{"id":876127,"date":"2026-10-09T09:04:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T09:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876127\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T09:04:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T09:04:18","slug":"ben-affleck-is-an-ai-nerd-and-the-internet-is-impressed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876127\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Affleck is an AI nerd, and the internet is impressed"},"content":{"rendered":"

They cast the wrong lead in \u201cGood Will Hunting,\u201d apparently, because it\u2019s Ben Affleck who is the secret genius, as it turns out. The actor who earlier this year sold his AI filmmaking startup to Netflix<\/a> for a reported $587 million has gone viral this week for demonstrating his understanding of AI technology, neural networks, machine learning, and the like, across multiple video clips of his recent interviews. <\/p>\n

He can even write a little Python, he says. <\/p>\n

The movie star delved into his interest in technology most recently on an episode of GQ\u2019s \u201cOne More Question\u201d series<\/a> this week, where he humbly started with \u201cI\u2019ve always been kind of into computers since I was young,\u201d before nerding out on the development of AI as it relates to filmmaking, while using AI terminology like machine learning, neural networks, transformers, tensors, GPUs, inference, and more.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In a clip that\u2019s making the rounds, Affleck explains to the impressed interviewer, Zach Baron, that he got into the space when analog film moved to digital. As he spoke, he kept defining terms so the interviewer could understand what he was talking about. <\/p>\n

\u201cI became more interested in that aspect of it, and the visual effects workflow for many years has included machine learning,\u201d Affleck began. \u201cSo I can write, like, pretty shitty Python scripts and stuff like that. Because with convolutional neural networks \u2014 which were the sort of precursors to what the transformer can do \u2014 which is just much more computation simultaneously \u2014 you would do things like, look at what\u2019s called a tensor \u2014 which is just the numerical translation of a visual image, in numbers like the batch number, the frame number, the red, green, and blue values of each pixel in each frame, and how many? It\u2019s just that simple, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

No, Ben Affleck, it is not just that simple, which is why this video is going viral. <\/p>\n

The actor then went into how neural networks were used to identify patterns and do edge detection or feature extraction, which he described as \u201cidentifying patterns enough to know \u2014 like this is where the window ledge is, so we can more easily take the green screen image out and replace it with something.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also admitted he used his status as a Hollywood star to get a peek at emerging AI technology, at times. OpenAI was among those he visited, Affleck said<\/a> in a separate clip, which ultimately led him to understand how he could get more directly involved in the AI space.<\/p>\n

As the interviewer continued, Affleck explained how AI can help with filmmaking while not replacing it, leading to the development and sale of his own startup in this space. (He claims the $587 million figure is \u201cnot right,\u201d noting that he didn\u2019t own the whole company.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI gambled on this notion that in order to do this in an ethical way and in a way that could take this technology and actually make it work hand in glove with artists in this community where there are very fixed, long-standing relationships around likeness and so forth, we had to create our own dataset,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I raised the money. I shot for about eight months with a lot of cameras and a lot of equipment, and created a dataset that would serve as late-stage training for open models to do discrete tasks, sort of where the training code, the inference code, were related to one another and geared toward actual specific tasks that would generate value,\u201d Affleck said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In a separate clip, also going viral, Affleck spoke to Bloomberg\u2019s Lucas Shaw<\/a> at the Screentime 2026 conference in LA, where he talked about how he fine-tuned AI models by taking open source models, unfreezing the weights, then teaching them to meet certain cinematic standards. In the process, the filmmaker retains their proprietary work, while benefiting from the learning they create by training their own unique model for the movie they\u2019re making.<\/p>\n

Ben Affleck (Hollywood star & Artists Equity CEO) talks about how he fine-tunes open video models by unfreezing weights and trained only the last cinematic layer so a film crew can hit real production standards.<\/p>\n

for context, Ben Affleck founded InterPositive in 2022, a 16-person\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/xIOvD0xMyt<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai) October 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

The actor used the technique himself in his movie \u201cAnimals,\u201d where AI aided in the post-production process. <\/p>\n

At one point, he also weighed in on the concerns around AI and its world-ending potential<\/a>. His worries, however, were much more rational. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I worry about AI, I worry about my kids in school. I worry about the 30% rise in the number of A\u2019s given out at colleges over the last three years. I worry about learned helplessness. I worry about responsible use. I don\u2019t worry about Skynet, and I don\u2019t think that it\u2019s going to take over [the movie] business in any meaningful way. I think it\u2019s going to be additive,\u201d Affleck said. <\/p>\n

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