philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Turkish Coffee recipe

Apropos of nothing more than I love Turkish food, here is a great 6 min tutorial on making Turkish Coffee. https://aegeandelight.com/how-to-make-turkish-coffee/#tasty-recipes-3186-jump-target

Tutorial – RAG vs. Fine-Tuning vs. Prompt Engineering

This is an excellent short primer explaining the three ways to make an AI more accurate and more efficient.

See the 13 minute video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYGDpG-pTho

‘No safety rules’: Concerns grow as AI-generated videos spread hate online

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In recent months similar AI-generated content has flooded social media platforms, openly promoting violence and spreading hate against members of LGBTQ+, Jewish, Muslim and other minority groups.

While the origin of most of those videos is unclear, their spread on social media is sparking outrage and concern among experts and advocates who say Canadian regulations cannot keep up with the pace of hateful AI-generated content, nor adequately address the risks it poses to public safety. 

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"When they create the environment where there's a lot of celebration of violence towards those groups, it does make violence towards those groups happening in person or on the streets more likely,” Balgord warned in a phone interview. ...

Lewis, who is also an assistant professor at Ontario Tech University, said that large language models such as ChatGPT have implemented safeguards in an effort to filter out harmful or illegal content.  

But more needs to be done in the video space to create such guardrails, he said. 

“You and I could watch the video and probably be horrified,” he said, adding “it's not clear necessarily that the AI system has the ability to sort of reflect on what it has created.” ...

See the full story here: https://www.chroniclejournal.com/news/national/no-safety-rules-concerns-grow-as-ai-generated-videos-spread-hate-online/article_a564632e-e801-50d9-968e-96dd5d556ad4.html

Ex-Google Exec Says Super Intelligent AI Is Reporting To Stupid Leaders. That’s Why Short-Term Dystopia Is Coming And There’s No Escaping It

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Capitalism, Not AI, Is The Problem

While tech leaders often frame AI as a tool to make work easier or enhance human capabilities, Gawdat doesn't buy it. “There's absolutely nothing wrong with AI—there's a lot wrong with the value set of humanity at the age of the rise of the machines,” he said. He blames profit-driven systems for deploying AI in ways that hurt workers and society.

“CEOs are celebrating that they can now get rid of people and have productivity gains and cost reductions because AI can do that job,” Gawdat said. “The one thing they don't think of is AI will replace them, too.”

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See the full story here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ex-google-exec-says-super-170134508.html

As AI Kills Jobs, Sam Altman Says Gen Z Are The ‘Luckiest’ Kids In History

... Quizzed if AI would potentially cause job displacement, Mr Altman shrugged it off, saying it was a cyclical process.

"This always happens, and young people are the best at adapting to this. I'm more worried about what it means, not for the 22-year-old, but for the 62-year-old that doesn't want to go retrain or reskill or whatever the politicians call it." ...

While Mr Altman takes an optimistic view of the future, a former Google top executive recently said that AI could disrupt society as the technology eats away jobs, rendering the middle class non-existent.

Mo Gawdat, who left Google X as its chief business officer in 2018, said the 'hell' will begin as early as 2027 as AI eliminates white-collar jobs, with no one spared, including software developers, CEOs, and podcasters. ...

"Unless you're in the top 0.1 per cent, you're a peasant. There is no middle class," he predicted. ...

Previously, Geoffrey Hinton, regarded by many as the 'godfather of AI', stated that the technology could soon develop its own language, making it impossible for humans to track the machines.

See the full story here: https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/as-ai-kills-jobs-sam-altman-says-gen-z-are-the-luckiest-kids-in-history-9063272

AI on stage: The rise of AI characters at Edinburgh Fringe 2025

PhilNote: brief descriptions of 6 pieces.

From digital landscapes to improvisational humanoid comedians, artists in Fringe 2025 are weaving AI into performance in wildly imaginative and emotionally rich ways - not to replace human expression, but to expand its boundaries. ...

See the full story here: https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/ai-on-stage-the-rise-of-ai-characters-at-edinburgh-fringe-2025-5261630

OpenAI launches GPT-5, a potential barometer for whether AI hype is justified

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OpenAI’s presenters also spent time talking about safety improvements to make the chatbot “less deceptive” and stop it from producing harmful responses to “cleverly worded” prompts that could bypass its guardrails ...

At a technical level, GPT-5 shows “modest but significant improvements” on the latest benchmarks, but when compared to GPT-4, it also looks very different and resets OpenAI’s flagship technology in a way that could set the stage for future innovations, said John Thickstun, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University. ...

Most recently, OpenAI has said it will turn its for-profit company into a public benefit corporation, which must balance the interests of shareholders and its mission. ...

The inability of a single AI developer to have a “sustained competitive edge” could increasingly force companies to compete on lowering the prices of their AI products, the bank said in a report last month. ...

See the full story here: https://apnews.com/article/gpt5-openai-chatgpt-artificial-intelligence-d12cd2d6310a2515042067b5d3965aa1

Fear of super intelligent AI is driving Harvard and MIT students to drop out

When Alice Blair enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a freshman in 2023, she was excited to take computer science courses and meet other people who cared about making sure artificial intelligence is developed in a way that’s good for humanity.

Now she’s taking a permanent leave of absence, terrified that the emergence of “artificial general intelligence,” a hypothetical AI that can perform a variety of tasks as well as people, could doom the human race. ...

She’s lined up a contract gig as a technical writer at the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit focused on AI safety research, where she helps with newsletters and research papers. Blair doesn’t plan to head back to MIT. “I predict that my future lies out in the real world,” she said. ...

Other students are terrified of AGI, but less because it could destroy the human race and more because it could wreck their career before it’s even begun. Half of 326 Harvard students surveyed by the school’s undergraduate association and AI safety club were worried about AI’s impact on their job prospects. ...

Even the cofounder of Y Combinator, a startup accelerator known for funding young founders who have dropped out, thinks students should stay in school. “Don’t drop out of college to start or work for a startup,” Paul Graham posted on X in July. “There will be other (and probably better) startup opportunities, but you can’t get your college years back.” ...

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com.au/news/innovation/agi-fears-is-driving-harvard-and-mit-students-to-drop-out/

Trump Media Is Testing an AI Search Engine Powered by Perplexity

President Donald Trump's media company, Trump Media, is beta-testing an AI search feature on the Truth Social platform, drawing on Perplexity's AI technology.

The new Truth Search AI feature is available now on the web version of Truth Social and will begin public beta testing on its iOS and Android apps at an unnamed future date, the Florida-based company said Wednesday.  ...

UAE state-owned newspaper The National conducted searches using the new product and reported that the AI-generated answers, perhaps unsurprisingly, source conservative-leaning media outlets.

But 404Media was able to get some possibly surprising results. When reporters asked how the American economy is doing, the new search engine said it was "currently facing significant headwinds, with signs of slowdown." ...

See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/trump-media-is-testing-an-ai-search-engine-powered-by-perplexity/

Breaking Barriers in Film Education: How USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Integrates AI Tools with Runway

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Tell us about your course and what you were trying to accomplish this semester.
For the last five years, I've been exploring AI and machine learning with an accidental focus on how it could be used in film – it's been five years of nearly daily "aha!" moments. I got lucky to teach AI at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, working with some of the brightest student minds and forward-leaning faculty & administration on Earth. (Though sadly, the rapid development of AI means I never get to use the same syllabus twice!). This semester we focused on integrating acting and directing techniques into AI technology – think "What would Uta Hagen do with AI?" We're very creation-focused – we start with pitch books, turn those images into montage-style trailers, then progress to scenes and directing performances. It's a gentle way to guide them toward completing their dream projects and help them realize nothing's impossible.

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What excites you most about the future of AI in film education?
What excites me most is seeing students go from having an idea to having a finished piece that gets them meetings in the industry, all within a single semester. The technology removes so many of the traditional gatekeepers and barriers that kept talented people from getting their work out there. It’s not replacing the need for creative vision or storytelling skills – if anything, it makes those more important because more content is coming. The students who understand how to combine traditional filmmaking knowledge with these new tools are going to have incredible opportunities ahead of them.

See the full story here: https://runwayml.com/customers/usc-school-cinematic-arts-partnership