Well done Suzy! I thought this was really well done - creative and imaginative, while still being accessible enough to resonate with a wide range of people, including those with fairly little AI context.
I also really like the angle for the next project: making prevention feel motivating rather than merely doomy seems both important and underexplored.
I’d be very happy to contribute if it's useful, whether through brainstorming, giving feedback on scripts/early edits, or potentially contributing original music to the score :)
My new short fiction film 'Seat at the Table' is now out on Youtube!
Premise:
When Eva visits her Dad’s AI company, she meets Liam, the company’s flagship AI system, who she imagines as a polite, precociously-smart kid. But with the company’s co-founder claiming Liam 7 is too dangerous to release, Eva starts to wonder if her Dad can really control what he’s created.
Would love to hear your thoughts on the film. It’s targeted at people who know fairly little about AI, to get them quickly up to speed on where we’re at right now and what this technology actually is. The main points I was trying to get across were:
If there are people you wish understood these things better, I’d love for you to show this film to them and, if possible, report back on their response. It’s always hard to gauge what effect a film is having, especially on people with low AI context, and I’ve found the anecdotal reports about my last film Writing Doom to be extremely helpful.
The next idea
I’m currently developing the next project (though may change my plan if this one flops). The key things I now want to get across are:
There’s something big coming, and it might be devastating
But the future is still malleable
Humans have collaborated to change course in the past, and we can again
(Also: humans are pretty cool and worth saving)
Here’s some ways to actually help, but ultimately you gotta take responsibility and go figure out for yourself how you can help
This new angle is a reaction to AI stories (including mine) tending to be doomy to the point of demotivating. The go-to way to be not-doomy is to show positive visions of the future, get people excited about how good things could be. This does almost nothing for me, for some reason, so instead I'm gonna have a go at making prevention sexy.
How you can help
The idea itself I don’t want to talk about too much (it’s still a delicate little flame right now) but I’d love to hear:
Your thoughts on the angle described above
Interesting stories of people (you?) who have come across EA/AI and decided to try to help. What that looked like, what that felt like, how it played out, and what they’re/you’re doing now. (I wouldn’t be directly depicting these, I’m just trying to get more of a flavour of what this kind of thing looks like in practice.)
Historical stories of prevention: the classic examples that come to mind are smallpox, Borlaug, Petrov, treaties on nuclear/bio/chem weapons, but I’m sure there are many, many more. What are your faves?
Historical stories of near-prevention: what did we get frustratingly close to averting? E.g., Roger Boisjoly and the Challenger disaster.
Historical artefacts/stories that provide a glimpse into an alternate timeline: e.g., “In Event of Moon Disaster,” the speech written for Nixon to deliver in the event of the deaths of the Apollo 11 crew.
Early drafts focused more heavily on the risks / negative stuff, and I got into a real tangle with the writing. I realised that I got into this stuff because it was interesting, not (just) because it was important. Imbuing the film with a sense of wonder was essential for getting out of the hole I’d written myself into, and I think it's a way better film because of it.
AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
Adapted from my Substack, Funding Anthropalypse.
Short version: if you want a share of the coming Anthropic and OpenAI windfall - the $37bn+ that could be in play next year - the way in is to become 'legibly excellent', so the evaluators and donors that frontier lab staff already trust point them to yo...
Disclaimer: Although I work on the Groups Team at CEA, I’m writing this in a personal capacity, and this post does not constitute an endorsement by CEA.
Agency - the realisation that you really can just do things.
TL;DR
Biosecurity needs people (of any background) who are agentic and have a high execution velocity and track record....
Well done Suzy! I thought this was really well done - creative and imaginative, while still being accessible enough to resonate with a wide range of people, including those with fairly little AI context.
I also really like the angle for the next project: making prevention feel motivating rather than merely doomy seems both important and underexplored.
I’d be very happy to contribute if it's useful, whether through brainstorming, giving feedback on scripts/early edits, or potentially contributing original music to the score :)