you gotta love steve bannon because he’ll spill the beans to attractive right wing newscasters: he already told us the strategy is to unite north & south america—but please note: this is a DEFENSIVE strategy. not offensive. it means they won’t go to war with china in the south china sea because they know they will lose. so they will retire almost all bases around the world and concentrate them only around north & south america. plus central. hence, now: maduro’s oil. (they think they have mexico because of the leader they put in there but they don’t actually have mexico like they assume). they think canada won’t fight (but again, surprises everywhere!), no idea why they think brazil won’t be a problem. anyhoo: wargames are starting. and in quite a rush as if there is a deadline…
WHO WILL WIN IN AI OR
THE DETAILS ARE EVERYTHING: LEAVE THEM TO US.
Listen up, because I am about to edumacate. SIC. Pronounced: ed-U-MA-cate. I will tell you who will win in AI. Same principle works in neighborhood real estate. Creatives make things, places, environments cool and attractive because they find new ways to say the same old thing in a different and edgy way. I don’t believe AI will cure cancer or the environment anytime soon. Sure, data processing will help filter options. But what AI can do now is impact storytelling. Especially visually. When I post a photo online, 9 times out of 10 I use the feature on my phone which allows me to adjust the exposure, brightness, black point, saturation, etc. I’ll make about ten adjustments per photo. I skip using the pre-made filters, although I do use them occasionally, for posting on private group chats. I am not even talking about professional level color grading, just basic color grading options. Most people posting who do visual adjustments, let’s say 9 out of 10, probably don’t even bother with what I am doing and use filters. As a filmmaker, I was enthused by the idea of AI video software that I could use to animate some of my audio narrations, visualize a script, etc. I tested out different ones last year, and abandoned each one. I understand the technology is developing (or what I get access to is not the top of what’s available). However, I always ran into issues, such as I could not adequately fine-tune the edit, I could not easily swap in my own video or photo into the auto-generated sequence. I could not get the rhythm I wanted visually. Or, I could only choose from a given selection of style templates. I am telling you something very simple that Steve Jobs did and knew. He catered to the graphic designers, the writers, the creative people and in turn they made his products fly off the minimalist countertops. He made cool products for them and they made his products cool for everyone else. Because why? He cared about DETAILS. When I was little I’d walk to my grandparents house after school. I’d take the plate of ginger snaps and grapes my grandmother left for me into the basement where my grandfather had his office. I would busy myself constructing stallions out of couch pillows and watch MATHNET (Square One! Du-do-du-dooo-doo). He worked in marketing and on political campaigns, including presidential ones (until his candidate was assassinated at The Ambassador Hotel—that turned him off of politics). I remember he had a printout above his desk in bold, a quote by Napoleon: “THE DETAILS ARE EVERYTHING: LEAVE THEM TO ME.” Right now, the presentation of “AI” (a grab bag undefined overused term) to the public is such that any tools built with it will take away the ability to fine tune details. The impulse is to create tools for the 90% who use the pre-designed templates. That is actually an incorrect approach. It is better to create the ability to adjust details for the 1-10% who will do so, because it is those people (I don’t like the word “users” so let’s say “utilizers”), those utilizers, who will create value via their own creations, thus opening the door to the other 90% plus who will use the scaled down versions with less manipulability. The AI companies who will win will be the ones who create greater flexibility and options in their software for utilizers. Right now I don’t see leaders in the space looking to do that. We liked Steve Jobs, and we didn’t really care if people said he was difficult and controlling. We knew he studied calligraphy and saw in his product the care for typography. Thus, typesetters liked and adopted his products. We don’t like Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerburg, Alex Karp, that other weird melty face, oh yeah, Thiel—because we don’t believe they are as capable as they are presented to us as being by the media or the stock market. We don’t believe in them as tech leaders because we do not see the life story, the trajectory, the ups and downs—the learning process. When I say “we” I don’t speak for all creatives or the public, obviously, but I’d say generally the sales face of AI technology right now is not a good sell. (I said something similar about Saylor and Bitcoin.) Personally, I’m not currently afraid of digital dictatorship or AI supremacy or the effects of ‘singularity’ because I think there are many competing factors that will (most likely) interfere with that vision—over-centralization and dominance being weaknesses here not to mention the epidemic of inflated egos—I am more concerned about a lost opportunity to create useful technological tools. I am merely giving feedback here about why I have not even tested out or tried new AI video tools in months because I am convinced I’m only going to have boiler plate options that I don’t want. I don’t see videos online that convince me otherwise. Whoever actually steers their company to create tools that creatives and researchers want to use will win the AI race. Specifically when it comes to media—and when you as a country or society aren’t producing anything but bits, you clearly must care about media, as the Ellison family is currently showing (with TikTok, and now perhaps WB under their wings). But, in order for that to happen, it would mean to trade in easy celebrity partnerships to do on the ground community legwork and information gathering, and lazy egos with open door access to gigantic media platforms and top political leaders will probably not have the humbleness of mind nor the discipline to put in the actual foundational hard work. Which will lead to a real chaotic mess in the end. Leg day everyday, my friends! If there is a tech leader willing to do that work, then that company will edge past the deflated balloons of overvalued companies when the bubble bursts.
