So when they say that we’re cooked because of artificial intelligence… they’re right. We’re cooked.
For a long time people believed we were in a slow boil. But we’re not. The pot’s been on long enough that we haven’t even recognized the fact that maybe a lot of things we thought were here for good are gone forever.
Let’s talk Hollywood for a moment. Let’s talk one of our favorite movies: The Truman Show.
If you remember as fondly as I do, Truman Burbank was a prisoner of a corporation that monitored his every movement and televised his life to the world. The film was cutting edge and asked deep questions back in the late ’90s, questions that are still painfully relatable today.
For those who loved the movie like we did, we always wondered: what happened to Truman after he left his hell? After he opened the door and escaped through that blue sky patch?
Well, thanks to a TikTok account using artificial intelligence, we can now find out, at least according to this individual’s imagined continuation.
Watching this AI-generated video of Truman Burbank finding freedom .. but at the same time finding a brand-new prison .. is deep on several levels.
On one level, it’s cool. It’s almost like watching deleted scenes or an alternate ending that was never created. But on another level, despite the fact that the AI is still a bit devoid of emotional depth and vocal fluctuation, it’s about as close to a realistic scene as you can get.
This is what scares Hollywood and actors so much is the fact that anyone in their living room can now do this.
If they don’t like a movie, they can create a new one. If they didn’t like the ending, they can come up with a better one. We saw that happen after Stranger Things when people disliked Season 5 so much that they began creating elaborate alternate endings of how they wanted the show to wrap up.
But back to Truman for a moment.
The precision here is breathtaking. We all knew the six fingers and warped faces of yesteryear were gone, but now we’re at a point where it’s almost indecipherable between reality and AI — and this video shows it. The voice inflections, even the monotone delivery, will get better over time.
We’re still in the infancy of this.
And if this is infancy… what do the teenage and adult years look like?
On another level — and we’re only half joking here — it’s interesting to wonder how much water was used to create this video. It takes a lot of energy and resources, and this one is pretty long. That probably means a whole lot of gallons went into bringing Truman back to life.
But take it a step further.
Whoever came up with the storyline deserves credit. We can absolutely envision that this is what Truman’s life might look like after he escaped. It feels almost inevitable that someone in his situation would remain a prisoner to society — people continuously watching him on their screens and convincing themselves his life is better than theirs, despite the fact that, as we can see, it’s not.
So I recommend watching the video we posted here that links to the TikTok account. They used Seedance 2.0 to create what we’re seeing.
It’s scary.
And we have some choices to make — not in the future, but right now. The choices are staring us directly in the face.
Last week I read a Fortune article that talked about how, within 18 months, most white-collar jobs could be fully automatable — with people no longer needed in them.
That’s fine and dandy.
All the Super Bowl ads reminded us that we can go gambling, take Ozempic, and apparently never work again thanks to AI. But at some point — at some level — we have to ask ourselves: if we stop making money in jobs, how exactly are we going to pay for the AI that’s supposed to make our lives easier?
Choices. Lots of choices.
And just like Truman, who made a choice to escape a world he believed was a prison — only to potentially enter another one — are we doing the same thing with artificial intelligence?
