This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Sam Altman just loves to be a sociopath and then brag about it. His latest?
https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666
"Her".
In case you've been living under a rock, this is in reference to the 2013 movie in which Scarlett Johansson plays the voice of an AI girlfriend. And it's also a reference to Open AI's new product, Chat GPT 4o, whose voice sounds just like... you guessed it, Scarlett Johansson.
This is no mistake. Open AI actually approached Ms. Johansson and asked her permission to use her voice. When she said no, they said fuck it and did it anyway.
https://x.com/BobbyAllyn/status/1792679435701014908
If Elon Musk is chaotic neutral, Sam Altman is increasingly proving himself to be lawful evil. It's not a good look.
Does this really sound that much like Scarlett Johansson? Even after Sama made that tweet this still didn’t occur to me. It just sounded like a generic, friendly female voice to me, and I think the “Her” tweet was just a reference to the plot of the movie, not the voice.
This whole kerfuffle seems annoying, and also seems like Scarlett Johansson reaching for a way to include herself.
They offered her a job, she refused, and then they got somebody else to do the same thing. Now she’s mad. This is not interesting.
Maybe the angle here is that since AI duplications are so easy and good now that we’ll enter a sort of guilty until proven innocent phase where everybody assumes they are more important than they might actually be.
No the company is not “deep faking” you, you just aren’t actually unique.
It occurred to everyone else on the internet (including me but I was primed). If a ton of people hear ScarJo and then it turns out they literally offered the job to Johansson, I'm inclined to believe she's reasonable in thinking there was something there.
Almost no one is. Amber Heard had a body double do the sex scenes for a movie, I guess you could say that that makes her not unique - people could get their titillation from someone else with the same body.
But I don't think it's delusions of grandeur to think that part of the value (in this case the titillation) in such a scene is specifically that it's Heard. There's a reason they took the legal risk of doing this. Which is why stars negotiate for the right to control even fake nudity - it can have an impact on their image. Some people just are more important than others, or they wouldn't be speaking to Sam Altman and basically being offered an ambassador role in one of the hottest AI companies.
Johansson wouldn't be unreasonable imo in thinking the appeal has something to do with her. Whether or not she has a legal right is another thing.
I’m not disputing that it could sound like her, and I think if I had been primed to it like you, I might have made the connection as well.
My point is that SJ is not a voice actor, and isn’t doing a specific “character” or something the way that Fran Drescher or Gilbert Gotfried are.
Her voice is generic. It’s why there aren’t SJ impersonators the way there are for Donald Trump, for instance, who has a very distinct way of speaking. Searching for a SJ voice impersonator returns 0 results for me on YouTube at least.
And by the way I say this as somebody who likes a lot of the movies she has been in and sought them out. Girl With the Pearl Earring, The Island, Her, Lost in Translation; these were all movies I loved and largely sought out because she was in them. She wasn’t being hired for her voice.
Really? She was hired for the movie Her because of her voice. She came in to replace another actress (Samantha Morton) because her voice didn't work. SJ might not be primarily a voice actor, but her voice is distinctive enough to be considered an upgrade from Morton's voice.
Sydney Sweeney is getting a lot of work right now.
If Elon decides that Grok needs to have a visual avatar, and wants to hire SS to model for it (because she is very attractive), but she declines, and he goes with a different blonde woman with enormous...eyes...should SS be able to sue for this?
In your case, the replacement would at lease be a different real life human being with their own body. If Elon instead made a digital avatar based off of SS's body cast, should she have the right to sue?
Yes. But that is not what OpenAI did. They hired a completely different real human being a trained an AI model on her voice.
I might stand corrected. I thought the whole problem was that they trained the AI on ScarJo's voice
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link