This is the part that we should all pay close attention to as much of these people are barely making ends meet: Most of the people striking are regular working class people. Hollywood is built on...
This is the part that we should all pay close attention to as much of these people are barely making ends meet:
Plenty of folks check out of any Hollywood story because, on the surface, the movie and TV world seems made up of the rich and famous—people easily viewed as out of touch with most of our realities. But in actuality, most of the people striking, including actors, make barely livable wages—a member of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee told Democracy Now! that 87 percent of the union’s members earn less than $26,000 a year. Workers in tangential industries who aren’t members of SAG-AFTRA or WGA, such as makeup artists, are also hurting with productions at a halt.
Most of the people striking are regular working class people. Hollywood is built on their backs, but because the pretty multimillionaire faces are those that we see front and center we assume it's all glitz and glamor and millionaires arguing with billionaires. This fight is every bit as important as any other working class strike.
The glitz and glamor is also what draws those working class below-the-line workers to Hollywood in the first place. They also fall under the spell of the industry's marketing. It can be incredibly...
The glitz and glamor is also what draws those working class below-the-line workers to Hollywood in the first place. They also fall under the spell of the industry's marketing. It can be incredibly unglamorous work with lots of manual labor for exceedingly long hours. All glamor industries rely on their allure to get people to work under miserable or boring conditions for little pay. It's what they count on.
Even if it was just the pretty multimillionaire faces on the other side of this, they deserve our support. They are the little guy here. The studios are multi-national corporations with annual...
Even if it was just the pretty multimillionaire faces on the other side of this, they deserve our support. They are the little guy here. The studios are multi-national corporations with annual revenue in the tens of billions of dollars. It's the same story as when pro-sports unions go on strike -- sure the players make a lot more than the average person, but the power dynamic is the same as on a union shop floor and they're fighting people making billions off their labor.
Intellectually you're correct but I'm never going to get my brain to emotionally be sympathetic to celebrities. They may be a pawn in the game but goddamn are a lot of them despicable.
Intellectually you're correct but I'm never going to get my brain to emotionally be sympathetic to celebrities. They may be a pawn in the game but goddamn are a lot of them despicable.
AI is just trained on these people's work, though. Why should they not get paid? If this was AGI that was creating something wholly new without being fed tons of scripts then you'd have a point....
AI is just trained on these people's work, though. Why should they not get paid? If this was AGI that was creating something wholly new without being fed tons of scripts then you'd have a point. But it's not. It's a glorified search engine rearranging what already exists.
With respect to "ali" being able to create someting new without training on a bunch of scripts, agi as its commonly understtod (human equivilant or above) would not be able to do that. Neither can...
With respect to "ali" being able to create someting new without training on a bunch of scripts, agi as its commonly understtod (human equivilant or above) would not be able to do that. Neither can humans. Nothing created is 'wholly new', nor do we create something in a vaccum. We are influenced by and learn from every other idea we have ever been exposed to. If you ask somone who has never watched a movie or play, never read a novel or played a videi game, to write a screenplay? They wouldnt be able to.
Im not saying that ai training is direcly analogous to human learning, (we frankly are nowhere near the level of neurology knoledge to even begin to know if it is or isnt), but saying a hypothetical ethical AI must produce something entirely new, or do its tasks with no training off of pre-existing works is an impssible standard that not even we can live up to.
Humans can start from scratch and create something. AI can't. It needs something to learn off of. It can't experience things. Humans can and the can use those experiences to create things.
Humans can start from scratch and create something. AI can't. It needs something to learn off of. It can't experience things. Humans can and the can use those experiences to create things.
AI does experience things, it's just that something like ChatGPT is only capable of experiencing text. Humans would be equally useless if completely deprived of things to learn from.
AI does experience things, it's just that something like ChatGPT is only capable of experiencing text. Humans would be equally useless if completely deprived of things to learn from.
Write a song that anyone wants to listen to and have it be completely "from scratch" and divorced from everything that came before. There are fundamental mathematical rules of what makes something...
Write a song that anyone wants to listen to and have it be completely "from scratch" and divorced from everything that came before. There are fundamental mathematical rules of what makes something musical, and taste is informed by experience. That's the whole reason genres form.
TV Tropes exists because there are fundamental patterns to what works for storytelling. There is no magical novelty that doesn't touch on what came before, unless you think you can write an enthralling script about an electron's experience buzzing around the centauri system in a made up language with an inhuman grammar.
Try to draw something aesthetically pleasing without leaning on the centuries of illustrative art that already exist. I doubt it would escape some comparison.
Everything that ever was or ever will be is a remix of all that came before. For decades, it's been clear we need to reform and pare down copyright, not make it more dystopian. Otherwise art suffers.
Art is, however, a form of human expression and communication, not a product for consumption. A machine is technically incapable of art, as is a committee making a paint by numbers movie.
No they can't. If you took a human infant, put them in a box, gave them food, water, and shelter, but no other outside influences, when it became an adult, it wouldn't be able to talk or function...
Humans can start from scratch and create something.
No they can't. If you took a human infant, put them in a box, gave them food, water, and shelter, but no other outside influences, when it became an adult, it wouldn't be able to talk or function at all, let alone create anything meaningful. The human mind isn't so different from a neural network. It's what they're modeled after. There's nothing inherently magical about the way the human mind works. It's just very very complicated and honed by millennia of evolution.
the training process of the model is actually the analogue to previous experiences in human learning: “A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to some class of tasks T...
the training process of the model is actually the analogue to previous experiences in human learning:
“A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to some class of tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at tasks in T, as measured by P, improves with experience E.”
Humans can't create anything meaningful without extensive learning from previous experiences. Infants playing with crayons just make a garbled mess, with some hints at patterns. Interestingly AI is the same when the training is too shallow.
Humans can't either. We do have some knowledge of how people who "start from scratch" develop. In psychology, they are usually labeled as "feral children" and I think they illustrate pretty well...
Humans can start from scratch and create something. AI can't.
Humans can't either. We do have some knowledge of how people who "start from scratch" develop. In psychology, they are usually labeled as "feral children" and I think they illustrate pretty well how much you underestimate the effect of learning. Without learning, there is not much "human" left, even the capacity to use language and think is impaired.
It can't experience things. Humans can and the can use those experiences to create things.
How do you define "experiencing" things? Because in the context of learning and creativity, I would define it as the ability to receive input and change the internal wiring in reaction to that input. Which AI does have.
If you mean what is commonly referred to as "qualia", then please explain why you think it is necessary for creativity.
It’s not like Hollywood is out there creating something “wholly new” as it is though. And I generally disagree with the idea that LLMs just rearrange what already exists. They compress information...
It’s not like Hollywood is out there creating something “wholly new” as it is though. And I generally disagree with the idea that LLMs just rearrange what already exists. They compress information until patterns emerge, often patterns that aren’t easily articulable by humans. Those learned patterns constitute something new, just as much as a human who synthesizes information from multiple sources to make a “new” work of their own.
Actors and artists are all trained on each other's work. You should get paid for the stuff you create, not the stuff other people create or machines create. Even if they use your artwork to learn...
Actors and artists are all trained on each other's work.
You should get paid for the stuff you create, not the stuff other people create or machines create. Even if they use your artwork to learn how to create more art.
I see this as just asking for the products of other people's labor.
LoL. I think someone would just tell you that if what you said is true, you have nothing to worry about then. "I want to be able to use these tools, but I don't think you should be able to use...
LoL. I think someone would just tell you that if what you said is true, you have nothing to worry about then.
"I want to be able to use these tools, but I don't think you should be able to use them" is just a dumb stance. I listen to a lot of comedy writers podcast and they seem way more focused on the streaming reveneue issues here, which makes sense to me. Ive sorta come to assume these ai clauses were put into negotiating just to get sag some room to negotiate and compromise.
The thing is that AI can’t write a workable script at all. They can write convincing filler content, but it doesn’t have a concept of what’s entertaining or meaningful. A good script doesn’t have...
The thing is that AI can’t write a workable script at all. They can write convincing filler content, but it doesn’t have a concept of what’s entertaining or meaningful.
A good script doesn’t have any wasted words in it; every single phrase is there for a reason and has meaning behind it. LLMs do not have that kind of depth and there is no evidence to believe that they ever will. The only role I could begin to see them writing would be interview questions, because then the interviewee would provide the meaning.
Patrick Willems just did a video on AI and on Nebula he put out an extra where he had ChatGPT write a script that he put his best effort into producing into an actual video. And as predicted, it turned out terrible. The writing was basically just drivel that name dropped some movies and some cinematic techniques they used. It was filled with some nonsensical changes of scenery and full of calls to action to like, subscribe, and comment. Overall it was lacking in substance and read like it was a book report written by a high school student who didn’t actually read the book.
The movie you are referencing is not bad because it had a shitty writer. It was bad because the things the filmmakers and producers wanted made no sense. Too many cooks had too much influence, and...
The movie you are referencing is not bad because it had a shitty writer. It was bad because the things the filmmakers and producers wanted made no sense. Too many cooks had too much influence, and in the end it was a huge disjointed mess with a bunch of things literally pulled from thin air because it didn’t make sense for them to be there in the first place.
I have not seen one piece of evidence that has given me the slightest glimmer of hope that AI will ever be able to write something with subtext or any deeper meaning with any sort of intention. It might come up accidentally, but not purposefully. You can’t just say it will because future. Idealized futures don’t happen.
I’m slightly conflicted, because I actually look forward to a future where regular people can access AI based databanks replete with actors with lifelike vocal skills, costuming, set designs,...
I’m slightly conflicted, because I actually look forward to a future where regular people can access AI based databanks replete with actors with lifelike vocal skills, costuming, set designs, special effects, adaptive motion capture routines, and writing engines that can take an initial concept to a full blown script, allowing them to make their own films from start to finish without paying a cent for anything beyond processing power.
Like yes I get how mega corps will (ab)use this technology, but it will have the side effect of democratizing the creative process for the other billions of people out here with ideas but no resources to put them into action.
Well, there is a giant question of copyrights and personal information. These actors and singers whose faces and voices you would be using are real people, who should have agency as to how their...
Well, there is a giant question of copyrights and personal information. These actors and singers whose faces and voices you would be using are real people, who should have agency as to how their visage is being used. And even if we ar talking about "entirely AI generated" stuff, it was still trained on real people and their, very often stolen, work.
I am a great proponent of progress, but i'm also of the opinion that we should hold us to a much higher ethical standards regarding this thing.
This part is a core of the anti-AI argument and it never made any sense to me. If I study an artist's work and practice until I can create paintings in their style, what makes that any different...
This part is a core of the anti-AI argument and it never made any sense to me.
It was still trained on real people and their, very often stolen, work.
If I study an artist's work and practice until I can create paintings in their style, what makes that any different than training an AI to do it?
The examples that have come up of "stolen work" are universally either data that artists have put out into the wider internet and found out that - gasp - the internet shares data, or it's a scummy stock photo company like Getty Images who have their own reputation for taking work and claiming copyright on it.
In any of these cases I can't manage to find the outrage.
I'd argue that you don't even have to mimic or recreate their style to still be influenced (color choice, choice of emphasis, etc). I, too, have a hard time getting fully on board with some of the...
If I study an artist's work and practice until I can create paintings in their style, what makes that any different than training an AI to do it?
I'd argue that you don't even have to mimic or recreate their style to still be influenced (color choice, choice of emphasis, etc). I, too, have a hard time getting fully on board with some of the AI hate as a result.
There are only so many variations of "reluctant hero" or "chosen one" stories. Is it any different that a human made Harry Potter after Star Wars instead of an AI prompt "Star Wars modern time magic only no tech Obiwan lives" or whatever?
The difference is mostly between a singular person using your art for his own means, the other is a literal corporation making huge profits with your art. And human being inspired by somebodies...
The difference is mostly between a singular person using your art for his own means, the other is a literal corporation making huge profits with your art.
And human being inspired by somebodies art is somethin fundamentally different than AI art. Ai art doesn't create. It doesn't has the capacity to make anything new. It only remixes old stuff, which is again fundamentally different.
Try giving AI art programs a very specific promt- they get stuck on some things because they don't have any prior references, and are unable of "imagination".
I'm with you on the class war, however I completely disagree with your premise of AI limitations (and wishful thinking that humans in a void can make something "new") When the uber rich will seek...
I'm with you on the class war, however I completely disagree with your premise of AI limitations (and wishful thinking that humans in a void can make something "new")
When the uber rich will seek out any tool that allows them to stop paying their workforce, and we get mad at the tool... The rich will win.
We need to fundamentally disconnect human worth from productivity. Or the rich will keep winning until we've lost everything.
Well that's the thing, there need to be laws and contracts dictating the use of these things, like with the stock photos. Right now the companies want to own the 3d visage of their actors for all...
Well that's the thing, there need to be laws and contracts dictating the use of these things, like with the stock photos. Right now the companies want to own the 3d visage of their actors for all eternity, with little or no residual payment
Ah, I thought we were talking in general, not about the specifics of the strike. The training issue is a much thornier nut to crack. This bit about scanning and then using an AI model in...
Ah, I thought we were talking in general, not about the specifics of the strike. The training issue is a much thornier nut to crack.
This bit about scanning and then using an AI model in perpetuity is so absurd that even the companies can't think they'll get that. It seems likely to me to be a red herring, something to enrage the union to fight against only to hand them a win here in exchange for what they really want. I suspect at the most the studios will get the right to use AI in lieu of a re-shoot for a specific release the actor was already paid for.
The actors are on strike precisely because the studios argue they should be able to pay an actor for a day to be scanned and then fully own and use their likeness whenever they want without any...
The actors are on strike precisely because the studios argue they should be able to pay an actor for a day to be scanned and then fully own and use their likeness whenever they want without any further remuneration for the actor. The actors would be fine with a scenario like you describe, though I am sure there would be some caveats to it, the largest of which would be properly labeling when an AI generation is in use.
Properly labeling AI generation is definitely going to be an issue initially, though in time I suspect we'll switch to anything that's a real performance being what's labeled simply because it'll...
Properly labeling AI generation is definitely going to be an issue initially, though in time I suspect we'll switch to anything that's a real performance being what's labeled simply because it'll feature prominently in marketing.
You are perfectly able to wrote scripts and get people to do the acting already. Either through amateur acting on local theatre stages, or just with a pen and paper plus a group of random people...
You are perfectly able to wrote scripts and get people to do the acting already.
Either through amateur acting on local theatre stages, or just with a pen and paper plus a group of random people you recruit from anywhere.
The skill needed to make it into what you envision, rather than amateurish crap, didn't come from nowhere.
The distance between you and a finished entertainment product today is exactly what makes those other people want to be paid liveable wages. It takes effort.
As far as I know, the increase in wages that they are asking for wouldn't even mean an actually noticeable difference to the top execs. They already have so much money that they can't ever spend it all even if they tried.
Thats ridiculous, the creative process is already democratized. Write a script with a piece of paper and pen using your own words and brain then grab your iphone and start filming. The process is...
Thats ridiculous, the creative process is already democratized. Write a script with a piece of paper and pen using your own words and brain then grab your iphone and start filming. The process is made creative by the solutions you personally employ to overcome a gap in raw skill, money, resources.
What youre describing is content, which does not require the stealing of work from millions of hard working individuals to empower a faceless corporation to sell subscriptions to the lazy in order to pump out garbage and make "passive income".
I think that would be cool too and I wish it were also a future wherein there are plenty of social safety nets for all, so that the people whose jobs get displaced by generative AI (actors,...
I think that would be cool too and I wish it were also a future wherein there are plenty of social safety nets for all, so that the people whose jobs get displaced by generative AI (actors, costume designers, set designers, writers, everyone from your list and more) will still have other opportunities.
It’s a big issue for sure, and I don’t have a clear idea on what we are supposed to do about it. Something along the lines of a guaranteed basic income is what I expect eventually. We do have to...
It’s a big issue for sure, and I don’t have a clear idea on what we are supposed to do about it. Something along the lines of a guaranteed basic income is what I expect eventually.
We do have to start getting used to the idea of a world where virtually all jobs are automated though.
Self checkouts definitely make my life better. I don't want to go through a regular checkout line. Hell, I want to pay on my phone and walk out without the bottleneck of the kiosk. Back when I...
Self checkouts definitely make my life better. I don't want to go through a regular checkout line. Hell, I want to pay on my phone and walk out without the bottleneck of the kiosk.
Back when I worked retail in college, managing a few SCOs was also definitely better than running a single checkout line and having to interact with annoying customers. The customers benefit too, because their choice would be multiple self checkouts operated by one person or waiting in line for a single register operated by one person.
I love self check outs though. I prefer interacting with as little humans as I can when I'm just going about running errands. The line for self check outs tend to move faster too for some reason.
I love self check outs though. I prefer interacting with as little humans as I can when I'm just going about running errands.
The line for self check outs tend to move faster too for some reason.
This is measurably true for multiple reasons. The first being that the self checkout usually has a single input queue for a bank of 4+ kiosks. This allows for the queue to keep moving forward even...
The line for self check outs tend to move faster too for some reason.
This is measurably true for multiple reasons. The first being that the self checkout usually has a single input queue for a bank of 4+ kiosks. This allows for the queue to keep moving forward even if one kiosk is slowed down by a customer who needs help or is paying in all quarters. The second is that even though some self checkouts have no item limit, after a certain subjective item count, people will self select to go to a staffed checkout line. Thereby reducing the average number of items that need to get scanned per person in the self checkout line.
The faster processing time is usually why I go through self checkout. Even if every staffed checkout is only 1-2 people deep and the self checkout has 6-10 people I'll still pick it because I know the odds of me getting "stuck" behind a slow transaction are much lower. Especially if I'm just there for a quick 1-5 items, I can usually scan and pay and walk out in under 60 seconds once I'm at the front of the line.
Honestly, this is exactly what I was thinking things would come to (especially after deepfakes became so legit) after watching S1m0ne back in the day. I think that's when I realized that...
Honestly, this is exactly what I was thinking things would come to (especially after deepfakes became so legit) after watching S1m0ne back in the day. I think that's when I realized that technology isn't always the awesomeness we hope it will be...
Then I watched Carrie Fisher in The Last Jedi and cringed so hard. Even if I disagree with any actual famous rich person striking, I believe it's wrong using likenesses without consent. It seems like the music business all over again, where someone writes a song, signs their life away to a label, and gets jack shit after the fact.
I mean, who's to state what's right and wrong though... I dunno.
Why do you disagree with famous actors striking? They are less than 2k of SAG/AFTRAs 160k members. Why not use their fame to make a better working life for the 158k members that barely make a...
Why do you disagree with famous actors striking? They are less than 2k of SAG/AFTRAs 160k members. Why not use their fame to make a better working life for the 158k members that barely make a living? In the end, the money is being made. Why should it all go to the studio instead of to the "famous rich person"? You'd rather the money go to the billionaires instead of the millionaires?
I think the writers are mostly focusing their strikes on the wrong entities - the content producers. They need to be focusing their strikes on the creators of AI. Content producers like Disney are...
I think the writers are mostly focusing their strikes on the wrong entities - the content producers. They need to be focusing their strikes on the creators of AI.
Content producers like Disney are using the tools, sure, but it’s AI companies who are raking in the profits.
Microsoft just posted an absolutely massive gain in stock price this last quarter. Strike them. Join arms with all other studios and demand royalties on the content they are scraping. Microsoft knows they will profit from AI - and would likely be willing to cut out some profits for the writers. Get in on that early. Protesting Disney executive pay is, in my opinion, going after the small fries.
Even though striking the production companies is a just cause, a more effective and lucrative path in my opinion would be to take on the AI creators themselves and demand a share of the profits.
They would have an option. If writers/content creators successfully defend their copyrights in court and successfully “unionize” in a cohesive front against AI tech then tech companies would be...
They would have an option. If writers/content creators successfully defend their copyrights in court and successfully “unionize” in a cohesive front against AI tech then tech companies would be required to profit share. That’s the goal I think they should pursue.
This is the part that we should all pay close attention to as much of these people are barely making ends meet:
Most of the people striking are regular working class people. Hollywood is built on their backs, but because the pretty multimillionaire faces are those that we see front and center we assume it's all glitz and glamor and millionaires arguing with billionaires. This fight is every bit as important as any other working class strike.
The glitz and glamor is also what draws those working class below-the-line workers to Hollywood in the first place. They also fall under the spell of the industry's marketing. It can be incredibly unglamorous work with lots of manual labor for exceedingly long hours. All glamor industries rely on their allure to get people to work under miserable or boring conditions for little pay. It's what they count on.
Even if it was just the pretty multimillionaire faces on the other side of this, they deserve our support. They are the little guy here. The studios are multi-national corporations with annual revenue in the tens of billions of dollars. It's the same story as when pro-sports unions go on strike -- sure the players make a lot more than the average person, but the power dynamic is the same as on a union shop floor and they're fighting people making billions off their labor.
Intellectually you're correct but I'm never going to get my brain to emotionally be sympathetic to celebrities. They may be a pawn in the game but goddamn are a lot of them despicable.
The vast majority of actors and performers of any type are good, honest, everyday people. The despicable people just get a whole lot more press.
AI is just trained on these people's work, though. Why should they not get paid? If this was AGI that was creating something wholly new without being fed tons of scripts then you'd have a point. But it's not. It's a glorified search engine rearranging what already exists.
With respect to "ali" being able to create someting new without training on a bunch of scripts, agi as its commonly understtod (human equivilant or above) would not be able to do that. Neither can humans. Nothing created is 'wholly new', nor do we create something in a vaccum. We are influenced by and learn from every other idea we have ever been exposed to. If you ask somone who has never watched a movie or play, never read a novel or played a videi game, to write a screenplay? They wouldnt be able to.
Im not saying that ai training is direcly analogous to human learning, (we frankly are nowhere near the level of neurology knoledge to even begin to know if it is or isnt), but saying a hypothetical ethical AI must produce something entirely new, or do its tasks with no training off of pre-existing works is an impssible standard that not even we can live up to.
Humans can start from scratch and create something. AI can't. It needs something to learn off of. It can't experience things. Humans can and the can use those experiences to create things.
AI does experience things, it's just that something like ChatGPT is only capable of experiencing text. Humans would be equally useless if completely deprived of things to learn from.
Write a song that anyone wants to listen to and have it be completely "from scratch" and divorced from everything that came before. There are fundamental mathematical rules of what makes something musical, and taste is informed by experience. That's the whole reason genres form.
TV Tropes exists because there are fundamental patterns to what works for storytelling. There is no magical novelty that doesn't touch on what came before, unless you think you can write an enthralling script about an electron's experience buzzing around the centauri system in a made up language with an inhuman grammar.
Try to draw something aesthetically pleasing without leaning on the centuries of illustrative art that already exist. I doubt it would escape some comparison.
Everything that ever was or ever will be is a remix of all that came before. For decades, it's been clear we need to reform and pare down copyright, not make it more dystopian. Otherwise art suffers.
Art is, however, a form of human expression and communication, not a product for consumption. A machine is technically incapable of art, as is a committee making a paint by numbers movie.
No they can't. If you took a human infant, put them in a box, gave them food, water, and shelter, but no other outside influences, when it became an adult, it wouldn't be able to talk or function at all, let alone create anything meaningful. The human mind isn't so different from a neural network. It's what they're modeled after. There's nothing inherently magical about the way the human mind works. It's just very very complicated and honed by millennia of evolution.
the training process of the model is actually the analogue to previous experiences in human learning:
“A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to some class of tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at tasks in T, as measured by P, improves with experience E.”
Humans can't create anything meaningful without extensive learning from previous experiences. Infants playing with crayons just make a garbled mess, with some hints at patterns. Interestingly AI is the same when the training is too shallow.
Humans can't either. We do have some knowledge of how people who "start from scratch" develop. In psychology, they are usually labeled as "feral children" and I think they illustrate pretty well how much you underestimate the effect of learning. Without learning, there is not much "human" left, even the capacity to use language and think is impaired.
How do you define "experiencing" things? Because in the context of learning and creativity, I would define it as the ability to receive input and change the internal wiring in reaction to that input. Which AI does have.
If you mean what is commonly referred to as "qualia", then please explain why you think it is necessary for creativity.
It’s not like Hollywood is out there creating something “wholly new” as it is though. And I generally disagree with the idea that LLMs just rearrange what already exists. They compress information until patterns emerge, often patterns that aren’t easily articulable by humans. Those learned patterns constitute something new, just as much as a human who synthesizes information from multiple sources to make a “new” work of their own.
Actors and artists are all trained on each other's work.
You should get paid for the stuff you create, not the stuff other people create or machines create. Even if they use your artwork to learn how to create more art.
I see this as just asking for the products of other people's labor.
LoL. I think someone would just tell you that if what you said is true, you have nothing to worry about then.
"I want to be able to use these tools, but I don't think you should be able to use them" is just a dumb stance. I listen to a lot of comedy writers podcast and they seem way more focused on the streaming reveneue issues here, which makes sense to me. Ive sorta come to assume these ai clauses were put into negotiating just to get sag some room to negotiate and compromise.
The thing is that AI can’t write a workable script at all. They can write convincing filler content, but it doesn’t have a concept of what’s entertaining or meaningful.
A good script doesn’t have any wasted words in it; every single phrase is there for a reason and has meaning behind it. LLMs do not have that kind of depth and there is no evidence to believe that they ever will. The only role I could begin to see them writing would be interview questions, because then the interviewee would provide the meaning.
Patrick Willems just did a video on AI and on Nebula he put out an extra where he had ChatGPT write a script that he put his best effort into producing into an actual video. And as predicted, it turned out terrible. The writing was basically just drivel that name dropped some movies and some cinematic techniques they used. It was filled with some nonsensical changes of scenery and full of calls to action to like, subscribe, and comment. Overall it was lacking in substance and read like it was a book report written by a high school student who didn’t actually read the book.
The movie you are referencing is not bad because it had a shitty writer. It was bad because the things the filmmakers and producers wanted made no sense. Too many cooks had too much influence, and in the end it was a huge disjointed mess with a bunch of things literally pulled from thin air because it didn’t make sense for them to be there in the first place.
I have not seen one piece of evidence that has given me the slightest glimmer of hope that AI will ever be able to write something with subtext or any deeper meaning with any sort of intention. It might come up accidentally, but not purposefully. You can’t just say it will because future. Idealized futures don’t happen.
I’m slightly conflicted, because I actually look forward to a future where regular people can access AI based databanks replete with actors with lifelike vocal skills, costuming, set designs, special effects, adaptive motion capture routines, and writing engines that can take an initial concept to a full blown script, allowing them to make their own films from start to finish without paying a cent for anything beyond processing power.
Like yes I get how mega corps will (ab)use this technology, but it will have the side effect of democratizing the creative process for the other billions of people out here with ideas but no resources to put them into action.
Well, there is a giant question of copyrights and personal information. These actors and singers whose faces and voices you would be using are real people, who should have agency as to how their visage is being used. And even if we ar talking about "entirely AI generated" stuff, it was still trained on real people and their, very often stolen, work.
I am a great proponent of progress, but i'm also of the opinion that we should hold us to a much higher ethical standards regarding this thing.
This part is a core of the anti-AI argument and it never made any sense to me.
If I study an artist's work and practice until I can create paintings in their style, what makes that any different than training an AI to do it?
The examples that have come up of "stolen work" are universally either data that artists have put out into the wider internet and found out that - gasp - the internet shares data, or it's a scummy stock photo company like Getty Images who have their own reputation for taking work and claiming copyright on it.
In any of these cases I can't manage to find the outrage.
I'd argue that you don't even have to mimic or recreate their style to still be influenced (color choice, choice of emphasis, etc). I, too, have a hard time getting fully on board with some of the AI hate as a result.
There are only so many variations of "reluctant hero" or "chosen one" stories. Is it any different that a human made Harry Potter after Star Wars instead of an AI prompt "Star Wars modern time magic only no tech Obiwan lives" or whatever?
The difference is mostly between a singular person using your art for his own means, the other is a literal corporation making huge profits with your art.
And human being inspired by somebodies art is somethin fundamentally different than AI art. Ai art doesn't create. It doesn't has the capacity to make anything new. It only remixes old stuff, which is again fundamentally different.
Try giving AI art programs a very specific promt- they get stuck on some things because they don't have any prior references, and are unable of "imagination".
I'm with you on the class war, however I completely disagree with your premise of AI limitations (and wishful thinking that humans in a void can make something "new")
When the uber rich will seek out any tool that allows them to stop paying their workforce, and we get mad at the tool... The rich will win.
We need to fundamentally disconnect human worth from productivity. Or the rich will keep winning until we've lost everything.
Eh, real people could obviously be captured under contract and their AI likeness then licensed out, much like stock photos currently are.
Well that's the thing, there need to be laws and contracts dictating the use of these things, like with the stock photos. Right now the companies want to own the 3d visage of their actors for all eternity, with little or no residual payment
Ah, I thought we were talking in general, not about the specifics of the strike. The training issue is a much thornier nut to crack.
This bit about scanning and then using an AI model in perpetuity is so absurd that even the companies can't think they'll get that. It seems likely to me to be a red herring, something to enrage the union to fight against only to hand them a win here in exchange for what they really want. I suspect at the most the studios will get the right to use AI in lieu of a re-shoot for a specific release the actor was already paid for.
The actors are on strike precisely because the studios argue they should be able to pay an actor for a day to be scanned and then fully own and use their likeness whenever they want without any further remuneration for the actor. The actors would be fine with a scenario like you describe, though I am sure there would be some caveats to it, the largest of which would be properly labeling when an AI generation is in use.
Properly labeling AI generation is definitely going to be an issue initially, though in time I suspect we'll switch to anything that's a real performance being what's labeled simply because it'll feature prominently in marketing.
You are perfectly able to wrote scripts and get people to do the acting already.
Either through amateur acting on local theatre stages, or just with a pen and paper plus a group of random people you recruit from anywhere.
The skill needed to make it into what you envision, rather than amateurish crap, didn't come from nowhere.
The distance between you and a finished entertainment product today is exactly what makes those other people want to be paid liveable wages. It takes effort.
As far as I know, the increase in wages that they are asking for wouldn't even mean an actually noticeable difference to the top execs. They already have so much money that they can't ever spend it all even if they tried.
Thats ridiculous, the creative process is already democratized. Write a script with a piece of paper and pen using your own words and brain then grab your iphone and start filming. The process is made creative by the solutions you personally employ to overcome a gap in raw skill, money, resources.
What youre describing is content, which does not require the stealing of work from millions of hard working individuals to empower a faceless corporation to sell subscriptions to the lazy in order to pump out garbage and make "passive income".
I think that would be cool too and I wish it were also a future wherein there are plenty of social safety nets for all, so that the people whose jobs get displaced by generative AI (actors, costume designers, set designers, writers, everyone from your list and more) will still have other opportunities.
It’s a big issue for sure, and I don’t have a clear idea on what we are supposed to do about it. Something along the lines of a guaranteed basic income is what I expect eventually.
We do have to start getting used to the idea of a world where virtually all jobs are automated though.
Self checkouts definitely make my life better. I don't want to go through a regular checkout line. Hell, I want to pay on my phone and walk out without the bottleneck of the kiosk.
Back when I worked retail in college, managing a few SCOs was also definitely better than running a single checkout line and having to interact with annoying customers. The customers benefit too, because their choice would be multiple self checkouts operated by one person or waiting in line for a single register operated by one person.
I love self check outs though. I prefer interacting with as little humans as I can when I'm just going about running errands.
The line for self check outs tend to move faster too for some reason.
This is measurably true for multiple reasons. The first being that the self checkout usually has a single input queue for a bank of 4+ kiosks. This allows for the queue to keep moving forward even if one kiosk is slowed down by a customer who needs help or is paying in all quarters. The second is that even though some self checkouts have no item limit, after a certain subjective item count, people will self select to go to a staffed checkout line. Thereby reducing the average number of items that need to get scanned per person in the self checkout line.
The faster processing time is usually why I go through self checkout. Even if every staffed checkout is only 1-2 people deep and the self checkout has 6-10 people I'll still pick it because I know the odds of me getting "stuck" behind a slow transaction are much lower. Especially if I'm just there for a quick 1-5 items, I can usually scan and pay and walk out in under 60 seconds once I'm at the front of the line.
Honestly, this is exactly what I was thinking things would come to (especially after deepfakes became so legit) after watching S1m0ne back in the day. I think that's when I realized that technology isn't always the awesomeness we hope it will be...
Then I watched Carrie Fisher in The Last Jedi and cringed so hard. Even if I disagree with any actual famous rich person striking, I believe it's wrong using likenesses without consent. It seems like the music business all over again, where someone writes a song, signs their life away to a label, and gets jack shit after the fact.
I mean, who's to state what's right and wrong though... I dunno.
Why do you disagree with famous actors striking? They are less than 2k of SAG/AFTRAs 160k members. Why not use their fame to make a better working life for the 158k members that barely make a living? In the end, the money is being made. Why should it all go to the studio instead of to the "famous rich person"? You'd rather the money go to the billionaires instead of the millionaires?
I think the writers are mostly focusing their strikes on the wrong entities - the content producers. They need to be focusing their strikes on the creators of AI.
Content producers like Disney are using the tools, sure, but it’s AI companies who are raking in the profits.
Microsoft just posted an absolutely massive gain in stock price this last quarter. Strike them. Join arms with all other studios and demand royalties on the content they are scraping. Microsoft knows they will profit from AI - and would likely be willing to cut out some profits for the writers. Get in on that early. Protesting Disney executive pay is, in my opinion, going after the small fries.
Even though striking the production companies is a just cause, a more effective and lucrative path in my opinion would be to take on the AI creators themselves and demand a share of the profits.
Kinda hard to strike a place you dont work for, though.
And besides, AI creators are being sued? Like wasn't Sarah Silverman doing that for example.
Why would Microsoft be interested in paying writers? That doesn’t make any sense to me. What’s the incentive exactly?
They would have an option. If writers/content creators successfully defend their copyrights in court and successfully “unionize” in a cohesive front against AI tech then tech companies would be required to profit share. That’s the goal I think they should pursue.
That’s a pretty big “if” though, and frankly one that I think is unlikely and maybe a bit ridiculous.