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Ai Youtubers | I Asked An Ai For Video Ideas For Other Youtubers. It Went Badly.

Tom Scott

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I Asked An Ai For Video Ideas For Other Youtubers. It Went Badly.

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​Earlier this year, I asked GPT-3, ​the new text-generation ​artificial-intelligence system from OpenAI, ​to give me some ideas for videos. ​There were a couple of good ones in there, ​but the problem was that ​almost all of them were fictional. ​Videos on this channel are usually ​about real things in the real world, ​and no-one’s managed to connect up ​a fact-checker to the AI yet. ​But that got me thinking: ​what about channels who aren’t ​limited that way? ​What about channels which ​talk about broader topics, ​or their own opinions, ​or do ridiculous challenges? ​Could the AI come up with ​new ideas for them? ​So I called up some folks, ​I gave the AI a few recent video titles ​from their channels, and I asked it… ​come up with more like that. ​Now, I wasn’t allowed to ​do live demonstrations, ​that’s in the OpenAI terms of service ​I agreed to, ​but ahead of each call, ​I got GPT-3 to generate ​a hundred ideas ​and then I picked the ​most interesting ones. ​Or at least, the ones where the AI ​didn’t completely go off the rails. ​If you look at my list, I might have ​20, 30, 40, 50, 100 ideas there, ​but I don’t want to do any one of them. ​It’s not easy to come up with good ideas. ​Mehdi Sadaghdar runs ElectroBOOM, ​a channel that has really technical ​videos about electronics, ​but which is, perhaps unfairly, best known ​for Mehdi repeatedly shocking himself. ​…that created [arc sound] ​[bleep] [arcing continues] ​One thing that he had in common ​with all the folks I talked to: ​they all have a list of ideas. ​It might be a whiteboard, a spreadsheet, ​a text file, but everyone had The List. ​I didn’t have much hope that GPT-3 ​would work well with Mehdi’s channel, ​because surely you can’t just jam ​some electrical-sounding words together ​and get something sensible out of it. ​Right? ​The very first one that it sent out ​was “charging phones from a Tesla coil”. ​Uhh… ​I mean, if you have a super-powerful ​Tesla coil, yeah, that’s possible. ​So if I was able to charge my phone, ​or at least try to charge my phone ​through Tesla coil, ​which is not a bad idea… ​although, yeah, I’d have to find ​a disposable phone for that one. ​The next one was ​”Lemon Lime Lightning: 2 MILLION VOLTS!” ​That sounds quite clickbaity ​…but maybe not possible. ​There’s one that just says ​”24K Gold Plated Electrical Banana Award”. ​I don’t know what that is. ​That sounds like a good idea. ​It sounds like somebody tried to ​electroplate a banana with gold, ​and give it as an award to someone else? ​Not bad… these titles, I would say, ​from the clickbaity point of view, ​they are not actually bad, right? ​Let me write it down, ​it might be a good idea… ​”Using Tesla’s Induction Motor Design ​to Test Solar Panels”? ​–buh? ​That feels like nonsense to me. ​That feels like a bunch of ​random words stuck together. ​”How To Build A ​3D Printed Plasma Speaker”. ​…what? ​Let me think about… ​And those were the best ideas. ​GPT-3 wasn’t great at coming up with ​things within the laws of physics. ​So what about for a channel ​that’s more about ​exploring concepts and ​interesting questions ​rather than really ​specific science? ​We like to take big questions ​and then try and reduce them down ​to a silly little quest. ​That’s Sabrina Cruz, one of the team ​behind the project Answer in Progress. ​Now I just need to get this ​steaming pile of garbage I call my code ​to actually function(!) ​…and her pitch sounded like ​exactly what GPT-3 should be good at. ​It nailed your video title style. ​Ooh! ​”why buying pets is a scam”. ​Oh my god! ​Well, looks like I have a ​new video idea to work on. ​It definitely matches the ​correct level of clickbaitiness ​that we go in with, ​where it’s just like, ​hey, I have a very bold hypothesis. ​Let me do something that ​barely argues it! ​All right, well, it was downhill ​from there, ‘cos it was… ​Oh no. ​”how to destroy your career with 1 email”. ​I mean, isn’t that relatable content(?) ​Aw geez. ​Do you remember that one… ​Google did a prank one year for April Fools? ​Oh my god. ​With the minion emojis? ​Now that’s an email that ​could ruin your career. ​Oh my god. Right! ​So what we’ve just ​done there is workshopped a story. ​Boom. ​Okay, I think it’d be optimistic to say ​either of those could be a full video, ​but there’s enough there that it might ​spark some bigger idea. ​”how to fix your posture”. ​…sorry. ​Which, incidentally, yeah, I’m leaning ​over a laptop at the minute… ​No, that’s literally the video ​I’m working on right now. ​No kidding! ​Yes it is. ​I’m working on a video ​about why my back hurts so badly! ​Wow. Okay. Um… ​The singularity is going to happen ​like next week, I assume. ​That sounds like a success, ​but there’s a bit of… almost ​cold reading going on here? ​Because the AI sent out a hundred ideas, ​I picked the best ones, ​and then Sabrina connected one of those ​to a better idea she already had. ​Even the title she gave, ​”why my back hurts so badly”, ​is way better than anything ​the AI came up with. ​So the best of the best ​were plausible video ideas. ​But I did show Sabrina more of the full list, ​and, well, most of them weren’t winners. ​These are all formatted so that ​they would feel like ​it would at least come across the table ​when we’re thinking about titles, ​but a vast majority are just, ​like, that sounds good. ​Let me think about it for a second… ​Right. ​Wait, what does that even mean? ​I think they’ve really captured the subtle ​negativity that just overflows my channel. ​Maybe score half a victory for GPT-3 there. ​What about if we go from ​factual exploration to opinion? ​I have a big Google Document of ​videos I would like to do, ​once the current ones ​that’ll take forever are done. ​And that list always gets longer ​and none of them get done, ​cos I’m always like, oh but this one should, ​now I’ve had a new one! ​So, one day I’d like to get to that list, ​but it’s just continuously growing. ​Harry Brewis is better known as hbomberguy, ​and he’s one of very few ​video essayists I know ​who can somehow keep my interest long enough ​that I’ll watch a feature-length piece ​about a show I’ve never even seen. ​But when your release schedule is ​a two-hour video every few months, ​idea generation isn’t really ​your production bottleneck. ​But I wanted to see if the system could ​at least come up with some suggestions. ​It got obsessed with video games. ​Well, yeah, that’s gonna happen(!) ​So I switched which videos of yours ​it was trying to riff off, ​and if there was one word even remotely ​about video games in there, ​everything was about video games. ​It’s the only thing that it can ​make sense of out of all of this! ​”The Last Of Us Is Disappointing, And Here’s ​Why”. ​That’s really good! ​Oh my goodness. ​That’s actually the perfect video title ​for a video about The Last of Us, ​because people who don’t like ​The Last of Us ​will be like, ah, finally, validation, ​and people who do like it will be like, ​ah, I’ve got to see this. ​I mean, it did just nick your format. ​It locked on to all your formats and went, ​”I know what to do with this, ​just sub in different names.” ​I should have said something like, ​”ah, that’s pointlessly contrarian, ​who would name a video that?” ​Oh god, I need to save that. ​That might come in handy! ​We also have “Mass Effect 3 Was A Mistake, ​and Here’s Why”. ​…I mean, not correct, but close, yeah. ​That’s what I was thinking, because ​obviously the opinion has to match up with… ​It has to be contrarian enough! ​One that came from nowhere: ​”How Bethesda Broke Me, and Here’s Why I’ll ​Keep Buying Their Games Anyway” ​That’s so specific! ​I wonder why ​it got that from my videos? ​That’s really good. ​This one I don’t understand? You might: ​”On Quantic Dream, David Cage, ​and the Uncanny Valley.” ​That’s really good, actually. ​That’s incredible. ​Quantic Dream are… they’re basically trying ​to be films instead of games in a lot of ways. ​There’s a lot of advanced motion capture ​stuff and facial animation. ​So there is a lot of ​uncanny valley stuff in there. ​That’s just a straight-up good video title. ​Okay! ​I was going to jokingly say ​I should make one of these, ​but that’s probably the one ​I would make so far. ​A lot of my stuff is just whatever I thought ​would make for an interesting concept, ​or I would find challenging to explain, ​I think that’s really fun to try and do. ​If I wanted to make a video along those lines, ​that would be the title for it. ​But I probably wouldn’t make ​those specific videos. ​Some of those ideas were actually good. ​Like, at least two of those I could make. ​And now I kind of want to, just so… ​A video essayist not only ​has to stand behind their ideas, ​but also put in exhaustive research ​and be passionate about a subject. ​And while it could be useful ​to have a system ​that’d take a video outline and ​have it autocomplete in a certain style ​and make the arguments you want it to, ​text generation just isn’t there yet. ​Which leaves us with channels ​that are about experiences. ​Folks who aren’t creating factual ​or documentary or opinion videos, ​just plain ol’ regular entertainment. ​Now, I did try to get in touch ​with a few channels who do ​beauty, or makeup challenges, ​but I didn’t get any replies. ​They’re in such different worlds ​that I just don’t have ​any contacts in common. ​I did give the AI a list ​of makeup challenges, ​and if anyone wants to try ​the No Water Makeup Challenge, ​the Curtain Makeup Challenge, ​or the If I Only Had More Time ​Makeup Challenge, go right ahead, ​I just don’t know what those are. ​But there was one more ​person I talked to. ​And he’s an expert on getting ​the title and the idea right. ​A perfect idea is an idea ​that is clickable ​but also highly highly entertaining ​throughout the entire video. ​And a lot of people are either good at ​picking great videos or great clickbait, ​and very very very few people ​can pick both. ​It’s very hard. ​Because some things that are ​very clickable might be a moment. ​Like, getting punched by the ​strongest man in the world, right? ​That’s an interesting video ​but that’s only ten seconds. ​It’s not a 15-minute video. ​And if you try to make it a 15-minute ​video, then it’s a bad idea. ​Not like, you just take things ​and stretch it out, ​it has to be a really entertaining video ​at that length, ​while still being clickable. ​That is the perfect idea. ​Jimmy Donaldson is better known as MrBeast, ​and fifty million subscribers ​watch his channel that’s a mixture ​of ridiculous stunts and ​hyperactive philanthropy. ​As we talked, it was really clear ​just how much thought goes into ​the titles, the ideas, ​and every frame of every video. ​The AI… does not have that context. ​It’s just putting words together. ​The very first thing it came out with was: ​”I Paid People To Take Selfies With Me”. ​Yeah, I can see where it would get ​that inspiration from, ​but there’s no, like, ‘oomph’. ​What’s the virality? ​”I Bought A Haunted House”. ​I can see where it got it from ​and the inspiration, ​but what it’s missing is a twist. ​Back to the selfie one, right? ​If it was like “I paid people to ​take selfies with me”, ​and I looked like Shrek ​but I had like a knife in my hand, ​then it’s kind of interesting, ​but obviously that’s not ​what it’s thinking. ​Or, with the haunted house, ​I bought a haunted house and offered people ​a million dollars to play in it. ​Yeah, iIt feels like there should ​be an “and” in there somehwere. ​It’s missing that little twist, where ​you apply that, and boom, now it’s viral. ​It also had one which feels like ​an entire series on your channel, ​just put in a blender so it’s just mush ​and no-one wants to watch it, which is: ​”I Paid People To Do ​Weird Things On Camera”. ​I’m like, that’s… ​That’s my channel in a nutshell! ​It’s exposing me! ​A lot of GPT-3’s ideas felt like someone ​trying to imitate the MrBeast channel ​without really understanding ​what humans like to watch. ​So while it didn’t go well, ​it did perform a little bit ​better than I expected. ​And I think it was Jimmy ​that gave the best summary: ​This could be very very effective ​in giving you something close ​to what you’d want, ​and then you just use that as ​inspiration to derive something good. ​AI works best as a co-pilot. ​At least, for now. ​Because one of the clichés about ​artifical intelligence is that ​as soon as it can do something, ​that doesn’t count as AI any more. ​Playing chess? ​It’s just brute-forcing numbers. ​Categorising images? ​There’s no thought there, ​it’s just training a model. ​Coming up with a list of plausible ideas, ​with an okay but not great hit-rate? ​That’s something that would have been ​impossible just a couple of years ago. ​But now? ​It’s just putting ​some words together. ​In a few years’ time, ​who knows what else ​it’s going to be easy to dismiss ​in the same way? ​Let me just stop tape… ​Wait, here, let me give you a little ​clip to go at the end of the video? ​Yeah, yeah, go for it. ​If you enjoyed this video ​subscribe to Tom Scott! ​He’s too nice to say it. ​Hit that sub button. ​It’ll make him really happy. ​Right there, tap it. ​All right, now you can go. ​I have literally never said that ​in my life, thank you!

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