Ollie Rankin

How computer science opened the door to a career in film

Ollie Rankin didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up. But an open mind and a chance meeting with a friend led to an exciting career in visual FX. Ollie entered the film industry as a Computer Science graduate in 1998 without a career plan. He took various papers outside his specialisation, from chemistry and astronomy to film studies. Ultimately, his experience in AI landed him the job that would kick-start his career.

What is your current position?

My time is currently split between three roles:

• Creative Director at Pansensory Interactive, I write and direct interactive VR experiences and create short films and games.
•  Vice President of Live Entertainment at Sansar, where I produce live virtual events, such as music festivals in the metaverse.
• Director of United Humans Foundation, a think tank and advocacy organisation that is building an open-source system for optimal collective decision-making centred on inclusivity, fairness, and science.

What was your introduction toworking with AI?

Peter Jackson’s announcement to make the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was the moment I suddenly knew what I wanted to do. My initial application, which focused on programming, was not successful. However, a chance meeting with a friend revealed Weta Digital were developing software to allow digital orcs and elves to think for themselves and fight each other in epic battles using artificial intelligence.

After this project, I helped develop four other crowd simulation systems. Interestingly, I spent a decade progressively dumbing down the crowds I made for subsequent movies to give the film directors precisely what they wanted.

Can you tell us about your current work with AI?

Most recently, I’ve been using AI in several capacities. Firstly – and probably a cliche at this point – is using generative AI (usually midjourney’s stable diffusion tool, but also sometimes DALL-E and Runway) to produce concept art; designing characters and environments for virtual reality productions; creating pitch deck and sizzle reel content. The second application of AI in VR I’ve been involved in recently isn’t as far along in development. We’ve been experimenting at Sansar with the creation of virtual digital personas, autonomous AI avatars with unique personalities and the ability to interact with real people.

What are some of the challenges AI presents in your line of work?

Stable diffusion, DALL-E and Runway are all pretty effective at producing something that looks “cool” based on a given prompt. But they can’t (yet) reproduce precisely what I’m thinking of, and they can’t produce multiple pieces of content that are stylistically consistent and with identical subjects (yet). As for the AI avatars, the biggest blockers are nuanced social things, such as the AI knowing when it is its turn to speak and converse with more than one person at a time.

Are there any aspects of AI technology you think are problematic?

Yes, I have a few:

I am particularly mindful of how much people play around with generative AI and the energy that it consumes. I imagine many of the queries being processed by midjourney, DALL-E, ChatGPT, etc., are purely for curiosity. By definition, these models are not creating anything new; training and running them uses enormous energy, inevitably incurring environmental
costs.

It is now cost-effective for every commercial brand or political campaign to use an AI chatbot to learn their target audience’s preferences, biases and
weaknesses.

I think any technology (machine, algorithm, AI) that can mimic a human ability essentially decreases the market value of human labour and, in doing so, increases the value of wealth. Without regulation, wealth inequality will only increase with every new technological advancement.

Finally, It’s not unthinkable that an artificial general intelligence, given too much agency, might decide that humans are obsolete and irrelevant to its objectives. Or worse, our existence is preventing it from achieving its objectives.

Do you have any career aspirations you would like to share?

To play a part in transitioning humanity away from exploitation and greed towards an inclusive, fair and sustainable future. That’s why I formed the United Humans Foundation (unitedhumans.com). I’m always seeking allies and collaborators because this ambitious goal can be achieved only with massive global support.

What advice would you give to someone considering studies related to AI?

I would encourage anyone considering studying AI to pursue it, but not just for its own sake. Identify a real-world problem we aren’t progressing fast enough as a species and figure out how to apply AI to address it.

Finally, tell us something we can’t learn about you from Googling you!

I’m Gollum’s toenail double. During my first year at Weta, a few of us would play hackysack daily in a loading bay. One day, going after a high-flying hacky sack, I accidentally kicked a steel drain pipe and wrecked my toenail. It turned black and fell off the following week. What grew back was such a gnarly, discoloured, unhuman claw that it was scanned in and used as a reference for Gollum’s fingernails and toenails.