Ben Affleck is an AI nerd, and the internet is impressed

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They cast the wrong lead in “Good Will Hunting,” apparently, because it’s Ben Affleck who is the secret genius, as it turns out. The actor who earlier this year sold his AI filmmaking startup to Netflix for a reported $587 million has gone viral this week for demonstrating his understanding of AI technology, neural networks, machine learning, and the like, across multiple video clips of his recent interviews. He can even write a little Python, he says.

显然，《心灵捕手》选错了主角，因为事实证明，本·阿弗莱克才是那个深藏不露的天才。这位演员今年早些时候以据称 5.87 亿美元的价格将其人工智能电影制作初创公司出售给了 Netflix。本周，他在近期采访的多个视频片段中展示了自己对人工智能技术、神经网络、机器学习等领域的理解，从而在网上走红。他说，他甚至还能写一点 Python 代码。

The movie star delved into his interest in technology most recently on an episode of GQ’s “One More Question” series this week, where he humbly started with “I’ve always been kind of into computers since I was young,” before nerding out on the development of AI as it relates to filmmaking, while using AI terminology like machine learning, neural networks, transformers, tensors, GPUs, inference, and more.

这位电影明星最近在 GQ 的“One More Question”系列节目中深入探讨了他对技术的兴趣。他谦虚地开场说：“我从小就对计算机很感兴趣”，随后便开始滔滔不绝地谈论人工智能在电影制作中的应用，并使用了机器学习、神经网络、Transformer、张量、GPU、推理等专业术语。

In a clip that’s making the rounds, Affleck explains to the impressed interviewer, Zach Baron, that he got into the space when analog film moved to digital. As he spoke, he kept defining terms so the interviewer could understand what he was talking about. “I became more interested in that aspect of it, and the visual effects workflow for many years has included machine learning,” Affleck began.

在一段广为流传的视频中，阿弗莱克向印象深刻的采访者扎克·巴伦解释说，他是在模拟胶片转向数字技术时进入这一领域的。在交谈过程中，他不断地解释术语，以便采访者能听懂他在说什么。“我开始对这方面产生兴趣，而且多年来视觉特效的工作流程一直包含机器学习，”阿弗莱克说道。

“So I can write, like, pretty shitty Python scripts and stuff like that. Because with convolutional neural networks — which were the sort of precursors to what the transformer can do — which is just much more computation simultaneously — you would do things like, look at what’s called a tensor — which is just the numerical translation of a visual image, in numbers like the batch number, the frame number, the red, green, and blue values of each pixel in each frame, and how many? It’s just that simple, right?”

“所以我可以写一些相当烂的 Python 脚本之类的东西。因为有了卷积神经网络——它们算是 Transformer 所能做的事情的前身，只是 Transformer 能同时进行更多的计算——你会做一些事情，比如查看所谓的张量——它只是视觉图像的数值转换，用数字表示，比如批次编号、帧编号、每一帧中每个像素的红、绿、蓝值，还有多少？就这么简单，对吧？”

No, Ben Affleck, it is not just that simple, which is why this video is going viral. The actor then went into how neural networks were used to identify patterns and do edge detection or feature extraction, which he described as “identifying patterns enough to know — like this is where the window ledge is, so we can more easily take the green screen image out and replace it with something.”

不，本·阿弗莱克，这并不简单，这就是为什么这段视频会走红。随后，这位演员深入探讨了神经网络如何用于识别模式以及进行边缘检测或特征提取，他将其描述为“识别出足够的模式来判断——比如这里是窗台，这样我们就能更容易地抠掉绿幕图像并替换成其他东西。”

He also admitted he used his status as a Hollywood star to get a peek at emerging AI technology, at times. OpenAI was among those he visited, Affleck said in a separate clip, which ultimately led him to understand how he could get more directly involved in the AI space. As the interviewer continued, Affleck explained how AI can help with filmmaking while not replacing it, leading to the development and sale of his own startup in this space.

他还承认，有时会利用自己好莱坞明星的身份去一窥新兴的人工智能技术。阿弗莱克在另一个视频片段中提到，他曾参观过 OpenAI 等公司，这最终让他明白了如何更直接地参与到人工智能领域。随着采访的继续，阿弗莱克解释了人工智能如何在不取代电影制作的情况下为其提供帮助，这也促成了他在该领域初创公司的开发与出售。

(He claims the $587 million figure is “not right,” noting that he didn’t own the whole company.) “I gambled on this notion that in order to do this in an ethical way and in a way that could take this technology and actually make it work hand in glove with artists in this community where there are very fixed, long-standing relationships around likeness and so forth, we had to create our own dataset,” he said.

（他声称 5.87 亿美元的数字“不准确”，并指出他并未拥有整个公司。）“我押注于这样一个理念：为了以合乎道德的方式做到这一点，并能利用这项技术与这个社区的艺术家们紧密合作——因为这里在肖像权等方面有着非常固定且长期的关系——我们必须创建自己的数据集，”他说。

“So I raised the money. I shot for about eight months with a lot of cameras and a lot of equipment, and created a dataset that would serve as late-stage training for open models to do discrete tasks, sort of where the training code, the inference code, were related to one another and geared toward actual specific tasks that would generate value,” Affleck said.

“所以我筹集了资金。我用大量的摄像机和设备拍摄了大约八个月，创建了一个数据集，作为开源模型的后期训练素材，用于执行离散任务。这有点像训练代码和推理代码相互关联，并针对能够产生价值的实际具体任务进行调整，”阿弗莱克说。

In a separate clip, also going viral, Affleck spoke to Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw at the Screentime 2026 conference in LA, where he talked about how he fine-tuned AI models by taking open source models, unfreezing the weights, then teaching them to meet certain cinematic standards. In the process, the filmmaker retains their proprietary work, while benefiting from the learning they create by training their own unique model for the movie they’re making.

在另一个同样走红的视频片段中，阿弗莱克在洛杉矶举行的 Screentime 2026 会议上与彭博社的卢卡斯·肖进行了交谈。他谈到了自己如何通过获取开源模型、解冻权重，然后对其进行训练以达到特定的电影标准来微调人工智能模型。在此过程中，电影制作人保留了他们的专有作品，同时通过为正在制作的电影训练独特的模型，从他们创造的学习成果中获益。

The actor used the technique himself in his movie “Animals,” where AI aided in the post-production process. At one point, he also weighed in on the concerns around AI and its world-ending potential. His worries, however, were much more rational. “When I worry about AI, I worry about my kids in school. I worry about the 30% rise in the number of A’s given out at colleges over the last three years. I worry about learned helplessness. I worry about responsible use. I don’t worry about Skynet, and I don’t think that it’s going to take over [the movie] business in any meaningful way. I think it’s going to be additive,” Affleck said.

这位演员在自己的电影《动物》中亲自使用了这项技术，人工智能在后期制作过程中提供了辅助。在谈话中，他还对围绕人工智能及其毁灭世界潜力的担忧发表了看法。然而，他的担忧要理性得多。“当我担心人工智能时，我担心的是我在学校的孩子们。我担心过去三年大学里获得 A 的学生人数增加了 30%。我担心习得性无助。我担心负责任的使用。我不担心‘天网’，也不认为它会以任何有意义的方式接管电影行业。我认为它将起到补充作用，”阿弗莱克说。