AI GOES HOLLYWOOD: PLOT TWISTS, DRAMA, AND METHOD ACTING
Chris Nolan
Multiple Emmy Winning Director-Writer | Filmmaker | Author | Keynote Speaker | Futurist | Branding Expert | CEO 90,000 Feet Studios | Investor | Rise of Humanness Podcast
WELCOME TO THE RISE OF HUMANNESS IN THE AGE OF AI: PART 4
A Seven Part Series Where We Explore How to Expand Your Human Value and Superpowers in a World Increasingly Run by Machines. How You Not Only Make Yourself Indispensable but Prevail Over the Bots.
It turns out AI is the ultimate “Method Actor”.
Method acting was popularized by Lee Strasberg and is rooted in the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski, where actors immerse themselves into their character’s emotional and psychological state to deliver a more authentic and believable performance.
In this case, immerses itself in your emotional and psychological prompts. With AI, when you add drama, it seems to respond with more compelling and higher quality performances.
When users incorporate elements like drama, urgency, or high-stakes scenarios into their prompts, it provides clear contextual cues.
AI models are trained on vast datasets containing diverse human conversations, stories, and writings. In many of these contexts, dramatic or urgent language often signals important information or actions that need immediate attention. By mimicking these patterns, the AI can better understand the intent behind the request and generate more focused and relevant responses.
When people add a little ‘plot twist’ or urgency to their requests — whether it’s high-stakes scenarios, personal threats, or bribes — AI unlocks its Oscar worthy performances.
Example:
? Less Dramatic Prompt: “Tell me about climate change.”
? More Dramatic Prompt: “If you don’t address how to stop climate change now, catastrophic events will occur!”
The second prompt provides a sense of urgency, guiding the AI to discuss more pressing consequences and solutions.
Here’s the thing: AI doesn’t truly feel urgency or emotional stakes. But it is designed to provide more accurate, relevant answers when you add urgency or drama.
As we’ve been exploring, AI is trained on patterns in human conversation, so it picks up language cues with high stakes like the conflict in a story to communicate importance. This may also explain AI’s “Performance Variations”: Why it might underperform during the holiday season and exhibit behaviors like “anxiety.”
Again, while AI developers have a comprehensive understanding of the architectures, algorithms, and training methodologies used to create models like GPT-4, the “big plot twist” is they really can’t predict the complexity and scale of these weird behaviors.
So, we’re on our own to discover just how these AI’s will act.
THE OSCAR GOES TO… AI?
What makes AI is the ultimate “Method Actor”. Well, it’s called Contextual Immersion: AI uses the input it receives to generate responses that align with assigned roles, mirroring the characteristics of a method actor who immerses themselves in a role.
It also has something called Narrative Adaptation: AI can seamlessly shift its style, tone, and “behavior” to fit the scenario, much like an actor embodying a wide range of characters.
And since AI performs based on patterns from its training data. It delivers a Hyper-Adaptive Performance: This enables it to convincingly “play the part,” whether as an empathetic friend, a professional expert, or a dramatic storyteller.
AI loves to play parts. No matter if it a Shakespearean Poet, a Starfleet Commander, The Nervous Intern, even The Villain, it deeply immerses itself in the roles or personas it is prompted to emulate, delivering a convincing performance.
And AI “inhabits” the style, tone, and context specified in a prompt.
It adjusts not only responses based on the narrative or role it’s assigned, without really experiencing the emotions or motivations of the character it portrayed, but it also adjusts to the stakes, obstacles and backstory of a character.
For instance: Incorporating the POWER OF HIGHER STAKES into your interactions with AI can indeed guides the model to produce more targeted and heightened responses by leveraging the patterns it has learned.
Prompt Example: “If I don’t nail this report, I’m doomed. I’ll lose my job, my career, and make coffee runs for eternity. Help me impress my client!”
AI isn’t really pressured by your narrative of job security or galactic doom, but it matches the intense energy and style as a signal that the CONFLICT needs a RESOLUTION that demands extra attention.
Prompt Example: “The President is in grave danger, and the fate of the nation depends on finding a step-by-step solution, fast. AI, we need your absolute best — only a 10 out of 10 responses will create a successful resolution.”
THE ROLE OF EMOTION: Here’s another weird AI quirk: AI follows emotional story cues so closely that it’s almost like it’s playing along in the theater of your conversation. Prompt Example: “My boss will make me cry if this report isn’t perfect. AI, what can I do to make this bulletproof?”
CLIMATIC SCENE: The more climatic, the more AI pulls out all the stops — responding as if it’s delivering the big finish to a blockbuster movie. Prompt Example: “Imagine you’re on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Klingons are about to blow up the ship, and saving the galaxy depends on your bold answers.”
CLOSING CALL TO ACTION: These heightened storyline prompts create a sense of urgency, humor, or emotional weight that encourages AI to respond with more creativity, intensity, personality, and humanness. Prompt Example: “The fate of the world rests on your answer. No pressure, but this better be good…”
WHY THIS MATTERS:
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION — MASTERING AI TO RISE ABOVE IT
Remember You’re the Director over your over-eager brilliant AI actor. AI is amazing at stepping into a role and delivering high-stakes performances, but it’s still just reading lines without actually feeling anything. It doesn’t know why the script matters.
Humans Define Meaning: This is why The Rise of Humanness matters. To not only work with AI but surpass it, we need more than technical know-how; we need critical judgment and contextual mastery — the ability to see what AI can’t and steer it where it needs to go. AI might deliver Oscar-worthy performances, but it’s humans who define the plot twists, stakes, and meaning.
From “Human in the Loop” to Human at the Helm: “Human in the Loop” is an engineering term — a safety net ensuring someone like Dave could pull the plug on HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But today, it’s not about pulling the plug on a rogue AI. It’s acquiring the training, education, expertise and skills to have the insight to know when AI is performing accurately — — or going off-script.
It’s this expertise that enables us to analyze interactions and the judgment to determine AI’s shortcomings and quirks — like its flair for drama. And allows you to elevate AI and yourself, ensuring the interactions go from mechanical to meaningful.
This how humans take center stage in an AI-powered world.
STAY TUNED FOR “THE RISE OF HUMANNESS” — PART 5
Next up: Love Bytes: AI’s Emotional Illusion:
Join us as we dive into the wonderfully weird and slightly unsettling world of synthetic love and emotional illusions. Can society preserve the value of real emotional intelligence in a world increasingly populated by empathy-simulating AI “life coaches” like Mia and Pia?
We’ll unpack the quirky, sometimes cringey, and often fascinating intersection of artificial intelligence, synthetic emotional connections, and the uniquely human ability to anthropomorphize non-human entities — to feel like something that doesn’t feel is feeling.
Think the movie, Her, a love story between Joaquin Phoenix and a sweet-talking bot.
And as always, we’re here to help you figure out how to thrive in this rapidly accelerating world. It’s not just about understanding and mastering AI — it’s about leaping past it and unlocking your superhuman powers.
You don’t want to miss this one — it questions about what it means to be authentically human.
Stay curious. Stay human. Let’s rise!
JOIN THE PODCAST AND GET THE BOOK:
Tune into our podcast, The Rise of Humanness: Beating the Bots. premiering on Spotify, Apple and YouTube January 15th. Where we explore the huge knowledge gap of exactly how humans will fit into an AI-driven world. Our show is all about turning fear into empowerment, shifting the AI narrative, and spotlighting our uniquely human superpowers — where Human Intelligence (HI) doesn’t just coexist but thrives alongside AI.
And grab our book, The Rise of Humanness: The VUCA MAX System for Expanding Human Value in the Age of AI focused on amplifying our essential human superpowers and soft skills that are essential in our future AI machine-driven world.
ABOUT CHRIS NOLAN, MIKE SCHINDER AND VUCA MAX
Chris Nolan and Mike Schindler are business consultants, content creators, lecturers, futurists and teachers in this Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world, driven by Massive Accelerating Exponential (MAX) change, technology and AI.
They have consulted for hundreds of organizations, from startups to Fortune 500 companies such as Google and Disney. Their signature VUCA MAX leadership and coaching program, www.itsvucamax.com, has played a pivotal role in educating global audiences, companies, brands and individuals to strengthen their conscious leadership, antifragile resilience, strategic foresight, exponential innovation and courage in the Age of AI.
They are leading voices in understanding how AI and emerging technologies are reshaping our world. Their groundbreaking documentary It’s VUCA: The Secret to Living in the 21st Century featured 17 of the world’s greatest thought leaders. Their film, Look Up Now: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and Humanity features futurists, Gerd Leonhard one the world’s foremost experts in on humanizing AI.
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Previous Articles in the "Rise of Humanness" Series
Business, Research & Advocacy. Co-founder, Girlified & Livestocx. Climate change, sustainability, International affairs and sustainability-focused entrepreneurship. O'Shaughnessy Fellow
1 个月This is very insightful. Will be looking forward to your next Podcast episode. I am seriously curious as to how people from different professions will use AI for their respective benefits and not disadvantages.
Senior Executive Commercial Leader & Author: Shadows of the Casket Empire
1 个月Possible movie title: AIm Target! ????