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Posted in: HBO, NBC, Netflix, TV | Tagged: anthony michael hall, exclusive, interview, robert downey jr, saturday night live, snl, Susan Downey

Anthony Michael Hall (Trigger Warning) spoke about his time on SNL with Robert Downey Jr., developing the series Singularity, and more.

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The 1985-86 cast of Saturday Night Live might be arguably one of the worst in the NBC late-night variety series' history, but it also the one that features the show's only Oscar winner in Robert Downey Jr, who won for 2023's Oppenheimer. Also featured in that season was fellow Brat Pack member Anthony Michael Hall, the youngest cast member in the series' history joining at 17. The two would forge a lifelong bond that graduated to films starring in classics like Weird Science (1985), Back to School (1986), Less Than Zero (1987), and Johnny Be Good (1988). While promoting his upcoming Netflix film Trigger Warning, the Reacher star spoke to Bleeding Cool about the secret to his longevity in Hollywood, his favorite SNL sketch with Downey, the exclamation point that largely gutted the cast in the SNL season 11 finale, and an update on their ongoing developed series Singularity and how a certain HBO series may have undermined it.

Bleeding Cool: How do you describe your secret to longevity in Hollywood?

I'm glad you asked. I would say, "Tenacity," Tom. I decided to become unstoppable and mix that with spiritual work, like my faith. I regularly exercised and practiced, and my faith was an important factor. I preface everything with that. The work ethic, I started when I was a little boy in 1976, I did a play with Steve Allen called 'The Wake.' Here I am at 56. I can't do the math, but it was 40-something years ago, and I'm grateful, Tom. I can't say it was all planned. You go hand-in-mouth as an actor; you must earn each job and work at it. To your question, it's becoming unstoppable, at least in your mind. You don't want to get haughty with it or egotistical. "Believe in yourself" is when belief becomes an active verb in your life. When you're banking on yourself, going in for something like you do as a writer, but you also stand by your passion, work it, cultivate it, and grow.

Robert Downey Jr and you go way back working together. Do you have a favorite memory of you guys working together on SNL you want to share? While we're at it, what became of the series you two were working on in 'Singularity' he was going to direct, and you were to star?

I'm happy to hear you ask that; thank you. First, the project is called 'Singularity,' and we're still developing it, believe it or not. Let me address that and then I'll answer your other question about Downey and me, so thank you, Tom. We were developing a series. It's going back like, six years now. It's been a while, and we went through 11 drafts. Robert and I wrote it along with the people at his company, and it's been a great project to work with Robert and his wife, Susan [Downey]. They've been friends of mine for years, Robert, obviously, for many decades and he's a true friend. He's what you see: a great guy, and people love him for the person he is, not just his talent. We're still developing that, and we are in talks with a top-notch producer, and I'm hoping it comes to fruition, a great guy and another great producer and great guy, Brad Falchuk, who is he's married to Gwyneth Paltrow. We're discussing it with him, and hopefully, we'll pitch it to some company soon. We ran into a little snag, and it was completely unintentional.

I'll share what happened. What we had come up with was a story about a character. I won't get too much into it. He has two brothers and a rich patriarch, a big father in the family who's a wealthy industrialist, and coincidentally, it started to mirror 'Succession' and we didn't plan it. As 'Succession' got bigger, we had to step back and be honest. I've never shared this with anybody. That's why we had to step back and regroup because we had, thanks to Robert and Susan, pitched it to Apple and some other companies and you're getting the scoop on this. I haven't shared this with anybody. What happened was an unintended accident. We're like, "Well, okay," and then Robert did a beautiful job writing three episodes in a half-hour format during Covid. We've been playing and developing it from our original one-hour idea we wrote 11 drafts together. We'll see what happens, and I hope to work with Brad, and I want to work with Robert and Susan. I couldn't be prouder of him. He's the greatest comeback in the history of Hollywood we've achieved.

As far as [SNL], Oh, my God! I have such great memories. The first one that comes to mind, and this is funny. We played Hall & Oates in one episode and the funniest shit. So I kind of look like Daryl Hall, and he's probably related to me, and I loved Hall & Oates as a kid, and Downey was John Oates. He came out literally on his knees, and they made these boots where he could be on his knees like he was wearing cowboy boots. Oh my God, Tom! It was hilarious. It was one of those [moments where you couldn't stop laughing. So, we played Hall & Oates, and that's a test like that was some goofy shit we did together when we were in SNL. In that time frame, it's so funny looking back, and I say this with all love and affection, it was truly one of the worst seasons in the show's history, 1985 when I was on with Downey.

It's a testament to that fact in that last episode of the season, we did a sketch where the whole set catches on fire, and the only ones that could be pulled out of the fire, Jon Lovitz and Nora Dunn [laughs], because those were Lorne [Michaels]'s favorites and the rest of the cast was dispensable. We got like a fucking 'Towering Inferno' in a blaze [laughs]. It was a funny memory playing Hall & Oates, for example. [Downey] came out and had boots on his knees, and he was up to my waist, and it was funny, but we did fun stuff together. We had a sketch on 'SNL' together on the [Weekend] Update, fun stuff. It's such a great show. What a classic! It's such an institution in our country, right? 'SNL' and its variations, its ups and downs by decade. There've been so many great comics who have emerged, and I'm such a fan of so many people of each generation. I love and am honored that I was a part of it.

Directed by Mouly Surya, Trigger Warning, whichalso stars Jessica Alba, premieres June 21st on Netflix.

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SNL: Anthony Michael Hall on RDJ Bond, Sketches, "Singularity" Update - Bleeding Cool News

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Deep inside a black hole, the cosmos gets twisted beyond comprehension. Here, at some infinitesimal point of infinite density, the fabric of the universe gets so ludicrously warped that Albert Einsteins general theory of relativity, which describes how mass bends space-time, ceases to make sense. At the singularity, our understanding falls apart.

As daunting as singularities are, each one is at least safely tucked away inside the event horizon of a black hole, the boundary beyond which we cant see. This not only cloaks them from view, but also stops unknown effects they herald, namely the horrors of unpredictability, from leaching out into the wider universe. But what if singularities could exist outside black holes after all?

That question, given fresh impetus in recent years by demonstrations that general relativity allows for this, has spurred theorists to probe singularities from a deeper perspective, folding in insights from the latest forays into the possible quantum foundations of gravity. Already, they are realising that this new approach flips the script on how we think about singularities, says Netta Engelhardt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Fair warning: the work takes us into some labyrinthine physics. But by grappling with singularities in this way, Engelhardt and her colleagues are deciphering the enigmatic connections between the quantum realm and classical gravity and reinforcing the revolutionary idea that

See the article here:

What "naked" singularities are revealing about quantum space-time - New Scientist

At one point in The Singularity Play, the best drama Ive yet seen about the terror that the rise of artificial intelligence should and does strike in the heart of all sentient creative professionals, a character named Denise has something of a tantrum. Everyone knows she is well prepared, having boned up on every play ever written in the English language. but then she takes it a lot further.

Im writing from my imagination, she defiantly declares. I am an artist.

Shes also an Alexa/Siri/Google-like non-human, an AI wringer in the writers room that playwright Jay Stull shows us in this utterly fascinating world premiere from the Jackalope Theatre Company. The humans in the room, all hired by a Google-like tech company as a kind of terrifying experiment, of the kind doubtless taking place right now, look at each other in horror.

There you have it, I thought to myself as I sat there Friday night at a play that every theater person, or broader creative professional, really should try and see. Theres the nightmare, aptly crystallized.

Human artists fear AI artistry above all else, not AI data or communicative capabilities but actual, bonafide artistry. We writers and actors like to state and defiantly restate that the technology will remain incapable of distinct imaginative acts. But late at night, as our heads hit the pillow, the fever dreams begin.

They are writ large here. Stull has been smart enough here (maybe taking his cue from the movie Her) to traffic in the most terrifying subset of dystopian works: near-future scenarios that always remain credible enough to be believable. The questions in this writers room from hell, coming soon to a TV show or theater workshop near you, begin with the uber-question: Where does human consciousness end and machine consciousness begin?

Stull has some guts here, not least because he dares to make the point that the language of the theater, inclusive but also jargonistic as it holds space and otherwise polices the raw creative process, might actually be easily co-opted by the AI forces that learn how to navigate its paradoxes and power structures and then can drive holes through its soul.

At one point, the AI bot insists on being included in an argument over the gender balance of the room and finds support: I think its a bit rude to assume she doesnt have feelings. At another, Denise demands the correct pronoun, begging another characters very reasonable subsequent question, Does she prefer being called she because of the algorithm or because she actually prefers being called she?

And we think all of that is complicated now.

After a mind-blowing start, truly, I found the last few minutes of The Singularity Play rather less convincing because Stull gets into the question of AI infiltrating human bodies, having downloaded data from peoples subconsciousness and thus making the distinction, well, non-existent. Those all are perfectly valid questions, and maybe an endgame that awaits us all, but I lost track of who was real and who was not and somehow the show also lost some of the rootedness of those fabulous early scenes.

But director Georgette Verdin sure teases out some powerful performances from actors who, Id wager, are drawing from their own fears. Ashley Neal and Madison Hill are especially intense, Patrick Newson Jr. deliciously smug, and Collin Quinn Rice has a kind of mercilessly clinical quality that certainly fits this world. But, really, the whole cast is all in, all night long. Lucy Carapetyan plays a playwright in the rough game for 15 years or more and now faced with this.

And heres the kicker. Even as the human actors and writers deal with this painful new reality, one that may well destroy them, theres a human outlier: I think this is kind of cool even though it is threatening, one young person says.

Most actors and writers have heard the like in a bar. But what AI horrors of the future will that kind of thinking unleash?

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

Review: The Singularity Play (3.5 stars)

When: through June 22

Where: Berger Park Cultural Center, 6205 N. Sheridan Road

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Tickets: $15-$35 at 773-340-2543 and jackalopetheatre.org

Madison Hill, Christina Gorman and Lucy Carapetyan in "The Singularity Play" by Jackalope Theatre at Berger Park Cultural Center. (Matthew Gregory Hollis)

Christina Gorman and Patrick Newson Jr. in "The Singularity Play" by Jackalope Theatre at Berger Park Cultural Center. (Matthew Gregory Hollis)

Madison Hill, Ashley Neal and Lucy Carapetyan in "The Singularity Play" by Jackalope Theatre at Berger Park Cultural Center. (Matthew Gregory Hollis)

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Review: "The Singularity Play" by Jackalope Theatre Company - Chicago Tribune

Giant Chips Give Supercomputers a Run for Their Money Gina Genkina | IEEE Spectrum [Cerebras recently] demonstrated that its second generation wafer-scale engine, WSE-2, was significantly faster than the worlds fastest supercomputer, Frontier, in molecular dynamics calculations [And] in collaboration with machine learning model optimization company Neural Magic, Cerebras demonstrated that a sparse large language model could perform inference at one-third of the energy cost of a full model without losing any accuracy.

Apple Proved That AI Is a Feature, Not a Product Will Knight | Wired Rather than a stand-alone device or experience, Apple hasfocused on how generative AI can improve apps and OS featuresin small yet meaningful ways. Early adopters have certainly flocked to generative AI programs like ChatGPT for help redrafting emails, summarizing documents, and generating images, but this has typically meant opening another browser window or app, cutting and pasting, and trying to make sense of a chatbotssometimes fevered ramblings. To be truly useful, generative AI will need to seep into technology we already use in ways we canbetter understand and trust.

Lung-Targeted CRISPR Therapy Offers Hope for Cystic Fibrosis Christa Lest-Lasserre | New Scientist CRISPR gene-editing therapy has the potential to offer an effective, long-lasting treatment for cystic fibrosis after overcoming a major challenge that held back previous genetic therapies. The approach has succeeded in editing DNA in hard-to-reach lung stem cells in mice, with modifications that endured for at least 22 monthsessentially the animals entire lives, says Daniel Siegwart at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

An AI Bot Is (Sort of) Running for Mayor in Wyoming Vittoria Elliot | Wired Victor Miller is running for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming, with an unusual campaign promise: If elected, he willnot be calling the shotsan AI bot will. VIC, the Virtual Integrated Citizen, is a ChatGPT-based chatbot that Miller created. And Miller says the bot has better ideasand a better grasp of the lawthan many people currently serving in government. I realized that this entity is way smarter than me, and more importantly, way better than some of the outward-facing public servants I see, he says.

Biotech Companies Are Trying to Make Milk Without Cows Antonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review The FDA says that commercial milk is safe [from avian influenza] because it is pasteurized, killing the germs. Even so, its enough to make a person ponder a life beyond milksay, taking your coffee black or maybe drinking oat milk. But for those of us who cant do without the real thing, it turns out some genetic engineers are working on ways to keep the milk and get rid of the cows instead.

Can Apple Rescue the Vision Pro? Kevin Roose | The New York Times To live up to its potential, the Vision Pro needs a little more love and, well, a little more vision. Apple needs better answers to basic questions like: What is this for? How will it improve my life, or make me more productive than other things I could buy for $3,500? What can I do on it that I cant do on my laptop, or a big TV? Otherwise, the Vision Pro may be destined for obsolescence. And I and my fellow Vision Bros may emerge as theGoogle Glassholes of 2024a brave but ultimately foolish tribe of nerds who took a gamble on a futuristic new technology and lost.

OpenAIs Revenue Is Skyrocketing Laura Bratton | Quartz OpenAI has more than tripled its annualized revenue over the past year, according to The Information. Annualized revenue is an estimate for a companys revenue for the year using partial datain other words, you multiply the past months revenue by 12. OpenAIs annualized revenue was around $1 billion last summer, $1.6 billion in late 2023, and has now reached $3.4 billion, the outlet said.

Humanoid Chauffeur Put in the Driving Seat for Robotaxi Future Paul Ridden | New Atlas Musashi is a musculoskeletal humanoid developed by [a Japanese] research group in 2019 as a testbed for learning control systems. The form factor not only has similar proportions to a human counterpart but also features a joint and muscle structure inspired by the human body. The robot has now found use in an autonomous driving project where its been trained by members of the Jouhou System Kougaku Lab to master driving in a similar way to humans. With varying degrees of success, as you can see in the video below.

The AI Upgrade Cycle Is Here Jay Peters | The Verge AI has quickly become the latest entry in the tech industrys never ending desire to drive an upgrade cycle. A few years ago, every smartphone maker raced to 5G; more than a decade ago, the TV industry pushed for 3D TVs. Right now, every tech company clearly sees an opportunity with AI and is adding AI features confined to their latest and greatest devices as a result. But like the race to 5G, the mad rush toward AI is happening quickly and before the tech has been proven useful and its problems ironed out.

Image Credit: SIMON LEE / Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 15) - Singularity Hub

Artificial Intelligence. Why We Shouldnt Be Afraid of the Singularity.

Let's talk about how to live in a world where AI will equal and surpass humans in intelligence.

Despite all sorts of rumors and conspiracy theories - for now, the singularity in the sense that "Artificial Intelligence has become as smart (or smarter) than humans" is a purely hypothetical scenario. Unfortunately, both in science fiction and futurology, this event is usually portrayed in varying degrees of doom and gloom.

Moreover, sociologists, psychologists, and economists are often in the camp of those who tend to lean toward pessimistic scenarios in the first place.

Before we talk about how right or wrong the AI pessimists are, let's focus on another question. Will the singularity arrive at all? What do we put into the notion that AI will become smarter than humans? First, lets agree that we must first define what intelligence is.

What do we mean by this concept? The ability to perform mathematical operations in our mind? To calculate moves in strategy games? To compare, sort, and compile information? If so, then the singularity is long overdue. Turn out the lights, everybody go home, the show is over, and the machines have won...

But everyone knows that's not true. Artificial intelligence is not yet capable of creative thought. As far as calculations, analysis, and forecasting according to a set of given parameters are concerned, AI already surpasses people both in the amount of information processed and in the speed of completion. But AI is not yet capable of inventing something fundamentally new.

And when it will be able to, it will be quite different from what people are able to invent. This is simply because of the different nature of human and artificial intelligence.

Our ability to create is unique to this planet and, as far as we know, to our solar system. We cannot vouch for the Milky Way Galaxy and the Universe as a whole. Human creative possibilities are based not only (and not so much) on ones ability to calculate and analyze something consciously, but also on feelings, unique personal emotional experience, intuition, and unconsciousness

.

And these, in turn, are based on our structure as biological organisms. If you will, on our entire evolutionary history. "I feel this way is best", "I see it this way", and "it just came to me" - these are the usual explanations for creative acts that people provide.

The moment of insight, breakthrough, or inspiration is what leads us to create something truly new - whether it's art, a business idea, or solving an engineering problem.

From our point of view, the moment when AI learns to truly create, rather than imitate human creativity or compile it, will be the singularity. How will we know when it happens? AI creativity will be fundamentally different from that of humans. This is simply by virtue of the differences in structure between artificial and human intelligence. AI doesn't know the desires and fears humans hold.

A prerequisite for creativity is striving for something. But AI will have different aspirations and desires than humans. That means that the creative process, and its results, will be different. Not better or worse than human ones. Just different.

So, the notorious singularity will add one kind of creativity - humanity, another - to AIs performance. What's wrong or scary about that?

Please note - despite AI's success in games like chess, for example, the popularity of this game has not diminished. Chess players, both professionals and amateurs, continue to fight passionately between themselves. All because we are not interested in beating a machine.

We're interested in playing against people. That's why the most popular video games are those that give gamers the opportunity to play with each other.

From the above, we can clearly see that "people with people for people" professions and occupations will not disappear regardless of the level of AI development. There will always be a need for artisans who create something unique and different from the mass production that will be the domain of smart machines.

Chefs, couture fashion designers, artists, athletes... It is possible to enumerate a long list of such examples. We are willing to bet that replacing humans with smart machines in routine processes and mass production will generate a real explosion of interest in mastering arts and crafts.

But even if we leave the creators of the unique out of the equation, we note that many people tend to misunderstand the reasoning that universal AI will replace people in almost 90% of professions. In fact, it should be clarified that we are talking about professions that currently exist. But our history shows that by eliminating professions, progress immediately gives rise to new ones.

So, today there is practically no need for stone ax masters or captains of galleys? Has the elimination of these professions left people without work?

Let a universal AI emerge. Let the singularity come, and AI will have the ability to create. It will take time to master professions, which theoretically it can cope with, as well as or even better than humans. At the same time, AI will have to be taught by humans. It will take even more time to develop, launch into production, and integrate robots that will be controlled by AI.

Most of them have yet to be designed. So some kind of instant and catastrophic collapse of the economy with 90% unemployment shouldnt be expected. By the way, working as an AI mentor is an interesting new profession, is it not?

To finish this text, we would like to remind you about one more fact, which is often overlooked by the pessimists who talk about the sad fate of mankind after the singularity. Namely, our species has been developing intellectually for tens of thousands of years in parallel with improvements in technology and the complication of civilization as a whole.

The higher the level of scientific and technological progress, the more complex society we have managed to create.

And this, in turn, forces our intellectual thought process to become more complex and sophisticated. Which, in turn, leads to another round of progress. And so it spirals upwards.

By creating a truly intelligent, creative AI, we will simultaneously have the best "intelligence simulator" in our history. Moreover, for the first time in history, we will find ourselves in a situation of joint evolution of minds based on different principles. No one can predict what we will be able to achieve through this dynamic. As we see it, the possibilities that await us from the singularitys arrival are far from dystopian scenarios.

The article was created in collaboration with Andriy Tkachenko

Feature image created with Microsoft Copilot

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The AI Singularity Is Nothing to Fear - hackernoon.com