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Comment by gwd | Hacker News Reader

> Probably a bad time to be an actor.

I don't see why -- the distance between "here's something that looks almost like a photo, moving only a little bit like a mannequin" and "here's something that has the subtle facial expressions and voice to convey complex emotions" is pretty freaking huge; to the point where the vast majority of actual humans fail to be that good at it. At any rate, the number of BNNs (biological neural networks) competing with actors has only been growing, with 8 billion and counting.

> Amazing time to be a wannabe director or producer or similar creative visionary. Amazing time to be an aspirant that would otherwise not have access to resources, capital, tools in order to bring their ideas to fruition.

Perhaps if you mainly want to do things for your own edification. If you want to be able to make a living off it, you're suddenly going to be in a very, very flooded market.

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It’s for sure plausible that acting remains a viable profession.

The bull case would be something like ‘Ractives in “The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson; instead of video games people play at something like live plays with real human actors. In this world there is orders of magnitude more demand for acting.

Personally I think it’s more likely that we see AI cross the uncanny valley in a decade or two (at least for movies/TV/TikTok style content). But this is nothing more than a hunch; 55/45 confidence say.

> Perhaps if you mainly want to do things for your own edification.

My mental model is that most aspiring creatives fall in this category. You have to be doing quite well as an actor to make a living from it, and most who try do not.

> the distance between "here's something that looks almost like a photo, moving only a little bit like a mannequin" and "here's something that has the subtle facial expressions and voice to convey complex emotions" is pretty freaking huge;

The distance between pixelated noise and a single image is freaking huge.

The distance between a single image and a video of a consistent 3D world is freaking huge (albeit with rotating legs).

The distance between a video of a consistent 3D world and a full length movie of a consistent 3D world with subtle facial expressions is freaking huge.

So... next 12 months then.

>If you want to be able to make a living off it, you're suddenly going to be in a very, very flooded market.

That is, I believe, GPs point.

Considering a year ago we had that nightmare fuel of will smith eating spaghetti and Don and Joe hair force one it seems odd to see those of you who assume we’re not going to get to the point of being indistinguishable from reality in the near future.

* Flesh out a movie about x following the Hero's Journey in the style of Notting Hill.

* Create a scene in which a character with the mannerisms of Tom Cruise from Top Gun goes into a bar and says "...."

We might enter a world where "actors" are just for mocap. They do the little micro expressions with a bunch of dots on their face.

AI models add the actual character and maybe even voice.

At that point the amount of actors we "need" will go down drastically. The same experienced group of a dozen actors can do multiple movies a month if needed.

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