Ben Syversen

As obvious as they are to us today, EXPONENTS were centuries in the making. Mathematical progress with exponents couldn't really get going until humans arrived at a simple and intuitive notation to efficiently convey the embedded concepts that we now take for granted.

Claude for Blender seems comically bad so far. It keeps failing but it just leaves me hanging, waiting while nothing's happening, instead of telling me it failed. Its most recent excuse for why a command failed was that it mistakenly typed "Blender" instead of "blender" ...

@Daniel_Batal Gotta love that the reference guide to “quickly understand” all the new features is 150 pages long! 🤣

For anyone interested in learning what new features are available in DaVinci Resolve version 21, there is a 150 page New Features Guide included with the download AND it's available online. It lists & explains all of the new features by page. I highly recommend giving it a read-through. Super useful to quickly understand what changes you can expect based on the pages you tend to use most! Read it HERE: documents.blackmagicdesign.com/SupportNotes/D…

@Almost_Sure Haha that’s true

@BenSyversen You seem to be the main person promoting it, currently

Here's a grey area of AI copying: somebody made an AI gen video which copies, beat for beat, the story of one of my videos even though the words and visuals are different. Is this an acceptable practice w/in YT or is it infringement of some sort? @robertoblake @dabidoYT

@dabidoYT Yeah. It doesn't exactly bother me -- the copied video is so bad that I can't consider it to be any kind of competition. Faceless Youtube Automation Bros (tm) can't actually compete with real creators. At least not in this niche...

I don’t like when people copy stories in particular, because your original video was imbued with all this beautiful intention and thoughtfulness and just, a broad sense of real care towards the story. Whereas this AI video is marked by a certain carelessness. The AI video adds nothing of worth. They purely took an outlier and thought, yeah this look like a good one to chuck through ElevenLabs and Kling. One doesn’t need AI to do that of course. Years ago, Brent Rivera copied ++ Drewdoes’ Capsule Hotel video since it did a million views in 7 days and was also an outlier. I knew that video back to front since we’d worked on the story beats meticulously together, and so that one felt personal. So even though this is in a technical gray area where some people may say “Steal Like An Artist”, I can’t say that there’s any positive repurposing here. I enjoy the use of AI, and even in production, I find AI more acceptable than most — but not with this specific intention. This is purely a cash grab, and regardless of whether it’s technically plagiarism or not, the intent is scummy. I empathise with you strongly and feel this personally.

@robertoblake @dabidoYT That's what I was thinking. I hesitate to call it "plagiarism," even though they clearly just fed my script into an AI and had it rewrite the thing with different words. But yes, reusing stories is not new. I liked 8 Mile, but it was better when it was called Purple Rain...

Plagiarism is bad regardless of method being manual or not. That said there is no copyrighted trademark to an idea or concept. Including story beats. It’s distasteful and frowned upon but it’s not IP theft if they are not using your trademarked IP. Ideally you want to build assets you can trademark and incorporate them into content , and then have an enforcement mechanism.

@second_bassoon A rising tide lifts all boats!

My competition just asked me to produce for them. For the last few years, I've been working on a classical music history project. Cinematic AI pieces about the lives of the great composers. And during this time, one of my quiet fears was seeing someone pop up in this niche doing the exact same style of content. Well...it finally happened... A longtime fan of my project was so inspired by the work that she decided to start creating similar content for her own channel. She tried producing AI visuals on her own. And it was, in her words, "very much hit and miss." So, she reached out and asked if I'd produce the content for her. And I'm not gonna lie...I'm excited and conflicted at the same time. Excited because this is my exact niche. The same composers, the same stories, the same type of content I'm already passionate about creating. I can't overstate just how much I love this subject. But... I'm conflicted because I never imagined I'd be pouring into the "competition." 🤣🤣 (Well, she's not a client yet. I'm still working on the trial project, which I know is gonna be amazing.) But either way, when I really think about it, it'd still be a win-win for all parties involved: ✓ I get to do work that I'm genuinely passionate about. ✓ She can rest easy in knowing that the content I produce for her channel will be of the highest possible calibre. ✓ The audience gets to enjoy even more content on the subject that they love. Perhaps the best way to handle competition is to be the one producing it?

@mathillustrated @LJ198767 I don't think Euclid would agree with the idea that multiplication is repeated addition either.

@LJ198767 PhD’s in a math will differ on this.

My, colleague, with a PhD in math, teaches that repeated addition is a limited definition for multiplication. Dr. Stokke also has a PhD in math teaches that it’s “THE” definition of multiplication. What is it? I teach addition as combining and multiplication as scaling.

@WrathofMathEDU If you ever get worried about AI taking the place of humans within math YouTube, that’s a good place to look to feel reassured! 🤣

YouTube's built in AI-driven "inspiration" tab is honestly hilarious

@robertoblake Yeah, they've just gotta start playing more than the same one song over and over again at their live gigs! 🤣

@BenSyversen That may have enough cultural cache to last similar to SpiderVerse and ZooTopia But I also think they can sustain the hype with small launches they have planned and I think the Touring strategy will sustain them

Outside of Anime there is almost no case study in long running, profitable animated programming. Set aside emotions or how you think of it ethically or about jobs… since the art ethics arguments failed with normies, the new posture is “what about jobs”… People question whether AI content can do more than get views. What about brand deals and longevity? Its model would likely be as revenue and merchandise and then also licensing. Animated content isn’t ideal for brand deals and integration anyways. Most animated programs didn’t have longevity. The most nostalgic ones outside of anime had 2-5 year runs at 26-50 episodes per season. AI content isn’t anymore risky than animated content but far cheaper to produce. No version of Transformers ever got 5 seasons. Tron Uprising was amazing. 1 season. Doug was a classic, not even 150 episodes. Jonny Test is beloved, not even 150 episodes. Cartoon Network raised a generation… it’s gone now. The Thunder Cats Reboot… 1 season. The Masters of the Universe Reboot… 2 seasons. There isn’t even an argument for non-AI animation longevity and profitability outside of Anime. Disney and Pixar dropped the ball and other than Zootopia it was flop after flop of burning money… The target market for animation anyway is and always was children and young adult minors since the 80s and post the Tex Avery era… Yes adults myself included enjoy animation and great storytelling. But for more than 50 years the primary audience for animation has been primarily children… Which means it’s also been a model that means ad revenue, merchandise and licensing. It was always about selling stickers and trapper keepers with the cartoons on them… And kids only care about what they like, now how it was made or if someone has a job. And parents always know that they give the kids what they like or they are sad and feel left out. It has always been this way.

@robertoblake Yeah. I'm curious to see how KPop Demon Hunters, a VERY big movie (I know, I have a kid...) will do in this landscape. They spent a long time on that film and are planning a long timeline for the sequel. But by the time the sequel is out the original fanbase will have grown up.

Yep. Beyond that it would be few Nickelodeon cartoons like SpongeBob, and then more edgy stuff like Family Guy, and King of the Hill… Either it’s edgy adult(ish) humor that can infect pop culture but is not intially a money pit and is CHEAP looking animation… that frankly could be done with Adobe Flash/Animate or an AI equivalent with almost nobody noticing… Or a children’s program where the children don’t care and don’t watch really for the artistic quality of it. That’s the brutal audit if we take the romantic side out of it. They START and get a shot because they are low budget commodities that are a line item and have outsized upside if they hit, and if they fail they are a write off… But they are funded at all because of marketability… What I predict is that Eastern Markets will produce a hybrid approach and not care what the West does or thinks… (anime was considered weird 20-40 years ago) but it will be consumed and adopted and they won’t budge on how they do things… And then the West will be forced to mimic their posture on this… Regular consumers will be fine but a lot of industry people and their fans will cry out but will cave because of FOMO and popular sentiment … The East outnumbers us in population and if the consumer trend over there becomes popular it will find its way over here. Reference Anime and KPop influence

@robertoblake Yeah, one commonality that those two shows have is that the ideas (ie, original comedic tone) are strong enough that the fairly cheap production quality (esp The Simpsons in its first few years) wasn't a problem and maybe even was an asset

Fair, we can name 2-10 outliers maybe that are multi generational and likely will have no longevity going into Gen Alpha… And I know this isn’t what people want to hear but I am being the contrarian for a reason. The bottom line is nothing survives a lack of funding. So getting cost down and revenue up is the only way something survives. Simpsons and South Park were challenged on the every “ethics” of existing on television at all… And had they not been as profitable and popular as they were… they wouldn’t have survived… They barely made it as it is, and people forget that. Mortal Kombat is another example of this. Simpsons and South Park both also started as CHEAP ENOUGH TO MAKE… And their creators would absolutely have used AI if it was available given how young they were at the time.

@MostafaVisuals Yeah! Emily's no rando though. A true pro. Former Veritasium, freelance for Cleo Abram, Welch Labs, Howtown, Mark Rober, (even me a little bit). It's not a risky bet to say that she'll be the next big science Youtuber.

Random channels pop up, do like 150k views in 1 day. A totally different concept. And people are still are still stuck on "copying outliers"

@MostafaVisuals @dabidoYT Thanks! Always a pleasure, Mostafa.

@dabidoYT also @BenSyversen, thank you for being a great client! You are extremely patient and great to work with!

Honestly, the creators I’ve worked with are so great. I feel fortunate to have been able to contribute to these 1.1M and 1.2M view videos respectively, despite being two completely different niches. I’m not the creator, of course, but it does give me joy to know/see that the video was shaped out of storytelling discussions. So, I feel fortunate not just because they’re a whole bunch of views — but because there was a LOT of collaborative thinking and deep thought behind questions like: “what is the underlying story and feeling we’re trying to get across with this video?” The first video is with the fantastic @BenSyversen. It’s amazing that a video about logarithms did 1.1M views, and this felt like one of the hardest challenges in terms of storytelling because weaving concepts whilist pushing character/narrative is super hard. But, it’s so nice to work with someone who really cares about the craft and meaning of the story, views be damned. @FastGoodCuisine is no stranger to 1M+ view videos, but this video is certainly performing great too. This was challenging for a different reason: how can we tell a story where there is no inherent goal or challenge? Ultimately, for YouTube storytelling like this, I think philosophically you’re really trying to emulate travelling. People watch these videos to escape. The journey is the destination, so you kind of relish the right things in the right order emotionally, whilst not lingering too long since we still do care about retention of course. There’s of course a lot of other aspects to viewers and what they like when it comes to these specific videos. Charles is talented but also works incredibly hard. For me, with whoever I work with more than a few times, I always just feel a sense of gratefulness that people still do care about things like storytelling and have care towards their videos. There’s a depth there to be dug.

@dabidoYT :-) Also on this topic:at the end of this video (linked to the spot), he mentions that the key middle scene of "Sinners" initially tested poorly w/audiences but they fixed it by adding an insert at the *beginning* of the film to prepare the context better. youtu.be/AjVv-32oe9Y?si…

@BenSyversen Lovely insights Ben!!

Contrarian take, but… I think that YouTube viewers are skilled at knowing whether a video feels good or bad to them… And usually quite bad at knowing how precisely to achieve that. ‘In The Blink Of An Eye’, a classic book on editing, talks about exactly this. It tells an anecdote where test audiences hated one particular section of a movie. But, the screenwriters figured out that it wasn’t actually that section of the movie that was bad. It was a section way beforehand that was needed to give it context. So if your audiences dislike your channel, there’s a problem there that requires deeper thought, and an even better understanding of viewers than they are able to articulate. For myself as a doctor, I appreciate the patients’ self-diagnoses, but it will never override what I think is actually going on, based on all the evidence available for that patient. Otherwise, there would be no need for doctors.

@dabidoYT Or, said slightly differently, a video could be 90% there and still not “work,” but then one fairly small tweak (framing/structure/etc) can make the whole thing fit into place without making big changes to most of the content.

@dabidoYT Very true. One (happy) consequence is that sometimes, if you correctly diagnose the problem with a video, then the amount of work/re-editing needed to fix the problem is not nearly as much as it might seem. (fixing the nerve issue might be much simpler than doing elbow surgery)

@mathillustrated @MindofTorres The bigger problem with the CB that I haven’t seen discussed often enough is the way they’ve absolutely botched the rollout of their digital SAT and the related prep materials. In particular, the “detailed solutions” given in the online practice tests are basically AI slop.

@MindofTorres And where did the CB “admit questions are easier”?

Someone will have to point out when the math exams got “easier” #iTeachMath