Hollywood Strike Update and AI Roundup with Trey Kollmer

**Nathan Labenz** (0:00)
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**Trey Kollmer** (0:45)
Even she showed pictures of pretty similar image generated by stable diffusion model next to a training image that was very similar to it. She even thought that no court would conclude that that was a derivative work.
But she does think there may be questions in the training of the model. You're copying these works and using it to create a system which can just replace a lot of the underlying creators. But that is really up in the air and that maybe Congress will weigh in and come up with new legislation because it's so new, it seems like crazy you're trying to apply these old laws and old rules to such a different paradigm.

**Nathan Labenz** (1:25)
Hello, and welcome to The Cognitive Revolution, where we interview visionary researchers, entrepreneurs, and builders working on the frontier of artificial intelligence. Each week, we'll explore their revolutionary ideas, and together we'll build a picture of how AI technology will transform work, life, and society in the coming years. I'm Nathan Labenz, joined by my co-host, Erik Torenberg. Hello, and welcome back to The Cognitive Revolution. Today, Trey Kollmer returns to the show. Trey first appeared in episode number 30, released back on May 30th, when he and two other members of the Writers Guild of America discussed the WGA's AI-related strike demands, and also shared a glimpse into how they are beginning to use AI as part of their individual writing processes. That episode was extremely well received, thanks in large part to Trey's nuanced perspectives, and I encourage you to check it out if you haven't already.
This time, we're doing something a bit different, because Trey's interest in AI goes much deeper than just experimenting with it as a writing assistant. Like me, he's extremely curious about all AI developments and very well read on the subject. So I invited him back to first share an update on the strike, and also to bring his own questions for discussion. We ended up talking for over two hours, covering topics including our ever-evolving understanding of AI models' reasoning capabilities, why NVIDIA stock has popped so much more than other AI stocks, including their critical partners, TSMC and ASML, and where else besides hardware value is likely to accrue in the AI stack over time. Finally, we close with a segment that I'm calling the Reality Writer's Room, in which we imagine our current reality as entertainment for some hypothetical outside observers, and then attempt to identify scenes of particular interest or dramatic irony.
One small correction, toward the end of the episode, I incorrectly said that Inflection was one of seven companies party to the Frontier Model Forum, but what I should have said was that Inflection was one of seven companies that agreed to certain voluntary commitments as part of a recent White House statement. Those seven companies are OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Inflection, but only four of them, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft, officially joined the Frontier Model Forum. It's a small detail, but worth getting it right.
If you ever notice any inaccuracies in the show or just want to request the return of another favorite guest, please reach out and let us know. You can always email us at tcr at turpentine.co or feel free to DM me on the social media platform of your choice. And if you're finding value in the show, we always appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts for Spotify, a comment on YouTube, or just a plain old share on social media. Now, I hope you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Hollywood writer and fellow AI Scout Trey Kollmer. Trey Kollmer, welcome back to The Cognitive Revolution.

**Trey Kollmer** (4:23)
Thanks. Thanks for having me back.

**Nathan Labenz** (4:26)
Very excited. This time, we're going to pursue a wide range of topics, but just for context, if folks haven't heard your first appearance, they should go back and listen to an interview with you and two of your guild mates, which was a very well-received episode. People thought that the perspective that you guys had on language models and the way that it's kind of playing into the dynamic that you have with the writer's strike was super interesting and certainly I agreed with that.