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What two years of AI development can tell us about Sora (Vox)
We live in the best and worst of times, apparently."Last week, OpenAI released Sora, a generative AI model that produces videos based on a simple prompt. It’s not available to the public yet, but CEO Sam Altman showed off its capabilities by taking requests on X, formerly known as Twitter. Users replied with short prompts: “a monkey playing chess in a park,” or “a bicycle race on ocean with different animals as athletes.” It’s uncanny, mesmerizing, weird, beautiful — and prompting the usual cycle of commentary.
Some people are making strong claims about Sora’s negative effects, expecting a “wave of disinformation” — but while I (and experts) think future powerful AI systems pose really serious risks, claims that a specific model will bring the disinformation wave upon us have not held up so far.
Others are pointing at Sora’s many flaws as representing fundamental limitations of the technology — which was a mistake when people did it with image generator models and which, I suspect, will be a mistake again. As my colleague A.W. Ohlheiser pointed out, “just as DALL-E and ChatGPT improved over time, so could Sora.”
The predictions, both bullish and bearish, may yet pan out — but the conversation around Sora and generative AI would be more productive if people on all sides took into greater account all the ways in which we’ve been proven wrong these last couple of years."
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"In the time between DALL-E 2 and Sora, AI image generation has gone from a party trick to a massive industry. Many of the things DALL-E 2 couldn’t do, DALL-E 3 could. And if DALL-E 3 couldn’t, a competitor often could. That’s a perspective that’s crucial to keep in mind when you read prognosticating on Sora — you’re likely looking at early steps into a major new capability, one that could be used for good or malicious purposes, and while it’s possible to oversell it, it’s also very easy to sell it short.
Instead of overcommitting to any particular perspective on what Sora and its successors will or won’t be able to do, it’s worth admitting some uncertainty about where this is headed. It’s much easier to say, “This technology will keep improving by leaps and bounds” than to guess the specifics of how that will play out."
The technology is fascinating, and expresses much about the future of computing, both on the practical and fantastical level. Many games are now procedurally-generated (think Minecraft). They are going to become fantastic. Many political campaigns, similarly, are fantastical. They are going to become horrific.
