Money or Mandala: Sora Was Never Built to Last
A monk spends weeks creating a sand painting, then destroys it. That's the point. Sora spent two years promising the future. What was theirs?
When I walked in the room dancing in greens and blues and reds, the loud quiet of the artist painting pierced with the gentle scraping of a rod along the chak-pur, vibrating sands fall like a stream and become a painting.
It’s like watching magic. Then in a few days, the painting is gone, and that’s the point. We go in for the temporary to understand. Nothing lasts.
Because the joy the artist brings fills the room along with the regular and rhythmic scraping of the chak-pur. The action connects us to what comes out, we’re part of it, and while it’s sad it goes away, we view knowing it will not last.
The gift is being there, in that moment of time when it becomes real….and then isn’t. Like many current AI companies leading the hype cycle. I’m good with the quiet creative monk doing work that won’t last.
Though Sora makes me wonder: what’s the purpose of building something while pretending it will last forever? When the answer to that is only money, we’re missing the point. It’s what you put into it that matters.
The mandala came out of quiet actions, intense practice, and a goal. Create and destroy. Sort of like loud AI promises chasing trillions with predicted futures that rarely happen.
Sora the AI video app was built to last, at least a few years ago. Disney jumps in with incredible content and $1B investment promise. And now one is demoted and the other is gone.
It’s like we’re in the room waiting for the mandala to appear, then we let it go for 2 years before wiping it away with an executive’s signature. At least the monk gave us a limited time period, we’ve spent two years using Sora and you just say goodbye like that?
And does this apply to any other trillion-dollar dreams? Sure, keep on using ChatGPT, or could it go away or get swallowed by Microsoft into another dreary Bing experience.
Already so many are complaining about the crap quality coming out, a mixture of guardrails and IPO rules that make companies shut up and cut out what doesn’t fit.
Still for them it’s a financial decision, not taking away an essential tool used to develop a skill that’s not easy to transfer. Like a monk sand painting. We ask creatives and visual artists to build the future with AI, and then the future is cancelled. Because it’s burning money like a fast spreading grass fire.
And how do you know the next AI video tool you depend on won’t suffer the same result? AI video right now is bad business. The “that’s part of early tech” excuse may work, and it’s also a question of why we are doing what we’re doing.
Then the future happened for Sora. Demoted from App Stores, the standalone app is shutting down, the model survives behind the ChatGPT paywall.
From one of the most downloaded apps 5 months ago to the dustbin of the paywall. The people who use it are left out. Good luck with Sora, go to another tool; many use all the tools because they don’t trust them to last. And no single one is the best, yet. The whole AI mantra, train yourself blather, goes quiet as the AI video tools drop from too much usage and too little money.
Big promises, big empty. So many are building things that are chasing a dream they can’t explain, in the future they keep repeating will happen so eventually we’ll all believe it. That doesn’t last.
Unlike the Tibetan monks making their art into a feeling and a memory, of missing that painting when it goes away. We owned it for a while, even a few weeks, then it’s no longer. The life cycle in a nutshell, delivered with a smile that the end has as much meaning as the beginning. What you put into the work is what comes out, even when it goes away.
I’m rooting for the monk because watching someone build and create makes you tingle with what’s happening. I felt that with AI, then the emptiness of the visions adapting to whatever the money asks. Not what people want, or what solves problems.
The monk knew in the end, the painting was gone for a reason.
We don’t know that with GenAI at all.