3 ms·

Hollywood writers' efforts to protect jobs against AI matters for all workers

13 points by CharlesW 3y ago

oldpersonintx 3y ago
[dead]
BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
I hate this timeline. Every time we find a way to make it so that we don't need people to work, people fight against it because spending our entire lives laboring is suddenly good actually. We throw "I don't want to starve in a ditch" and "I love doing this" into a blender until they look like the same thing. But they're not. > "writers went on strike to protect their livelihoods from generative AI" Please. No. Jesus. Fuck. People shouldn't starve in a ditch, but the solution isn't to persist doing work that machines can do instead. The solution is to distribute the value gained by the automation to the people. Strike against the government to advance societal welfare, not against the production studios to prevent eliminating the need for human labor.
- tetris11 3y ago
  If you ask my father who had it pretty easy most of his life: if the ruling class want us to keep buying their products and dont want to employ us, then pretty soon they're going to start handing out money ala UBI. If you ask me: I'm not even sure the ruling class want us to keep buying their products any more. I think they just want to ensure that no one can ever touch them. If that's the plan, then we're really not necessary.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > If you ask my father who had it pretty easy most of his life: if the ruling class want us to keep buying their products and dont want to employ us, then pretty soon they're going to start handing out money ala UBI. Yeah, that scenario doesn't make any sense to me either. The automation barons won't care if the consumer product barons go bankrupt, so they will. > If you ask me: I'm not even sure the ruling class want us to keep buying their products any more. I think they just want to ensure that no one can ever touch them. If that's the plan, then we're really not necessary. I think the end-state for the fantasy of total automation is a few Elon Musks controlling all the productive capacity of the world and using it for vanity projects, while everyone else lives like rats in the cracks.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
  > Strike against the government to advance societal welfare, not against the production studios to prevent eliminating the need for human labor. They are fighting the battle they think they can win. Which do you think it more likely, getting some favorable changes made to contracts with studios, or upending the entire structure of capitalism?
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Strike against the government to advance societal welfare Sure, but even if that effort can achieve the result you're envisioning, it's going to take a very, very long time. In the meantime, people don't want to starve. But when it comes to art, there's another factor: I have zero interest in art made by machines because it eliminates the very thing that I like about art: that it's a human communication. I genuinely think losing that would be catastrophic.
- silverquiet 3y ago
  A fair number of people really seem to enjoy writing. What I'd really like to see automated would be things like laying bricks or roofing or other construction drudgework or flipping burgers or stocking shelves. Depressingly, it looks like the fun stuff is going to get automated first (though I don't think the LLMs are all that close and they could very well hit some walls soon).
- tivert 3y ago
  > Every time we find a way to make it so that we don't need people to work, people fight against it because spending our entire lives laboring is suddenly good actually. The problem with your perspective it that technology will not, cannot free people from work. In our current social system, which continues without serious challenge, all technology can do is eliminate employment which means poverty. An automated utopia a century from now doesn't matter at all, if it means poverty for my family and me for the rest of our lives. > The solution is to distribute the value gained by the automation to the people. Strike against the government to advance societal welfare, not against the production studios to prevent eliminating the need for human labor. Ain't gonna happen, especially if the strikers are workers who just had their economic power obliterated by automation. The powers that be will look down at the strikers, observe they have no use for them anymore, then close the blinds and go about their day unbothered.
loandbehold 3y ago
UBI might not be enough. People need these jobs for status. "esteem needs" and "self-actualization" are last in Maslow's Hierarchy but since basic needs are met in modern world, we also need to feel needed to be happy.
glimshe 3y ago
> "The contract the Guild secured in September set a historic precedent: It is up to the writers whether and how they use generative AI as a tool to assist and complement" Writers that utilize AI, like I do, will be a lot more productive than their peers and will be able to generate better, more scripts in less time. In other words, like any other tool in any field. Tools replaced most of farm labor so now we have a minimal number of people actually farming. What I'm saying is that they won't be able to stop the displacement of people using this method - and over time, the best writers will be the ones who can use AI skillfully.
- ericmcer 3y ago
  I have used it a bit to generate scientific reasonings behind vague sci-fi ideas, but leveraging it to directly write passages would just produce a bunch of bloated garbage. It is great for fact checking though, I wonder how good it would be at taking entire manuscripts and testing for any scientific or historical innaccuracies.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Writers that utilize AI, like I do, will be a lot more productive than their peers and will be able to generate better, more scripts in less time. 1. Are you an actual writer? If so, exactly what kind of writer? 2. I'm highly skeptical of that, especially the "better...scripts" part. The "more...scripts" part may be true, but I highly doubt they'd rise above poor to mediocre writing.
ericmcer 3y ago
Do you all really think AI is going to cause this massive disruption everyone keeps predicting? It feels like we keep going down technological roads that are good enough to get sensationalist demos and articles but then getting that last 10% never really happens. Just yesterday I was listening to Andrew Yang describe his 2020 UBI ideas. It reminded me how scared we all were that every person who drives for a living would be out of a job soon. Now 5 years later we don't even talk about it anymore, but we are terrified of AI replacing all our creatives. Do you really think that is going to happen? In what timeframe?

13 points by CharlesW 3y ago

[dead]

I hate this timeline. Every time we find a way to make it so that we don't need people to work, people fight against it because spending our entire lives laboring is suddenly good actually. We throw "I don't want to starve in a ditch" and "I love doing this" into a blender until they look like the same thing. But they're not. > "writers went on strike to protect their livelihoods from generative AI" Please. No. Jesus. Fuck. People shouldn't starve in a ditch, but the solution isn't to persist doing work that machines can do instead. The solution is to distribute the value gained by the automation to the people. Strike against the government to advance societal welfare, not against the production studios to prevent eliminating the need for human labor.

tetris11 3y ago
If you ask my father who had it pretty easy most of his life: if the ruling class want us to keep buying their products and dont want to employ us, then pretty soon they're going to start handing out money ala UBI. If you ask me: I'm not even sure the ruling class want us to keep buying their products any more. I think they just want to ensure that no one can ever touch them. If that's the plan, then we're really not necessary.
- tivert 3y ago
  > If you ask my father who had it pretty easy most of his life: if the ruling class want us to keep buying their products and dont want to employ us, then pretty soon they're going to start handing out money ala UBI. Yeah, that scenario doesn't make any sense to me either. The automation barons won't care if the consumer product barons go bankrupt, so they will. > If you ask me: I'm not even sure the ruling class want us to keep buying their products any more. I think they just want to ensure that no one can ever touch them. If that's the plan, then we're really not necessary. I think the end-state for the fantasy of total automation is a few Elon Musks controlling all the productive capacity of the world and using it for vanity projects, while everyone else lives like rats in the cracks.
Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
> Strike against the government to advance societal welfare, not against the production studios to prevent eliminating the need for human labor. They are fighting the battle they think they can win. Which do you think it more likely, getting some favorable changes made to contracts with studios, or upending the entire structure of capitalism?
JohnFen 3y ago
> Strike against the government to advance societal welfare Sure, but even if that effort can achieve the result you're envisioning, it's going to take a very, very long time. In the meantime, people don't want to starve. But when it comes to art, there's another factor: I have zero interest in art made by machines because it eliminates the very thing that I like about art: that it's a human communication. I genuinely think losing that would be catastrophic.
silverquiet 3y ago
A fair number of people really seem to enjoy writing. What I'd really like to see automated would be things like laying bricks or roofing or other construction drudgework or flipping burgers or stocking shelves. Depressingly, it looks like the fun stuff is going to get automated first (though I don't think the LLMs are all that close and they could very well hit some walls soon).
tivert 3y ago
> Every time we find a way to make it so that we don't need people to work, people fight against it because spending our entire lives laboring is suddenly good actually. The problem with your perspective it that technology will not, cannot free people from work. In our current social system, which continues without serious challenge, all technology can do is eliminate employment which means poverty. An automated utopia a century from now doesn't matter at all, if it means poverty for my family and me for the rest of our lives. > The solution is to distribute the value gained by the automation to the people. Strike against the government to advance societal welfare, not against the production studios to prevent eliminating the need for human labor. Ain't gonna happen, especially if the strikers are workers who just had their economic power obliterated by automation. The powers that be will look down at the strikers, observe they have no use for them anymore, then close the blinds and go about their day unbothered.

loandbehold 3y ago

UBI might not be enough. People need these jobs for status. "esteem needs" and "self-actualization" are last in Maslow's Hierarchy but since basic needs are met in modern world, we also need to feel needed to be happy.

glimshe 3y ago

> "The contract the Guild secured in September set a historic precedent: It is up to the writers whether and how they use generative AI as a tool to assist and complement" Writers that utilize AI, like I do, will be a lot more productive than their peers and will be able to generate better, more scripts in less time. In other words, like any other tool in any field. Tools replaced most of farm labor so now we have a minimal number of people actually farming. What I'm saying is that they won't be able to stop the displacement of people using this method - and over time, the best writers will be the ones who can use AI skillfully.

ericmcer 3y ago
I have used it a bit to generate scientific reasonings behind vague sci-fi ideas, but leveraging it to directly write passages would just produce a bunch of bloated garbage. It is great for fact checking though, I wonder how good it would be at taking entire manuscripts and testing for any scientific or historical innaccuracies.
tivert 3y ago
> Writers that utilize AI, like I do, will be a lot more productive than their peers and will be able to generate better, more scripts in less time. 1. Are you an actual writer? If so, exactly what kind of writer? 2. I'm highly skeptical of that, especially the "better...scripts" part. The "more...scripts" part may be true, but I highly doubt they'd rise above poor to mediocre writing.

ericmcer 3y ago

Do you all really think AI is going to cause this massive disruption everyone keeps predicting? It feels like we keep going down technological roads that are good enough to get sensationalist demos and articles but then getting that last 10% never really happens. Just yesterday I was listening to Andrew Yang describe his 2020 UBI ideas. It reminded me how scared we all were that every person who drives for a living would be out of a job soon. Now 5 years later we don't even talk about it anymore, but we are terrified of AI replacing all our creatives. Do you really think that is going to happen? In what timeframe?