Willie Geist

Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist · Ben Affleck on “Animals,” Matt Damon, and His Family

• Why Does Ben Affleck Tie Congo's Ebola to America?

  Ben Affleck says philanthropists should not show up and dictate how local work gets done. Flying in people from Europe or North America and paying them to stand around as experts leaves no real value and no real improvement where they work. His model is to invest in local organizations until they become sustainable and need no further investing. The work includes women victims of gender-based violence in war, capacity building with coffee farmers and growers, education, internal health, access to clean water, and healthcare.

  The abrupt dissolution of USAID raised the stakes. Affleck calls USAID a tiny fraction of the US federal budget and a very meaningful piece of the aid that goes out to

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• What Example Does Ben Affleck Want His Kids to See?

  Ben Affleck says what really stays with him, and what he hopes his children take from his life and career, is that their dad did not give up and did not hold himself above anybody else. He was successful in direct correlation to the hard work he put in. Sometimes you work hard and still do not get there. Doing the work anyway leaves an esteem that no one can take away.

  A happy life follows from your own sense of what counts as success and failure. It does not need someone else to say the work was great, and it does not need the approval of the whole world. He loves Animals, wants people to see it, and thinks they will like it. He makes movies mindful of the audience, their time, and their e

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• Why Does Ben Affleck Say Artificial Intelligence Must Err?

  Ben Affleck says artificial intelligence is always going to be error prone. A calculator, the kind of computing people already know, gives the same precise result every time someone says four times four. Artificial intelligence is probabilistic. It works like a bookmaker setting a line and finding a mean, then landing in a zone. When a result is wrong, or when the system states something with tremendous authority and then admits the fault, the miss is how the technology does what it does successfully.

  In 1982, traders had computers sell a stock as soon as it hit a certain number. Everybody did the same thing. The computer sales dumped the stocks, caused a panic, and wiped the market out. Th

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• Why Share Movie Incentives With the Crew?

  One panelist knows for absolute certain that a movie is better when the people making it share the incentive to make it good. The environment is better, the likelihood of quality is higher, and the experience of the human beings doing the work improves.

  If all twelve other people in the room are invested, they stay a little longer or try a little harder and pick up an extra piece or an extra shot, because people are going to watch. If all someone cares about is the check and going home, and nobody treats the person as important to the process, the extra shot gets no help. A slider that is off is just too bad. Some people still work to a higher standard anyway, just because of who they are,

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• Why Wouldn't Jen Garner Play Ben Affleck's Wife?

  Ben Affleck asked Jen Garner to play his wife, and she told him she was not going to do it. He thinks she is a great actress, and he wanted to see another side of her because he knows her so well. He says she is, as usual, a little wiser than he is.

  Matt Damon had just gotten the Odyssey, and Ben Affleck says Damon was as happy as Affleck had ever seen him the day he got the job. Affleck knew it meant a lot. Damon had already had the opportunity to do lots of work, and the Odyssey was clearly meaningful. Affleck was really happy for him. He calls the experience great, and he thinks it would have been great even absent the result. Affleck decided to play the part himself rather than risk som

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