Bullet Build Layering

Here's a rolling news slide treatment from London. A different slant on the traditional, yet tired, trope of animating bullets. So delaying reveal in time with your glowing speech. Otherwise, your audience reads ahead of you and fails to take in any of your words of wisdom, attention lapsed until the next slide appears.

It's from First Edition with Tom Newton Dunn, Monday 5th June 2023, on channel Talk TV.

I was intrigued to learn that earlier this year, purported singularity - beyond the Turing Test point where artificial surpasses human intelligence - was ten years away. One person helping to form Britain's 'AI Taskforce' though now slashes this time horizon.

These following graphics [running for sixty seconds from here] were to discuss The Times front page piece for the following day's print edition. Quoting Matt Clifford [preceding 9min interview], Prime Ministerial policy adviser on AI; 2 Years To Save The World.

Apparently, inside 24 short months, 'AI systems will be powerful enough to “kill many humans” '.

Anyone not seen Terminator?

But away from sci-fi...

Which naturally all adds up to prole panic.

Thankfully not all those involved see armageddon as inevitable. One wing suggest a ceiling from the inability of AI to have 'understanding of causality'. Another gently urges easing up on the 'hero worship' of computer scientists and related 'AGI doomerism'. And the ever useful reminder, 'being expert in neural networks does not make you a great forecaster'.

Then how about this for summary sign-off from talking head around this piece, The Times' science editor Tom Whipple;

"the dogma is you create AI and that is the last problem that humans have to solve, you then use the AI to solve everything else".

I can imagine remixing that quote with annotations. Swapping in your wonders and prospect name for 'AI' and 'humans' for starters on a cheeky discussion slide. Handy for grounding your proposal in reality, ie. away from dogma towards requiring resource, commitment and professionality.

So what of this primetime slide treatment?

Firstly, a thematic predicament.

Here we dive straight into the first of five bullets. No absent text intro, save for a title line. Which can suit if time is pressured, as much live tv news is.

Yet a linked issue with this type of 'build slide' approach, is also what happens at the end.

Most then tend to dwell after the final point in some way. Whether summarising what has gone before, or pontificating as to overall consequences.

Which misses a trick somewhat. As then your spoken words do not align with the final image. Particularly not with any message on-screen should you stay with the final point's matching background.

Is the answer as simple as clicking again for another background image. One evoking the broader endeavour? For a point-ramming linger, before moving on.

Which can bring us back to the start as well. For you could use same image up front as you intro your incoming slide before revealing bullet No.1.

Making transition perhaps just that little bit smoother.

Next, imagery.

What does each image say, actually? And how clearly does it, really?

Are any of these deployed above any good?

Notwithstanding the fact that an abstract concept can be tricky to apply a background image to, at least the bio pic has some colour, and the gyrocopter drones weaponry is straight from today's valiant Ukraine defence.

Finally, think of what follows.

The thread of the host was to ask a pair of subsequent contributors was less whether these did represent a two-year off trauma, but more on the policy implications.

A salesdeck could combine similar. Starting from an underlying premise.

What does the audience make of the imminence or distance of said (in this case) "threat"?

Or you could ask for a ranking.

Which of (here) these five are most troubling. And if different, which can we do something about right now? Not forgetting the (vital) confirmation that all assembled are indeed compelled to act on them, and now.