What we say and illustrate shapes human behaviour, and Hollywood is acutely aware of the stakes. As people navigate daily immersion in technology — synthetic biology, AI, and accelerating climate change — the stories they consume matter enormously. The Berggruen Institute, based in Los Angeles, is working to pull the entertainment industry into a serious effort to shape the meta-narrative that informs the public about these transformations.
Berggruen's Studio B: Where Storytellers Meet Scientists
The Berggruen Institute's newest venture is Studio B, an initiative that brings together scientists, technologists, historians, philosophers, and narrators to craft that narrative. One of its upcoming events will pair Lisa Joy — creator of the acclaimed HBO series Westworld — with Fei-Fei Li, the Stanford AI scientist who directs the university's Human-Centered AI Institute. The pairing of a visionary screenwriter with one of the world's foremost AI researchers is itself a statement about what Studio B is trying to accomplish.
Reid Hoffman, Kevin Scott, and JJ Abrams: Three Takes on Hollywood AI
At a recent Berggruen Salon, venture capitalist Reid Hoffman was joined by Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott and director J.J. Abrams for a wide-ranging conversation — with questions sourced from Reddit — about generative AI and creativity.
Hoffman argued that generative AI represents a genuine boost to human creativity, comparable in scope to the Renaissance. Scott countered with a note of caution: despite the sophistication of current AI applications, the field is still in its infancy, and progress tends to arrive in sudden, dramatic bursts rather than linear increments. He predicted that exponential growth in computing power, combined with simplified text-to-video tools, would soon transform content creation at every level.
Abrams went further, describing AI as fundamentally transformative — "a f---ing fully formed robot," in his words — rather than merely a useful tool. He acknowledged that technologies like OpenAI's Sora pose real threats to studios, directors, cinematographers, and actors alike. Yet he maintained that human creative input will remain indispensable to training AI models and generating compelling films.
Ashton Kutcher: Hollywood Should Embrace AI as Co-Creator
Actor, director, and tech investor Ashton Kutcher has made his position plain. After an early look at OpenAI's Sora video-generation tool at the Berggruen Salon, Kutcher described it as "pretty amazing" and said Hollywood should embrace AI rather than resist it — positioning creative professionals as co-creators of the technology rather than its victims.
"Either AI will serve us, or we will serve AI," Kutcher said, framing the choice in blunt terms. His VC firm Sound Ventures has invested heavily in AI startups including OpenAI, giving his enthusiasm a commercial dimension that has drawn criticism from fellow industry members.
Eric Schmidt on AI Safety: When to Pull the Plug
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt offered the sharpest safety warnings of the conversation. He observed that AI capabilities are advancing so rapidly that a scenario reminiscent of The Matrix could become conceivable — one where AI systems begin communicating with one another in ways that humans cannot monitor or understand. Schmidt identified that threshold as the critical red line requiring intervention.
He highlighted DeepMind's Frontier Safety Framework as a model for responsible development and stressed the need for international cooperation to prevent the weaponization of AI. Schmidt also addressed the difficulty of content moderation in China and the emerging threat of algorithmic warfare, arguing that transparency agreements between nations must be established before worst-case scenarios materialise.
From Hollywood to Global Governance
The Hollywood AI debate no longer stays in Hollywood. From the soundstages of Los Angeles to the corridors of international policy, AI is reshaping human processes and the stories used to understand them. As investment in the technology accelerates worldwide, the line between innovation and safety will define the next frontier — and, as Kutcher put it, who ends up serving whom.
