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.”

Jacob Coxon says Anthropic employees call themselves “ants” and sacrifice their careers for the company’s singular pursuit of superintelligence, while calling OpenAI "distracted and messy" “At Anthropic, it felt a lot more like—well, for starters, the employees call themselves ants. They’re ants in the anthill. Everyone is like a worker ant trying to make Anthropic’s mission go well. “People are very willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the mission. They’ll take on work that’s less interesting, less big, bold and exciting, and less flashy. They’ll do it at a hit to their own interests for the good of the company. “That’s because every decision comes back down to, ‘Is this going to get us to superintelligence faster?’ “You’ve seen Sora, the video platform OpenAI made. Anthropic would never make Sora because it’s not on the core path to artificial superintelligence. OpenAI is distracted and messy. One guy says, ‘I want to do Sora,’ or, ‘I want to build a little device,’ and they let them do it because it doesn’t have the same focus. At Anthropic, that would never happen.” Patrick Bet-David: “Who would shut it down? The seven co-founders?” Jacob Coxon: “They’d all agree. It would be like, ‘This video isn’t the right direction for heading straight to superintelligence.’”