Hollywood and Unintended Consequences: The AI Puppy Has Escaped
August 2, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
For most viewers, the ongoing writers’ and actors’ guild strikes simply mean the unwelcome delay of their usual diversions. Perhaps they will revisit an old hobby or refresh themselves on what an in-person sunset looks like. But for those in the entertainment industry, this is nothing short of a fight for their livelihoods and, for some, human innovation itself. The Hollywood Reporter transcribes an interview with a prominent SAG-AFTRA negotiator in, “Justine Bateman: Pulling AI Into the Arts is ‘Absolutely the Wrong Direction’.”
Streaming is one major issue in these strikes. Studios are making big bucks off that technology but, strikers assert, pre-streaming contracts fail to protect the interests of actors, writers, and other content creators. Then there is AI, which many see as the bigger threat. Studio efforts to profit from algorithm-built content is already well underway. So, if the studios win out in these negotiations, don’t plan on being a Hollywood writer unless you are really famous, know AI methods, and have a friend in the executive suite. Others can practice van life.
Bateman is very concerned about that issue, of course, but she is also anxious for our collective creative soul. She states:
“Generative AI can only function if you feed it a bunch of material. In the film business, it constitutes our past work. Otherwise, it’s just an empty blender and it can’t do anything on its own. That’s what we were looking at the time [at UCLA]. Machine learning and generative AI have exploded since then. … When I could see that it was going to be used to widen profit margins, in white-collar jobs and more generally replace human expression with our past human expression, I just went, ‘This is an end of the progression of society if we just stayed here.’ If you keep recycling what we’ve got from the past, nothing new will ever be generated. If generative AI started in the beginning of the 20th century, we would never have had jazz, rock ’n’ roll, film noir. That’s what it stops. There are some useful applications to it — I don’t know of that many —but pulling it into the arts is absolutely the wrong direction.'”
So, are the WAG and SAG-AFTRA negotiators all that stand between us and a future of culture-on-repeat? Somehow, this dino-baby has faith human creativity is powerful enough to win out in the end. Just not sure how.
Cynthia Murrell, August 2, 2023
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