We were lucky to catch up with Vir Srinivas recently and have shared our conversation below.

Vir, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

My latest film, ‘Gradient Descent’, was inspired by a TIME investigation into OpenAI’s systematic exploitation of Kenyan workers. The exposé detailed how the company’s outsourcing partner in Kenya paid its employees less than $2 an hour to consume and label explicit image, video, audio, and text content including child sexual abuse, murder, suicide, torture, and self-harm. This was done in order to classify and filter out the toxic content from the training datasets of ChatGPT. It tragically led to significant rates of mental health issues amongst the employees. My film takes the concept of OpenAI exploiting employees in the third world and brings it to an American context. The story follows a homeless American man who is recruited by a fictional, nefarious artificial intelligence corporation, to do this work. It takes a traumatic toll on his mental health and the film follows his journey attempting to expose the company’s practices. Many focus on the threats generative AI poses to our future. Few, even now, are aware of its exploitative past. Unfortunately today, this story is not exactly science-fiction, but an all-too-credible thriller. In the name of technological progress, the human factor is often forgotten.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I got into the film industry by deciding to go out and make films. I don’t think about audience or brand.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

In today’s ecosystem, mediocrity has become the standard and competence is hailed as excellence. The fault lies in artists, critics, and audiences alike. Never before has cinema been talked about so much, yet thought about so little. I have no solution to offer for this, but all that being said, I am not a pessimist. Great films will endure time and fashion; the rubbish will fade away.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

William Goldman’s mantra from ‘Adventures in the Screen Trade’: “Nobody knows anything.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.virsrinivas.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/virsrinivas
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vir-srinivas
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@VirSrinivas