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

Ben Affleck is going viral for sounding like an AI engineer, according to TechCrunch. The actor, who sold his AI filmmaking startup to Netflix earlier this year, impressed viewers in recent interview clips. In a GQ interview with Zach Baron, Affleck explained neural networks, transformers, and tensors. He said he can write, quote, "pretty shitty Python scripts." He described how convolutional neural networks detect edges, like window ledges, to help remove green screens. In a separate Bloomberg interview at the Screentime 2026 conference, Affleck explained fine-tuning open-source AI models by unfreezing their weights. He used this technique on his film "Animals." Affleck disputed the reported $587 million Netflix sale figure, saying he didn't own the whole company. On AI's risks, he said he worries less about Skynet, and more about learned helplessness in students. He called AI "additive" to filmmaking, not a replacement. Full article link in bio.