Alan Jeffries

We are launching a new app called Sora. This is a combination of a new model called Sora 2, and a new product that makes it easy to create, share, and view videos. This feels to many of us like the “ChatGPT for creativity” moment, and it feels fun and new. There is something great about making it really easy and fast to go from idea to result, and the new social dynamics that emerge. Creativity could be about to go through a Cambrian explosion, and along with it, the quality of art and entertainment can drastically increase. Even in the very early days of playing with Sora, it’s been striking to many of us how open the playing field suddenly feels. In particular, the ability to put yourself and your friends into a video—the team worked very hard on character consistency—with the cameo feature is something we have really enjoyed during testing, and is to many of us a surprisingly compelling new way to connect. We also feel some trepidation. Social media has had some good effects on the world, but it’s also had some bad ones. We are aware of how addictive a service like this could become, and we can imagine many ways it could be used for bullying. It is easy to imagine the degenerate case of AI video generation that ends up with us all being sucked into an RL-optimized slop feed. The team has put great care and thought into trying to figure out how to make a delightful product that doesn’t fall into that trap, and has come up with a number of promising ideas. We will experiment in the early days of the product with different approaches. In addition to the mitigations we have already put in place (which include things like mitigations to prevent someone from misusing someone’s likeness in deepfakes, safeguards for disturbing or illegal content, periodic checks on how Sora is impacting users’ mood and wellbeing, and more) we are sure we will discover new things we need to do if Sora becomes very successful. To help guide us towards more of the good and less of the bad, here are some principles we have for this product: *Optimize for long-term user satisfaction. The majority of users, looking back on the past 6 months, should feel that their life is better for using Sora that it would have been if they hadn’t. If that’s not the case, we will make significant changes (and if we can’t fix it, we would discontinue offering the service). *Encourage users to control their feed. You should be able to tell Sora what you want—do you want to see videos that will make you more relaxed, or more energized? Or only videos that fit a specific interest? Or only for a certain about of time? Eventually as our technology progresses, you will be should to the tell Sora what you want in detail in natural language. (However, parental controls for teens include the ability to opt out of a personalized feed, and other things like turning off DMs.) *Prioritize creation. We want to make it easy and rewarding for everyone to participate in the creation process; we believe people are natural-born creators, and creating is important to our satisfaction. *Help users achieve their long-term goals. We want to understand a user’s true goals, and help them achieve them. If you want to be more connected to your friends, we will try to help you with that. If you want to get fit, we can show you fitness content that will motivate you. If you want to start a business, we want to help teach you the skills you need. And if you truly just want to doom scroll and be angry, then ok, we’ll help you with that (although we want users to spend time using the app if they think it’s time well spent, we don’t want to be paternalistic about what that means to them).

Zohran Mamdani is being heckled right now at a press conference in Brooklyn, NY, by someone whose words I can't hear, but watch how he's dealing with it. Mamdani has the unique skill of knowing how to handle and walk into every room and engage with people, no matter how toxic they are or how their feelings are against him. And many times, make them feel heard. Elected officials, nonprofit and religious leaders, advocates, and activists on both sides of the political spectrum who met with him told me that. Don't take my word for it, President Trump is pretty public about it. That's why he's currently the mayor of New York City. If you don't like his politics or you're like me, who opposed his candidacy and is still troubled by some of his actions and statements, then don't take this post the wrong way; read into it how you should be better to communicate your message. Yes, putting ego aside for any public figure is not easy.

the 90s java aesthetic

China’s solar power plant in Dunhuang uses around 12,000 mirrors to focus sunlight onto a central tower, heating molten salt to extreme temperatures. That heat is stored and used to generate electricity on demand, including after sunset.

China’s solar power plant in Dunhuang uses around 12,000 mirrors to focus sunlight onto a central tower, heating molten salt to extreme temperatures. That heat is stored and used to generate electricity on demand, including after sunset.