE BY EPISODE" pertains to randomly changing a character's social status when it's essential to the plot... and if "a lot of stuff is different", why is it a novelization? How is it "bashing" to ask you why your novelization is making the changes that you're making?
NORA: SHUT UP ABOUT MY WRITING
ME: I noticed that 'your' writing keeps using the same phrases. "Brow furrowed" appears 53 times, "a voice laced with" appears 37 times, "his movements swift and deadly" appears 48 times. This and the text "You’re using 2.0 Flash Experimental" appearing at the start of Chapter 3 tells me this is AI generated text. The Wiki entry for Brooke calls her the "queen bee," but your AI has applied that term to her prematurely by using it before Nina's death. The Wiki entry for the Lakewood Slasher also refers to him as a "reaper," mistakenly so. I think your AI tool scraped those entries without spotting the mistakes. It seems to me that calling this writing a "fresh take" is a deflection over how your AI has made some errors.
NORA: I SPENT TWO YEARS WRITING THIS AND YOU ARE TRASHING IT
ME: You took two years to write this -- using AI -- and you're only seven episodes in? At a rate of novelizing 3.5 episodes a year, you're not going to be done with all 24 episodes of the show until 2030. When you started writing this two years ago, the show was eight years old. The show is now 10 years old. At your rate of completion, it will be 15 years old. Are we sure we can consider that "fresh"?
NORA: STOP SHITTING ON MY BOOK
ME: Are you sure it's your book? This is a novelization of a TV show. You didn't write the outline or any of the dialogue. And judging from the AI-generated prose, you also didn't write any of the descriptions. Why are you so offended by my comments about a story you didn't plot with dialogue you didn't script and descriptions you didn't write?
NORA: FUCK YOU AND FUCK OFF
(Nora has left the chat.)
Jesus. I can't believe I keep getting caught up in fanfic consultations that always end up like this one even without a phony and a fraud misrepresenting a machine's work as their own. What is wrong with me? Is it a cry for help? I am going to call my therapist.
Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → AI
Powered by PunBB, supported by Informer Technologies, Inc.