Jacob Elordi Is Not Interested In Your AI Questions

Disney announced today that it would invest $1 billion in OpenAI’s AI video-creation platform, Sora. The deal will license more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars, enabling users to create video clips featuring them.

I find it all insanely boring. Not because I dislike AI — although I do dislike it in the creative context — but because it all feels so mind-numbingly mundane. I have no idea what the future of AI will look like: Will it achieve superintelligence, put us all out of work, and enslave humanity? Or is it a giant bubble that will pop and bankrupt the economy? Or will we gradually integrate it into our everyday lives, as we did with the Internet, iPhones, social media, and air fryers?

I have no idea. To me, it feels like AI is something that corporate America (and the federal government) is trying to make happen, but that the majority of Americans outside of Silicon Valley aren’t that keen on it because we actually don’t want our jobs to be replaced, we find the creative output of AI to be uninspiring, and that AI is mostly just an aggregator of other people’s work. But also, the middle school my daughters attend recently gave them an assignment to use Sora, so the youth are clearly being taught to use it.

But god, what a tedious subject. And you know who agrees with that assessment? Jacob Elordi, who, in an interview with Vanity Fair, gave an answer to a question about AI that suggests he’s more intelligent and more interesting than I have given him credit for.

As a human being, I have no tolerance for [AI] - nor the ever encroaching, constant conversation that we keep having about it. Even being asked about it. I just have no interest in it at all, because it’s so ****ing boring. That’s ones and zeros. That’s numbers. It’s digital. I can’t focus on it. It bores me, personally. If it’s your interest, go nuts in your garage; play around, build a robot. But as far as I’m concerned, I would much rather kiss on the beach, and read a novel, and be sunburnt.

So, there you go, folks: Jacob Elordi would rather get a sunburn than talk about AI. It’s a low bar, but I have never liked Elordi more.

(Hat Tip: Roxana)