Ben Affleck says predictions that AI will wipe out jobs—or kill us all—are just propaganda: ‘In fact, more people technically are being employed’

For all the anxiety surrounding AI—from fears that it will destroy jobs to predictions that it could even wipe out humanity—one Hollywood star thinks people may be making the technology seem scarier than it actually is.

Ben Affleck, the actor and screenwriter known for films like Good Will Hunting, believes that growing fears surrounding AI are largely “propaganda”—and once people sit down and use it, they realize it can be a tool for good.

“[Once] it moves from this nebulous, abstract, terrifying alien—‘It’s going to kill us all, we’re paperclips, and it’s going to wipe out half of white-collar jobs, all this propaganda’—and they actually see what it is, it’s like another form of computing that does tools and is a technological advancement,” Affleck recently told Bloomberg.

Affleck has been one of the most vocal supporters of AI technology in the industry. In 2022, he founded InterPositive, an AI-focused filmmaking startup, and earlier this year, it was reportedly purchased by Netflix for $587 million.

But when asked about the role of AI in producing his new movie Animals, Affleck wasn’t eager to pull back the curtain on exactly how the technology is playing a role........

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