OpenAI Is Ready for Hollywood to Accept Its Vision
... Among few considerations holding back further deployment of AI is the specter of a court ruling that the use of copyrighted materials to train AI systems constitutes infringement. Another factor is that AI-generated works aren’t eligible for copyright protection, limiting exploitation since they’d enter the public domain. ...
On March 19, the ChatGPT maker screened 11 short films made with Sora by independent filmmakers at Brain Dead Studios, a hip movie theater in West Hollywood on Fairfax Avenue, in a bid to showcase its technology. Those movies displayed the limitations of the tools while hinting at their potential.
None of the titles incorporated extensive dialogue between characters. Narratives were sparse to nonexistent, with more than one person commenting after the screenings some of the films were closer to commercials than short films. ...
Some VFX artists are already leaning into AI, working around certain legal constraints by training open-source systems on their own works. ...
Alton Glass, a Directors Guild of America member who attended the screening, said “workflows are going to shift” with the advent of AI. He stressed, “opportunity will come from that.” ...
A study commissioned last year by the Concept Art Association and The Animation Guild surveying 300 leaders across the entertainment industry found that three-fourths of respondents indicated that AI tools supported the elimination, reduction or consolidation of jobs at their companies. Over the next three years, it estimated that nearly 204,000 positions will be adversely affected. At the forefront of the displacement: sound engineers, voice actors, concept artists and employees in entry-level positions, according to the study. Visual effects and other postproduction work stands particularly vulnerable. ...
See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/openai-hollywood-sora-1236170402/
Why the world is looking to ditch US AI models
... the Trump administration's shocking, rapid gutting of the US government (and its push into what some prominent political scientists call “competitive authoritarianism”) also affects the operations and policies of American tech companies—many of which, of course, have users far beyond US borders. People at RightsCon said they were already seeing changes in these companies’ willingness to engage with and invest in communities that have smaller user bases—especially non-English-speaking ones.
As a result, some policymakers and business leaders—in Europe, in particular—are reconsidering their reliance on US-based tech and asking whether they can quickly spin up better, homegrown alternatives. This is particularly true for AI. ...
Social media content moderation systems—which already use automation and are also experimenting with deploying large language models to flag problematic posts—are failing to detect gender-based violence in places as varied as India, South Africa, and Brazil. If platforms begin to rely even more on LLMs for content moderation, this problem will likely get worse, says Marlena Wisniak, a human rights lawyer who focuses on AI governance at the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law. “The LLMs are moderated poorly, and the poorly moderated LLMs are then also used to moderate other content,” she tells me. “It’s so circular, and the errors just keep repeating and amplifying.” ...
Part of the problem is that the systems are trained primarily on data from the English-speaking world (and American English at that), and as a result, they perform less well with local languages and context. ...
... “smaller language models might be worthy competitors of multilingual language models in specific, low-resource languages,” says Aliya Bhatia, a visiting fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology who researches automated content moderation. ...
“Fundamentally, the training data a model trains on is akin to the worldview it develops.” ...
See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/25/1113696/why-the-world-is-looking-to-ditch-us-ai-models/
The Reality of the US-China AI Arms Race
Alvin Graylin gives an excellent, entertaining, and data-rich presentation on the current race to develop AI, why the idea that the US must "win" it doesn't map to what is actually happening, why the US sanctions to slow China's AI development are doing exactly the opposite, why cooperation with China and others will give the world better AI, and why the greatest threats from AI are rogue individuals and groups rather than countries.
(HBS) The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise(HBR)
... Even more interesting: AI broke down professional silos. R&D people with AI produced more commercial work and commercial people with AI had more technical solutions. ...
See the paper here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5188231
See the substack description here: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-cybernetic-teammate
PhilNote: The substack comments are equally interesting
Netflix’s Reed Hastings Donates $50M to Launch AI and Humanity Initiative at Bowdoin College
... Initial priorities include hiring 10 new faculty members in a range of disciplines; supporting current faculty who want to incorporate and interrogate AI in their teaching, research and other work; and conversations about the uses of AI and the changes and challenges it will bring, including workshops, symposia and support for student research. ...
“Bowdoin is ideally positioned to meet the challenges and opportunities of AI,” she said. “Our deep commitment to the liberal arts and the common good position us to think together about what we are going to value in human cognition, and what we will want our AI systems to do — or not do — going forward in service to humanity.” ...
See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/netflix-reed-hastings-donation-ai-humanity-bowdoin-college-1236171130/
Revolutionary experiment concludes that light exists in 37 dimensions
... Everyday experiences follow clear, sensible rules. For example, if you find a letter in your mailbox, someone obviously delivered it there. This simple logic—called local realism—assumes objects exist clearly and events happen predictably, influenced solely by immediate surroundings. ...
But quantum mechanics rejects such straightforward reasoning. In this bizarre quantum world, particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously until someone observes them. The GHZ paradox illustrates how this idea mathematically breaks classical rules, even suggesting absurd outcomes like one equaling negative one. ...
Photons—the tiny particles making up light—were controlled in ways requiring 37 separate points of reference. Handling quantum states at this scale allowed researchers to deeply explore how quantum mechanics diverges from common sense and classical physics. ...
One of the key takeaways from the experiment is that quantum mechanics does not conform to classical expectations. By creating a GHZ-type paradox in 37 dimensions, the researchers demonstrated a breakdown of local realism in ways previously unexplored. ...
The research team mathematically confirmed that their experiment achieved the strongest recorded manifestation of quantum nonlocality. ...
See the full story here: https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/revolutionary-experiment-concludes-that-light-exists-in-37-dimensions/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
How to Write Your First AI Agent (Even If You Don’t Know What That Means Yet)
...
writing your first agent doesn’t require deep technical skill—it requires a mindset shift. Think of it as a new way to delegate.
This post is a practical starting point: what agents are, how they work, and how to build one today using tools you already know. ...
- Sense: Gather information from the environment
- Think: Process that information against goals or rules
- Act: Take action based on the processing
Every agent—from the simplest email filter to the most advanced autonomous system—follows this pattern. ...
Importantly, this agent didn’t replace or displace anyone. When we originally built it, we did not have the resources to stand-up the team required to do the work. Today, we could easily justify the human resources, but it would not be a good use of anyone’s time. The function is fully automated — as it should be. ...
Leading the Agent Revolution
The best agent implementations start with leadership, not technology. As you work with your team:
- Focus on outcomes, not features. What business problem are you solving?
- Start small and iterate. Build one capability that works well before adding complexity.
- Involve end users early. The people who will use the agent should help design it.
- Measure and refine. Set clear success metrics and continuously improve.
- Build for augmentation, not replacement. The best agents make people more effective, not redundant.
...
See the full story here: https://shellypalmer.com/2025/03/how-to-write-your-first-ai-agent-even-if-you-dont-know-what-that-means-yet/?mc_cid=c14727bb2b&mc_eid=116e9f337b
Square Enix to wind down its Web3 venture Symbiogenesis in July
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The project was launched when the non-fungible token (NFT) market’s fatigue reached its peak in 2023, failing to meet the low expectations of players in the sector. The project began as a game where players could purchase NFT-based characters and travel across a mystery multi-chapter fantasy. The growing fatigue in the market was another factor, with the usual players burnt out from other projects.
While the project promised excitement with its 10,000 NFT characters and promise of utility, the underwhelming reception it received was a surprise, especially considering the fact that it came from a renowned publisher like Square Enix.
Square Enix to shutter Symbiogenesis in July
According to reports, Symbiogenesis did not offer users any financial incentives for playing, nor did it offer much in terms of gameplay. The project was supposed to follow legendary projects like Axie Infinity or Off The Grid but refused to adopt their mechanism. Aside from allowing players to sell and buy characters and items in the games, it offered little return on investment. Players mentioned at the time that even at their peak, most of these items sold for a couple of thousand dollars. ...
See the full story here: https://www.mitrade.com/insights/news/live-news/article-3-713288-20250322
The Maya Angelou Immersive Experience
... Professor Travis Cloyd of FIU’s D.R.E.A.M.S. program is proud of the university’s role in this educational AI experience. “By integrating AI, augmented reality, and spatial experiences, we are creating a new standard for location-based entertainment, one that enhances learning, retention, empathy and connection for the next generation. Immersive experiences aren’t just seen—they’re felt. By blending digital and physical worlds, we create deeper connections to stories that matter.” ...
See the full story here: https://www.shootonline.com/spw/the-maya-angelou-immersive-experience/
OpenAI takes its pitch to Hollywood creatives after launching controversial video tool
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This week, the ChatGPT maker screened 11 short films made with Sora on the big screen at Brain Dead Studios, a movie theater on Fairfax Avenue. The event, called Sora Selects, aimed to showcase filmmakers using Sora while also marketing the technology. The company’s first such event was held in New York in January, followed by L.A. The next stop is Tokyo.
The movies shown on Wednesday featured various themes and AI-generated environments, including medieval times, dreams and sunsets — with scenes showing AI-produced humans, animals and landscapes. ...
Sahai said at peak traffic, there are 10 Sora videos generated every second. The four top cities using Sora are all abroad — Seoul, Paris, Tokyo and Madrid, OpenAI said. New York ranks fifth. ...
See the full story here: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2025-03-21/openai-hollywood-filmmakers-sora
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