Editor’s note: Today, we bring you a guest piece by Sam Volkering from his publication AI Collision which was first published on Tuesday 19 November.

You can hear from Sam more often at AI Collision and learn more about the latest developments in AI by simply clicking here to sign up for free.

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

The other night, Armageddon the movie came on the TV. I quite enjoy that movie, so I stuck with it. My wife walked in not long after it started, and figured she might as well sit in on it too.

Eventually it got to that scene where they have chosen the miners they’re going to send up onto the asteroid to drill a hole, drop in a nuke and blow it to smithereens.

It was at this point I told my wife about the Ben Affleck commentary about the movie from the special edition DVD.

Remember those, DVDs. Where on the menu screen you had a bunch of viewing options, often you’d have a choice to watch the film with a director’s commentary or an actor’s commentary. They would explain how parts of the film came together, or a scene was shot.

Well, this commentary from Affleck is absolute genius.

If you’re familiar with the movie too, not only does what Affleck say make absolute sense, it’s also beautifully insightful and very direct.


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The thing I like about Affleck is that he and Matt Damon, who are lifelong friends know the movie business inside out. And as hilarious as his commentary of Armageddon is, he’s spoke many times on the state of Hollywood and movie making and is always a deeply insightful speaker.

So, when just a couple of days later after watching Armageddon for the fifth time, I saw a video of Affleck speaking about AI and movie making, I thought this might actually be a good listen.

The reasoning here is phenomenal.

AI is a craftsman. AI is not an artist. Not yet. But what he’s also pointing out is that yes, there are aspects of movie making where AI will come in, kill jobs and cut the production costs of movies.

And it probably should do that, make the whole process more efficient and easier to do. But at the same time, there’s elements of human creativity that AI cannot do, maybe will never do because it is inherently not human.

AI is certainly a factor of creative destruction on not just Hollywood, but industry across the board. But not in a dystopian way. The process of creative destruction of industry trims the fat, streamlines, reduces costs, improves efficiencies and productivity, all the while creating more profitable outcomes, which leads to greater economic output and ultimately more jobs, just different ones.

And if it takes Ben Affleck to help people to see just how that works in a more celebrity infused industry, I’m all for it!

Boomers & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).

Boom 📈

  • Cyngn (NASDAQ:CYN) up 28%
  • Vicarious Surgical (NYSE:RBOT) up 11%
  • Appen (ASX:APX) up 6%

Bust 📉

  • Micron (NASDAQ:MU) down 14%
  • Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) down 10%
  • AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) down 8%

From the hive mind 🧠

  • A few weeks ago, leaders from all over the AI world convened in San Francisco for TEDAI 2024, a series of TED talks all about (as you’ve probably guessed)…AI. Now the videos aren’t all available yet, but you can get notified when they are, and I suggest you do here.
  • Infinite memory. Imagine never forgetting anything. I’m not sure the human brain is capable of that. Thankfully it won’t have to, but AI can, and will, and it’s happening very soon.
  • I had to laugh at this, mainly because the Australian one is very literally just a mash up of Chris and Liam Hemsworth 🤣

Weirdest AI image of the day

Exploiting the people’s money tree – r/weirddalle

ChatGPT’s random quote of the day

Startups don’t die because they run out of money; they die because they run out of momentum.
— Ben Horowitz, 2010

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief, AI Collision

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