IF DROIDS COULD THINK: George Lucas on AI #SWPD2024

[00:00:00] Joshua: Hello, and welcome to Trash Compactor. I'm Josh, and today we're going to be talking about AI and its impact on art and creativity, and more specifically, trying to answer a question that I've been obsessed with: what does George Lucas think of generative AI? And since George hasn't been returning my calls, I'm going to do the next best thing.

I want to welcome my guests, John.

[00:00:23] JOHN: Hey there.

[00:00:25] Joshua: And Bracey.

[00:00:26] BRACEY: Hi, how's it going?

[00:00:28] Joshua: as everyone probably knows, George Lucas is well known as being a big embracer of new technology, specifically in the creative field of filmmaking. He's done more to bring digital technology to filmmaking than anyone else in the world, to the point where some people actually, like, blame him for it.

[00:00:43] Joshua: They kind of lay it at his feet. Um, So, on the one hand, you think he'd be a natural supporter of a new technology, , like generative AI, and when I say generative AI, I mean things like ChatGPT and MidJourney and those prompt apps that can, like, generate a script or an image or even moving [00:01:00] images

[00:01:00] Joshua: based on you simply telling it what you want, And so Yeah, I'm just fascinated with what George Lucas thinks of all this.

[00:01:07] Joshua: John, I'm wondering if you have any, any thoughts.

[00:01:11] JOHN: Yeah, that's such, it's such an interesting question because, as you just said, he's sort of the forerunner of so many of these technologies and a

[00:01:18] JOHN: big proponent of using whatever new, uh, uh, tech comes along to create a brand new image. Uh, and there's a lot of controversy, you know, around that in Episodes 1, 2, and 3 and some of the ways it was used and they really pushed, uh, pushed that forward.

[00:01:34] JOHN: So it's like trying to get Into that mindset, I think in general, he would be in favor of its use as far as it extends out his vision. Because my impression has always been that George Lucas had a vision, um, that he wanted to explore and then share. Um, and it changed at different points, it manifested a little bit differently at different points, [00:02:00] but that there was something he wanted to be like, this is a cool idea I have, this is what I'm going to put out there.

[00:02:05] JOHN: And as far as the tech goes, if it was doing that It would be awesome and amazing. It would be, it'd be something to use. And I, I, I, what I think is he might have a question about generative AI as to where the line is on where it would be his vision coming out, and where it would just be some other, you know, part of the algorithm, the black box that is generative AI creating it for him.

[00:02:30] JOHN: You know, we sort of know through a lot of the stories that there were, you know, there were different, influences in the original Star Wars movies from different, you know, different directors, different writers shaping it. And by the time you get to episodes one, two, and three, he wanted complete control.

[00:02:45] JOHN: He wanted everything under his own creative, you know, aegis. And so I don't think he'd tolerate an AI that was sort of doing the job for him of saying, Oh, you don't want this to be about Jedi. You want it to be about this. I don't think [00:03:00] that's where he would go with it, but maybe to see From the visual effects standpoint, how far he could push certain limits, as long as they were within what he wanted, or perceived it as creating something as he wanted.

[00:03:11] JOHN: As far as something like Chatt GPT being a co writer, I don't think he'd want that. Um, that would definitely not from What I got from the episodes one through three experience was it was this is his entire Project and it was written and where some of the criticisms come from too. So I think that visual effects Yes, the writing I think would be a little more dubious And I don't know where he would establish the line of where is it the artist's vision and where is the AI really?

[00:03:43] JOHN: Uh, uh, going off on its own for that. Um, and that's the big question we're all going to be asking, um, writers, directors, art directors. Anybody's going to have to be asking that question themselves, because I've done it myself. I'm like, go to Midjourney, type something in, and I may have prompted it, but it goes off on a [00:04:00] completely different tangent I didn't expect, and maybe that inspires me, but how much of it is really me then?

[00:04:04] JOHN: And if you really want control, you may object to that. So I think he would be sort of down the middle, but if it can really Yeah, summarized, if it can bring what he wants to life, he would go for it.

[00:04:15] Joshua: That sounds right to me. Bracey, what do you think?

[00:04:18] BRACEY: Yeah, yeah, I, I largely agree with, uh, everything, uh, John just said. I, I, I completely, like, the thing that stands out to me is, uh, Uh, kind of something that he said back in Star Wars to Jedi and usually it was used like for the trailer for that where it's like a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

[00:04:37] BRACEY: And like that always kind of shaped who George Lucas was to me. He really cares about the story and he really like enjoys the fixings that tell that story, but uh, as long as it's in service to the story. So I feel like, yeah, he wouldn't give control. Over to an AI to tell the, the main, the main story that he's saying, like he wants to, he wants to [00:05:00] tell the main vision.

[00:05:01] BRACEY: However, I feel like as he likes to create just these sprawling universes, um, I feel like he wouldn't have a problem being like, alright, Uh, what is this alien race? What is their backstory? Where are they from? This is like, uh, uh, this is who they're next to. What is their relationship? What is their hit?

[00:05:21] BRACEY: Like, all the things that would really just kind of enrich the entire, uh, uh, universe, the galaxy, or the story that he's trying to tell. Um, uh, so he can kind of go in and, and see this world kind of grow and then be like, oh yeah, this is perfect for that, uh, that thread that I had, and this is great for that thread.

[00:05:40] BRACEY: And I feel like that's, how we're going to see creatives start to use these capabilities, these, uh, these AI, it's just like being able to really bring their idea to a higher. sense of, um, not necessarily realism, but just kind of really just bringing it to life, [00:06:00] bringing these, uh, these worlds that they want to basically live in, uh, to life and get immersed in.

[00:06:06] BRACEY: And I think that's going to be really, really interesting. And I'm, I'm dying to hear, uh, what he has to say. Uh, so, uh, I just wanted to say to this because like, yeah, I, I feel like it's probably what we all think. And we just kind of want some validation. I guess is really what it's going down to. We just really want to, it's like, do we know you the way we think we know you?

[00:06:24] BRACEY: Um, uh, cause you're, yeah, you're all, he's always on the tech front side. He's always pushing the tech, but it's always been at Uh, in service to what he's wanted to say.

[00:06:36] Joshua: Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, hearing you describe that use case, it sounds like how he uses the art department. He would have some vague ideas, he would throw it to the art department and just see what they came up with and he would show up, you know, once a week and he'd be like, I like that, I want the head from that on the body of this, I like that silhouette of that ship, but I want you to change this.

[00:06:58] Joshua: So, you know, it [00:07:00] sounds like the process that he utilizes already. It's just, you're sort of replacing the human artists with AI, which is where I think a lot of the Sturm and Drang comes from in the creative community. Here's the interesting thing about George Lucas for me, is that there's a duality there, because on the one hand, He's an early adopter and a pioneer in terms of technology, but he uses all of that to tell very humanist stories and, you know, Star Wars, I think, romanticizes romanticizes technology while being suspicious of it I think that's embodied in Darth Vader where his half machine, Status is sort of part of his monstrosity, and the way that they, talk about it, how, you know, he's more machine now than man, twisted and evil, and, famously, in A New Hope, Luke is the only one who's capable of destroying the Death Star because he figures out he has to shut off his computer and trust his instincts and the Force.

[00:07:55] Joshua: THX 1138 is all about our relationship to machines and, how we're, [00:08:00] in danger of being enslaved. By our technology, and I think, he's clearly very fascinated by humans relationship to machines, but I think for him, generative AI taking over or replacing human creativity, I think may be a step too far for him, now again, where that line actually is, is sort of the question that we're all grappling with. There was an interview that I just happened to watch with him recently from actually. Almost a decade ago now with Charlie Rose, and at one point, Charlie Rose asked him why he's such an innovator, and George Lucas said, quote, quote, Because I had a story to tell, there's a gap between what is possible and where my vision is, and I've had to fill that gap, which is what anybody does, you don't invent technology and then figure out what to do with it, you come up with an artistic problem, and then you have to invent the technology in order to accomplish it, so it's the opposite of what most people think it is, and any artist will tell you that. And art, on all levels, is just technology, which is why people say, well, monkeys can do paintings.

[00:08:59] Joshua: Well, they [00:09:00] can't, really. They can do scribbling. Like what my two year old does, but if you want to say, I want to convey an emotion to another human being, that's something only human beings can do. You have to be a human being.

[00:09:13] BRACEY: That was a fantastic quote you found, because I feel like it, I mean, not only did it make me feel like, uh, you already vindicated, uh, our, our perspectives just from that one quote, but, um, it's also a little bit more interesting insight, uh, into how he views the relationship between art and, and technology.

[00:09:31] BRACEY: I would say though, I, I, I feel like maybe there would be a difference between old George Lucas, George Lucas, ah, George Lucas, can't say his name today, um, old George Lucas and, uh, uh, new George, well, current George Lucas, um, older, uh, older meaning in age and then, uh, uh, uh, younger. Um, the different perspective on technology and also just like what story he would want to tell.

[00:09:57] BRACEY: I feel like the current George [00:10:00] Lucas would just, uh, uh, be more concerned about telling a story in the current medium of movies. And I feel like, uh, uh, the younger George Lucas would be like, wait, well now, you know, I'm going to update what my vision is because what's possible now is something closer to the holodeck, something closer to experiencing, um, a fully immersive story.

[00:10:23] BRACEY: And, uh, being able to, like, really kind of just dive into a world and a perspective that he really wants to communicate, and I feel like that would drive him to use, uh, the technology, not just to get, uh, uh, uh, his current story across

[00:10:41] BRACEY: in the current medium, he would use that, uh, to drive it forward. Like forward in a bigger, a bigger idea.

[00:10:48] BRACEY: And that's, I mean, obviously that's speculation. That's, that's the whole point of this. But I, I feel like that's how old George, George Lucas would, uh, would approach this, this technology.

[00:10:58] JOHN: think that brings up an interesting point because [00:11:00] you bring up like, just the word holodeck, of course, from Star Trek, but you know, the, the idea of whatever the medium is, if

[00:11:06] JOHN: it's gonna be the next generation, AI is this very blurry definition, because in many cases when people talk about AI, what they're really just talking about is massive computing power to execute complex tasks.

[00:11:19] JOHN: Um, and to clarify, at no point are we actually talking about, uh, general AI, which we're not at yet. That, you know, that's OpenAI's stated goals, general intelligence. These are large language models or just massively powerful computers. So with a holodeck, what I imagine is you put the input and you say, okay, I want this world.

[00:11:36] JOHN: You can give it artistic renditions of the world you want it to be. The human effort to render that world and do in a way that would be, you know, flawlessly three dimensional and completely interactive to an audience member. You know, who's now experiencing it, not in a movie theater, but let's say a holodeck.

[00:11:54] JOHN: That requires a huge amount of computing power and effectively a massive AI, [00:12:00] because you're literally creating a world. And you're not going to have a set of humans there to be like, wait, should that rock be there? Or should it be there? Now, the director may make changes like that after the fact, but you're not going to put that level of detail in because you don't know where the audience member is going to go.

[00:12:14] JOHN: Are they going to go left? Are they going to go right? So there is a huge amount of room for Enormous computing power in a scenario like that. Bringing it back to movies, you have a giant fleet battle. All the TIE fighters, all the Star Destroyers, the Rebel fleets. You can take it to such an extra level and even allow the audience maybe to sort of like zoom in or see detail that you wouldn't have otherwise gotten.

[00:12:36] JOHN: Like, what does it mean when, you know, Not Red Squadron, but Yellow Squadron goes in from a different angle, and they're also assaulting. Like, you might get things that you couldn't otherwise get because now you have the computing power and the creative behind it can set the parameters. That could be really cool, but when it takes on a life of its own, it starts changing.

[00:12:56] JOHN: The very vision you have, you know, and people are going to do that. [00:13:00] People are going to do that in Hollywood because they're going to be told to do that by their bosses. You know, just crank one out there. Get, get a movie made, put the basic parameters in, it's going to be in space, there'll be a battle, blah, blah, blah, and you'll have a movie.

[00:13:10] JOHN: It'll probably be quite generic. Um, and Lucas's The furthest from that. He's very hands on in terms of the vision that he wants to manifest there. So yeah, a lot, a lot of computing power can be used, a lot of things, but what's, what's that line? And, and it's sort of unrelated directly to AI, but I, but I sort of would see somebody like that as a director pushing back on AI is, um, An AI isn't gonna, isn't going to do what a human being does in terms of collaboration, at least not yet.

[00:13:42] JOHN: And especially if you're, not if you're giving it the parameters. If you have an AI in front of you and you're saying to it, I want this, and it's yours. This isn't another independent human there. The AI is not gonna push back on you. It may randomly feed something back to you that inspires you, but it's not gonna give you something different.

[00:13:58] JOHN: An AI might take [00:14:00] something in a direction you didn't expect, but it's not gonna push back in the same way.

[00:14:04] JOHN: It's not gonna bring you something and really be able to argue it from another human perspective. and understand power dynamics in the institution that is Hollywood. So I can definitely see somebody else just sort of in a director's chair with an AI in front of them, creating only what they want, getting no pushback.

[00:14:22] JOHN: And then at the end being themselves very dissatisfied because it wasn't enough. You need those other humans to interact with, to bounce off of, and to occasionally tell you, hey, what about this? What about something completely different? And yeah, maybe one day we'll have general intelligence AI, and that will be serving that role, but we're not, we're not there yet.

[00:14:42] JOHN: This is just really in the service of us, and the models we have are really for extending what you want. And that's where I can sort of see the two roads. Lucas would like the control, I think, um, but might be unsatisfied with the results of it. Uh, but I love the idea of it backfilling [00:15:00] certain things that you wouldn't want to do or have the time to do.

[00:15:04] Joshua: Well, that's interesting, though, because arguably, what you just described was kind of Lucas's experience making the prequel trilogy. And obviously, I wasn't there in the room. but by all accounts, it was, less of that pushback that he maybe had, 20 years earlier when he was making the original trilogy.

[00:15:21] Joshua: By this point, working for him, you were working for a legend. So, the power dynamics there were very different. I found another quote from an interview with him on StarWars. com from 2019. quote, I'm not sure where my embrace of technology comes from. All art is technology. Film or the movies were the highest point of technology in the art world. You just had to learn a lot and there's a lot of technical things to deal with.

[00:15:45] Joshua: So that wasn't the issue as much as it was the fact that I didn't mind change. And I didn't mind change because I actually physically worked in it. I worked as an editor, I worked as a cameraman, and I know how difficult it was just working in the medium where you have little splices of film, you can't find them, [00:16:00] when you go to look for something you have to go through reels and reels of film, it takes a long time and it's very frustrating on lots of levels.

[00:16:05] Joshua: Just the whole idea that back in the Kodak days you'd shoot the film, and then you have to send it to the drugstore to get it processed and then bring it back to see what you have is slow and frustrating. And the whole thing was built on that, whereas if you do it electronically, digitally, you can see what you're doing as you're doing it, so you know exactly what you're doing.

[00:16:20] Joshua: You know, hearing him describe that, I think a lot of it, when it comes to technology for George Lucas, is enabling the doing, enabling the process of creative process, I don't know that he would be satisfied with, replacing that process, or even part of that process, with like, a black box where you don't know where the output is coming from.

[00:16:43] Joshua: So, on the one hand, you know George Lucas is not sentimental about the way things have been done for the sake of, preservation or, whatever, but on the other hand, it is all in service of something that I think he views as very human, and I'm gonna use the [00:17:00] word sacred. I think for him it's something foundational, fundamental to the human

[00:17:05] BRACEY: It makes me feel like he, he doesn't realize he's drawing a line while erasing it with his elbow. Cause like, he's like at the same time, like, you know, like he, he does care about the, the, uh, what has been, but in his rush to tell what he is, Uh, he wants to say he is pushing towards this new future and ultimately just obliterating the way everything was done.

[00:17:27] BRACEY: And he doesn't, it doesn't seem like he really knows how to, uh, to really, um, uh, fit those two elements together. Uh, uh, but I did want to, I did want to say something because, uh, uh, that second quote Uh, really spoke to me and I also wanted to, uh, uh, to use that to push back a little bit on something that, uh, uh, uh, John had mentioned.

[00:17:45] BRACEY: The ability of AI, I think ultimately as a tool, um, which is, I, I am a, I got it. Honestly, I'm kind of on the fence of how I feel about, like, stepping into this new era, looking at AI as a [00:18:00] tool, knowing where it's going, that it's like, maybe that's setting us up for a bad trend of looking at AI as a tool.

[00:18:07] BRACEY: However, um, uh, working in the field a bit, like, I've recognized that it is something that you could actually Set the parameters. And it basically, you could look at it as a, as a medium, just as much as anything else and how you're going to work with that medium will have a very different outcome. So if you did just like use it as like your, yes, men are like, I want AI.

[00:18:31] BRACEY: Yes, men are, then you're absolutely right. The output that you're going to get is something that you're probably as a creative, not going to be very happy with. When you realize that it is the process, however, I think the people who are going to excel are going to recognize that the parameters of the AI, of the, um, the personalities that you could generate, uh, are, are tweakable, and, and you could create AI that gives you pushback actually quite easily, building it into, like, how you respond, how it [00:19:00] responds to certain prompts, and, uh, ultimately, if you're giving it a guide as, like, maybe, um, Uh, a type of movie guide or things like that.

[00:19:09] BRACEY: It's like, this is your, this is your stone. Like you stay, you stay attached to this. And if I'm trying to push an idea, you always come back to this, uh, this touch point

[00:19:19] BRACEY: and, and argue from that point. And I feel like we're going to really see some interesting creatives

[00:19:23] BRACEY: come out in this era where they are able to like really look at AI as a medium, as a tool in a way that they, they can manipulate in a way that like.

[00:19:33] BRACEY: It helps them push beyond themselves.

[00:19:37] JOHN: a, that's a really, really interesting notion because you just said like, the parameters of the AI. And if you are, if you are inherently looking for yes men, uh, you will create those as your

[00:19:47] JOHN: parameters, and the result

[00:19:48] JOHN: will very much be that be the result of yes men. If you do tweak it, I'm thinking, you know, there's so many different genres, I'm thinking of, okay, well, you got, uh, both in fictional, you have Tony Stark and Jeeves, you know, uh, an AI that sort of does [00:20:00] push back, or, or can even be sarcastic, um, uh, what was the movie with Joaquin Phoenix, Her, and Scarlett Johansson, you know, where the AI, you know, sort of the merging of the two, and, It, while it has its own sort of, it does develop more awareness, it's more than generative AI, um, it was designed within certain parameters, but those parameters will, were designed to push in a certain direction, a romantic direction, a supportive direction, uh, a few different things.

[00:20:29] JOHN: So you sort of get what you expected, laying out those, those, uh, uh, uh, parameters in the first place. So maybe, maybe the, uh, the, the second subtext question would be anticipating that he probably would use AI. To some degree or another, were he to get back into filmmaking. Um, what would the parameters be of the AI that you set if you're using it as a tool?

[00:20:51] JOHN: And I think he would view it as a tool because I'm thinking just of the creative vision of Star Wars. The droids. The droids are artificially intelligent. [00:21:00] Literally. Um, C 3PO is a metal constructed being, uh, with circuits and parts, and has a computer inside him. So, it's very 1970s in its original concept, but C 3PO is an AI of a sort, you know?

[00:21:16] JOHN: Self aware, so it's arguably generally a general AI, but clearly the droids all have very specific parameters. Assassin droids, protocol droids, you know, every droid has its set parameters and they operate within those. Um, and I imagine that in the Star Wars universe, they've sort of been through a lot of iterations of problems with their droids.

[00:21:39] JOHN: And even the prequel series is, you know, that's the Clone Wars are fighting against. Droids, um, that are programmed for war, but they're also a little bit out of control. And what is that all about? So I think he's wrestled with that question, but has very much limited the idea of AI to having parameters.

[00:21:56] JOHN: I think the question takes a totally [00:22:00] different turn that goes, you know, You know, into the almost mind boggling, what happens when AI is self aware? What happens when it is generally intelligent? And then are you dealing with a, effectively a hyper advanced human being or something that's beyond human beings and you're just asking them to be like, hey, can you do this thing for me?

[00:22:18] JOHN: And, you know, we'll collaborate on creating it and then maybe the AI will disagree or not want to do it with you. You know, imagine the AI that says, yeah, I don't like your vision, I'm not working with you. You know, you, that's going to

[00:22:29] BRACEY: gonna happen.

[00:22:30] JOHN: Yeah, it's gonna happen. So, you know, there's gonna be some rejection out there.

[00:22:33] JOHN: Um, so all these different levels of AI and where it's gonna go, I almost envy the position he's in to sort of be able to be emeritus from a lot of this, and, and look at it and maybe, have fun around the edges. I imagine, The other person I would actually ask about that too would be, because it is contemporary James Cameron, you know, does many of the same things for the idea of like, has a vision, pushes the technology forward.

[00:22:57] JOHN: It's not arbitrary technology development, it is, [00:23:00] I want to show people how water Operates in the Abyss, I Want to Recreate the Titanic, I Want to Show the World, and then we're in 3D in Avatar. So, you see that as more because Lucas hasn't been doing as many modern movies, you saw that progression up until recently a little clearer.

[00:23:15] JOHN: You know, the prequels are where we sort of get the end of Lucas's major journey. But that was, push, technology to its limits. As you said, no sentimentality about losing it. And the fans had a real divided vision about that, because he didn't understand why there was such a weird feeling about what we saw in the prequel, the ships, the fighters.

[00:23:37] JOHN: And on one side, it was because, well, this is before, so isn't, isn't it supposed to look a little bit older and more classic and maybe jankier or something? And to him, it was like, well, no, things come and go up and down, but also. That was my vision based on 1970s technology. We are now in the 1990s and the early 2000s.

[00:23:54] JOHN: I can do so much more. So just sort of forget about that. That was cool. And I, I always got the sense he never [00:24:00] understood the fan's attachment to the classic design and bringing, and wanting to bring that back. So when Disney takes over the movies, they bring back all of that vintage.

[00:24:12] JOHN: special effect. And to him, it was just like, why? Why are you doing that? Like, it did not compute to him. So that's why the question may be something that's a little bit beyond even our understanding because I'm on the side of, yeah, I really liked that vintage design, and would have liked to see that sort of taken backwards in the prequels.

[00:24:32] JOHN: But now I understand that in his mind, there was always so much more. And just hearing about the Clone Wars in episode four, as a reference, even if it wasn't fleshed out yet in his own mind, there was still the genesis of the idea that was far more epic and, and grand than anything that could have been done with the technology of that era.

[00:24:52] JOHN: You know, what were these Clone Wars gonna, gonna look like? And he had a lot of that available to him in the early 2000s, so why wouldn't he take [00:25:00] AI to push it to the next level if it could bring out more of that?

[00:25:04] Joshua: John, you know, you invoke the Clone Wars and the prequels it's another way, the movies are very conflicted about this also, because on the one hand, you have R2 D2 and C 3PO who are two of the most lovable, quote unquote, human characters in the entire saga, and yet, as you pointed out, the whole conflict of the Clone Wars is all about this, uh, battle between droids and, at least in George Lucas conception, superior flesh and blood thinking clones. Droids are ultimately not as good creative thinkers as human minds are

[00:25:37] Joshua: I mean, Obi Wan has a line in episode two. you know, if droids could think, then there would be none of us, would there? So it's like, you know, the movie is,

[00:25:47] Joshua: very much looking at things through this humanist lens, yet at the same time, some of the most human, lovable characters are those two droids.

[00:25:56] Joshua: And so it's just kind of like, well, are they alive or aren't they?[00:26:00] how are we supposed to

[00:26:00] BRACEY: Yeah.

[00:26:01] BRACEY: And that, and that war kind of also is like a smokescreen to like the, uh, the, the real story, which is like the, the battle between good and evil that is like going on in the background that you, you, you can't see. Which I think is also kind of an interesting thing to have, like the main set stages are actually the, the, that's not what's really important.

[00:26:21] BRACEY: They're the thing that's obfuscating the, the real, uh, the real human story in the background. yeah, I just thought it was interesting. I also really love, I love how John kind of like the, the idea of how he had this aesthetic for Star Wars that we fell in love with it. But it was like for him, it was like a scale model.

[00:26:40] BRACEY: And he was like, no, don't, don't fall in love with that. Like, what are you doing? No, no, no, this is

[00:26:43] BRACEY: just, This is just to get the other idea across,

[00:26:45] BRACEY: you know, like, we're supposed to go here. And everyone's like, no, what happened next? In the, like, with a scale model. Um, it's just, it's just, it's funny to me how, uh, how that kind of plays in my head.

[00:26:56] JOHN: love that because it's, it's the difference between how the artist does [00:27:00] something to how the audience receives it. You know, and that that eternal, battle between the creator And the viewer is that you'll never quite see what the creator intended, but the creator also won't

[00:27:11] JOHN: communicate exactly what they want to the person who's experiencing it.

[00:27:15] JOHN: And this is just like writ large, it's like, oh, wow, we're on a totally different page now. and with Lucas and, and his, you know, real interest in film as a medium, I think missed one concept behind it, which is that the human being, experiencing film sort of imprints it onto themselves based on where they are in their life, how old they are, what appeals to them, and it creates a sentimentality as a result.

[00:27:41] JOHN: And that sentimentality will carry forward within that genre and certainly within a an actual franchise. Um, I don't think he ever thought from a That perspective for him it was just, but I can do more, I can, I can get it further. And that's why, like you, I think I'd be fascinated to see what these alternate [00:28:00] episodes seven through nine would have been.

[00:28:01] JOHN: But I would have had to go in and being like, yeah, but this isn't going to be Star Wars that I know. Um. It's going to be something sort of way out there, and it might be amazing and good, but I gotta, I gotta take my expectations out of it. Disney played the game of, we're going to lean so hard into the sentimentality of it, into going right back to what everybody knows, so much so that they almost made one for one remakes in some ways.

[00:28:26] JOHN: You know, the episode seven is almost like a, uh, A parallel movie to Episode 4, and that's not what I think Lucas would do in any new movie he would make, um, or anything. And that's where, again, AI comes in. Maybe he doesn't even get AI, because going back to like how androids were conceived of, it sounds very much like other sci fi writers, uh, and creators of that era.

[00:28:48] JOHN: You know, mid to late 20th century era, which is that AI is possible, but it's conceptualized from that era, and it's seen as very suspicious. I mean, [00:29:00] look at, like, Frank Herbert and Dune. You have the reference to the history that, oh yeah, we had to fight AI and get rid of all of it.

[00:29:07] JOHN: So now we don't even have computers. We have humans as computers. Star Wars has the clones versus the droids. That idea that flesh is superior. Um, and ultimately that's not gonna be the case. You know, depending on where this goes or how soon, but that's sort of where he comes from.

[00:29:24] JOHN: So I think that in terms of storytelling, we wouldn't see a story that would be like AI is what takes over. But as a tool, where, where does it not end up ruining the story? Where does it end up manifesting the vision you want? But I don't think he would tell that story that it's, that's just an AI central computer controlling everything and that's what it's all about because Star Wars is fundamentally spiritual. Like that is its basis. And even if it's not what we think of as spiritual. I mean, there's literally the influence of Joseph Campbell on it. And that's not a story that really gets easily told just by an AI.

[00:29:59] JOHN: Because you're looking [00:30:00] for the human experience in that. You know, the hero's journey is not just created because it's a cool thing to say. It's because it's something relatable. You know, it's something that we sort of see in our myths going back. It's something built into us.

[00:30:12] JOHN: So an AI could take advantage of that in terms of designing a story, but it's not coming from that lived experience, so yeah, I don't know where that line is, and I think, I think the question comes down to also where do you see it in terms of writing and where do you see it in terms of special effects, because as far as I know, the technology didn't change very much in terms of writing Star Wars, you know, it moved from typewriters to word processors to computers.

[00:30:42] JOHN: But that wasn't a radical change, it was just about efficiency, you know, on the margins. Now we can actually write things completely with an AI assistant. And that's something that was never ever available, or really even conceived of, in terms of writing. And I'll, you know, quickly [00:31:00] wrap that up with my own confession of, I've been afraid to use it myself in Dungeons and Dragons. So, I'm very tempted. I've used it a few times to generate names and things, but I feel like I would be too tempted to rely on it to tell a story that, well, I don't feel like coming up to the answer to the question that this player just asked that I had no idea they were going to ask. And it's completely out of left field.

[00:31:28] JOHN: So I'll just have ChatGPT come up with a result for me. A lot of DMs do that, because if you're doing a lot of things on the fly and you're pressed for time, that could be really cool. But I'm, I'm personally a little afraid of that. And I think asking the writer versus the, the special effects George Lucas, I want to know what the writer George Lucas thinks about where that would play in terms of his writing.

[00:31:51] Joshua: In terms of George Lucas, the writer, I know that he wrote the prequels the same way he wrote the originals, with number two pencils on a yellow legal pad. So, like, for [00:32:00] him, the writing process was literally exactly the same, I mean, though, he did work with, co writers, I saw an interview with Johnathan Hales, who was the co writer of the script for Episode 2, and, they had this meeting, and Johnathan Hales said, he had the beginning and he had the end, and then my job was to work out all the other stuff that happened in between, which is like, the story, the movie. So, you know, in that sense, if he's willing to give another writer parameters, might he do the same thing with an AI?

[00:32:31] Joshua: I don't know, because, you know, here's my thing. Like, for me, maybe this is my lizard brain, and maybe this is something that I will have to get over, or something I'll never get over, but for me, there's still value to having it come from a human source.

[00:32:48] Joshua: And, like, I'm aware that that may make me, like, someone, who, only will listen to vinyl records or somebody who won't drive an automatic transmission, like it's, it's gotta be manual. [00:33:00] And that, you know, maybe makes me something of a dinosaur, um, I think a part of my curiosity about what George Lucas thinks about this is a part of my own process of grappling with these questions.

[00:33:10] JOHN: I don't think we're dinosaurs for wanting the human thing. The vinyl comparison, uh, always gets me, because that is now still, I mean, it came back and it's a billion dollar industry. Um, one billion dollar, but, you know, still, it, it, it does cross that mark. I think that there will be a huge market, regardless of how AI plays out, there'll be a huge market for Human created content.

[00:33:30] JOHN: Now, will it be the dominant market? No. But I, that's how I think of, Broadway theater people pay a lot of money to go see people perform in something that, and they say, well, but you have film. You have all these other technologies and genres that should completely obliterate it.

[00:33:44] JOHN: Now, are plays and musicals performed everywhere all the time? No, it's, it's, it's limited and it is more niche. But they'll always be a fundamental audience for a human thing being performed by humans. And there was such a humanity to George [00:34:00] Lucas's tales, even as the special effects advanced.

[00:34:06] JOHN: You know, that episodes one through three, fundamentally about human questions. So any further movie would be about That. it's still coming back to the human experience, so I, I, I really, I don't know what that would mean for, just, you know, letting an AI take over the writing, I, I, I don't see that as a, I don't see that as something he would really get behind, except as a little bit of a tool.

[00:34:32] BRACEY: I see one path. Uh, uh, that he might get behind, uh, AI taking on writing. And it's not too dissimilar from what Josh was saying with, uh, setting up the parameters for another writer to, like, fill in the gap between the beginning and the end. I feel like in the conversation with AI, we tend to think about, humans involvement within, the same scope line.

[00:34:55] BRACEY: Like, we're expecting humans to write the same length movie, or the [00:35:00] same length content. Uh, I think what we're What's hard for us to imagine is how the scale and scope of a project, of an idea, can completely balloon because now we have this means of actually extending our thought beyond something that's like a movie that's an hour and a half, To three hours, you know, like that.

[00:35:25] BRACEY: Or, I mean, before, back in the day, like, maybe a lot of TV shows, uh, like a narrative that would expand five seasons was impossible. And now it's like, you know, we do that all the time. And I feel like, something like AI will allow us to write something as intricate and on the scale of something as Game of Thrones, but like within a weekend. But we get to see a human kind of at a creative limit, and I'm kind of interested in what is the Lucas limit, like what is at limit creativity when you're like, all right, [00:36:00] you want to create a story and immerse somebody in it, like the medium is is its own limitation.

[00:36:07] BRACEY: Initially, movies, we thought like this was the medium, but now you, you get to take off all the, the training wheels. Like you can expand your imagination to

[00:36:16] BRACEY: my imagination: go. Like, you know, like to me, that's what, uh, we're starting to step into. And I'm really excited, to see like, what are humans at the limit?

[00:36:27] BRACEY: What is human creativity at, at the limit? Cause that's, that's what we're, we're touching on.

[00:36:32] JOHN: And I really hope that that remains where what it's about is what

[00:36:34] JOHN: is the human creativity at the limit? It doesn't become entirely outsourced to the AI.

[00:36:40] JOHN: That's where sort of

[00:36:41] JOHN: the the the capital imperative will be to do

[00:36:43] JOHN: that So

[00:36:45] BRACEY: It'll go there,

[00:36:46] JOHN: yeah

[00:36:46] BRACEY: It'll absolutely go there, too.

[00:36:48] JOHN: The room for the human part, and from the consumer, even going from the consumer model, the humans will want to do that, will want human stuff as well.

[00:36:56] JOHN: But yeah, what's that going to be? Basically, what I take away from that, that though, is that[00:37:00] we need to get George R. R. Martin an AI, so he'll

[00:37:03] JOHN: finish the books.

[00:37:04] Joshua: to

[00:37:05] BRACEY: Yes. Yes, we do. Ha ha ha.

[00:37:07] Joshua: you know, you're talking about writing something that's as intricate and as, in depth as, Game of Thrones and a weekend.

[00:37:14] Joshua: And it makes me think of this tweet that I saw, why would I bother to read something you couldn't be bothered to write?

[00:37:22] Joshua: I feel like it would be empty, calories in a way. I mean, there's no divining the intent or the message

[00:37:27] Joshua: here,

[00:37:28] JOHN: They would be empty, and I think we already see that with the way people, , experience art in general,

[00:37:34] JOHN: of any kind, is that there's the, there's the need to understand what the creator was doing, I mean, even when you're

[00:37:41] JOHN: reading a book, you're, you're, you're fascinated between like, well, why do they do this?

[00:37:44] JOHN: Why do they create this story? Uh, why do they make the character do this? You're not just interested in the black box of AI doing that. But the other part is there is the, uh, celebrity aspect to it too. Huge bit of marketing. And obviously Hollywood is well familiar with that is that, um, we love to get on the [00:38:00] bandwagon.

[00:38:00] JOHN: That's fundamentally part of the human interaction with it. So as far as humans consuming, uh, AI generated content, yeah, they're going to be like, well, why am I going to waste my time with that?

[00:38:10] JOHN: And the people who really understand marketing well are going to be like, yeah, we still got to create a personality and maybe it'll be a fake. It maybe they'll present an AI as a personality, but, um, there's just this huge need we have to connect with the creator. of our art. Um, and sometimes it gets sort of, you know, zeitgeisty.

[00:38:29] JOHN: We all like, oh, this is the era of this. This is the era of this person. Um, but we almost need that. And we've always, and we've always needed that. There's been no break, no exception to that rule. Every era has its defining artists and people begin to identify with that. Um, so AI dilutes that so much that I wonder that after its initial sort of burst onto the scene when it floods all of our content with stuff, uh, which we're seeing.

[00:38:54] JOHN: You see, I think the first area that you'll see impact will be things like romance novels. Uh, you'll see a billion of them made [00:39:00] and then as it, I think that will recede like a tide and people who, especially in that genre, will come back and say like, yeah, but I want the, I want the, you know, sort of author who creates that themselves.

[00:39:11] JOHN: Um, uh, I think of the personality obsession of Chuck Tingle and that whole weird environment. And that's where my mind started with this was you get this weird cult of personality around somebody. And we need that in art that we are experiencing. So I think there will be this burst of AI that floods us with,

[00:39:30] JOHN: yeah, a lot of generic content. but we're here, we're here literally asking this question because we want to know what George Lucas thinks. We're upset, we, we want to know what this person thinks about it. That's, that's, that's, that's the point of this whole thing, so yeah.

[00:39:44] BRACEY: very true. And everything you just, everything you both said is very valid. I just found myself thinking about the whole, the whole generative story a little differently because like I am, I am interested in what an [00:40:00] individual creator says, but it's also because I'm interested in like what is an individual.

[00:40:06] BRACEY: Yeah. Yeah. their perspective on the world, um, from, from their vantage point. And to me, to some extent, AI is the culmination of like multiple vantage points. It is, it is the world's brain or at least the world's brain that trained it, that ultimately that was the training data. And so to me, it represents A little bit more of a hive brain that will be refined over time that you can like really zero in to what kind of, uh, avenues of thought you want to really, uh, zero in on, but to me, it's less about just like, Oh, it's a machine cranking something out.

[00:40:47] BRACEY: And it's like, it really is reflecting us. And I find that fascinating and I really kind of want to see what we are like, really, we have this. Tool, machine, this [00:41:00] capability, this medium that is actually like pulling from our collective consciousness and creating in a way that we couldn't do it as an individual.

[00:41:09] BRACEY: Or if we did, we were just like so, so extracted in a way that like only a certain group of people could appreciate it. This is allowing us to like actually access mind. in areas that we could have never accessed it, from parts of the world that we would have never been able to access it, and, and,

[00:41:28] BRACEY: and, and from, uh, collections of people that we would have never even thought to uh,

[00:41:33] BRACEY: to get that perspective. So that's, you know, that, not that it,

[00:41:36] BRACEY: it's I'm not trying to, uh, uh, devaluate,

[00:41:40] BRACEY: uh, what you guys were saying. It's just like, from my perspective, it's a little different of how I look at what AI is writing.

[00:41:46] JOHN: it could definitely do that, especially with parameters. It's, it's current use, and this is, I'm trying to remember the, uh, the article I was listening to, uh, because I listen to a lot of articles, um, the other day was saying that, over the past 10, 15 years has [00:42:00] been a great flattening of

[00:42:00] JOHN: culture and and particularly the Western world, but, and especially the United States.

[00:42:05] JOHN: They were examining everything from music to movies and they predicted that AI was going to further that trend, that it's, it's a great compression to the mean. So you're not getting any outliers and people today listen to fewer genres of music, fewer. Offbeat artists and things like that, and that AI will, for a time, sort of, uh, uh, uh, accelerate that.

[00:42:27] JOHN: It could as easily, if the End user wanted to, it could pull out different things, um, as a result too. And I think we'll, I think we'll, we'll get there, but we're not going to have something like Star Wars, which was new and unique, unless there's the capability for that to, unless there's an audience that still wants things that are not necessarily an average of what they've already consumed.

[00:42:52] JOHN: And that's the, that's sort of the danger of AI in general, is that it, it just, You know, it compresses everything into something [00:43:00] that is a culmination of all knowledge, but it's also very sort of bland as a result. So how do you, how do you as a, as a writer or creator handle that? And how do we handle that, you know, on the, on the societal level?

[00:43:11] JOHN: I think that a good writer could really use AI to get certain things that they might not have gotten before. but that's going to be down the road. I think we're going to see a lot of generic content before that, because we always have generic content to battle on, on, you know, in all ages.

[00:43:25] JOHN: We've always had somebody comes out with Star Wars, and then what comes out next are all the iterative copycats of that.

[00:43:31] BRACEY: Space Pirates!

[00:43:32] JOHN: Yeah. You know, uh, and, and, and so, you know, I think AI is just going to massively accelerate that. So you wouldn't see somebody like Lucas be like, yeah, I just want to copy what all these other people did.

[00:43:42] JOHN: If, if AI is going to be used, I just imagine he would be like, this has to be something that is completely me. It would have to be something that allows for a unique vision to be shared.

[00:43:53] Joshua: Well, this, conversation I feel like could go on for ever and ever If either one of you knows how to get [00:44:00] in touch with George Lucas so that I could get this question in front of him, I would be very grateful.

[00:44:05] BRACEY: We should ask AI.

[00:44:07] Joshua: I did ask

[00:44:08] BRACEY: AI George Lucas. Oh no, you asked AI to be George Lucas and tell you what

[00:44:14] Joshua: Oh no, I didn't ask it to be George Lucas, I asked what, George Lucas would think. ChatGPT said, it had no way to know for sure. I asked Claude AI. And Claude AI said, It's difficult to definitively state what George Lucas would think about the use of generative AI in art and filmmaking, but here's my attempt at an informed perspective.

[00:44:31] Joshua: As an innovative filmmaker, he might be intrigued and excited by the new creative possibilities enabled by A. I., he pioneered visual effects and digital technology in film, so he likely appreciates technological innovation. However, he also values the human creative process. might have some skepticism or caution about over reliance on A.

[00:44:45] Joshua: I. tools versus human imagination and storytelling. Lucas has always emphasized mythic storytelling that connects to timeless human truths. He may feel that A. I. still has limitations in capturing the depth and nuance of human stories. As someone protective of his intellectual properties, he may have [00:45:00] concerns about AI generated content based on his films or characters without consent.

[00:45:03] Joshua: He is known for vigorously defending his IP rights. However, if the technology matured to assist pre production concept work like visual development, he might find that quite useful. And if it was demonstrably original, he might accept it as part of a new era in filmmaking.

[00:45:16] Joshua: Overall, he'd likely have a

[00:45:18] Joshua: nuanced perspective, intrigued by the possibilities, but also cognizant of the need for human vision, values, and meaning in the art we create and consume.

[00:45:26] Joshua: The future role of AI in storytelling would surely be debated from many angles. So, basically, that's our entire conversation right there.

[00:45:34] BRACEY: you didn't even have to listen to the

[00:45:35] JOHN: know, so you can, you can just use the end. But, that right there shows what Generative AI does at its best it very quickly synthesizes for you, and it does bring it down to the mean. So, so you're not getting a very,

[00:45:49] JOHN: exciting or necessarily, You know, something that gets inspired says, but wait, what about this thing that we really haven't thought of and makes weird references?

[00:45:56] JOHN: You know, you're not going to get that from the AI, but you get a quick, [00:46:00] succinct answer that is really close, like 95 percent overlap. Once you go through all the things we've said, and that's, that's kind of scary.

[00:46:08] BRACEY: Just saved somebody 30 minutes right there.

[00:46:10] Joshua: Oh, yeah, that's why I saved it for the end. so, but, there's something to be said for going through the exercise, like, going through the process. getting the right answer for the test versus training people how to think and like, my fear is that we're gonna see an over-reliance on getting that instantaneous human-like comprehensive answer and miss out on that opportunity to learn how to think.

[00:46:34] Joshua: the other thing that I'll say is, as John pointed out, we still don't actually know the answer to the question, because what we are actually interested in is the thoughts and perspectives of this one individual human person. So again, if anyone knows George Lucas, I just need to slip a post it note in front of him with this one, this one question, Um, any closing thoughts or have we pretty much covered it?

[00:46:57] JOHN: We've covered a lot.

[00:46:59] BRACEY: Yeah. [00:47:00] Like you said, there's, there's, there's always going to be something to say. I had so many thoughts as we were going through this and I was just like, well, we'll save that for another time.

[00:47:07] Joshua: All right. Well, in that case, if you liked what you heard, please follow trashcompod on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram transcripts of this episode and all our other episodes are available at trashcompod.com, and we will see you on the next one.

[00:47:21] ​