I hope there is some kind of “label” that comes out of this like the Surgeon General’s cigarette warning. “This movie is 87% AI generated” so I won’t have to bother thinking about whether to skip it. Fuck lazy & greedy movie makers. They’d giveup their immortal soul for $3.50
There’s a philosophical argument to be made for sure, and I’d probably even agree with you. But the reality is that the technology is here, and it’ll be used in pursuit of the almighty buck.
Yeah, we need human writers! I don’t think AI can turn great books into shitty movies as well as actual writers. AI scripts sound like a real gain, IMO.
Well, for one, I think like this. And given the upvote, at least one other person does as well. And six others disagree. Which is fine with me, by the way, people can disagree and be civilized about it.
As for “obvious shills and trolls” - just because I like the technology and dislike current writers, I’m a troll? With thinking like this you should perhaps go live in a totalitarian state, cause that’s how they roll - “you’re either with us or you’re bad”.
Why do you expect AI to write better scripts than “current writers”? Do you believe than humans are incapable of good writing, and we need AI to finally make the first good art to ever exist?
Not first good art, no, there are many great movies. It’s usually when people who are famous enough to do whatever are the directors (Tarantino, Nolan). But the usual crap? All the unimaginative movies and TV shows? Botching good books by not understanding the source material at all? That’s most of the writers and that’s who I think should be replaced by AI. We were doing a presentation on capabilities of AI recently and one sentence my colleague came up with sums it up: AI is not some super smart thing, it’s like millions of average people who can think really fast.
I’m fine with AI content. It’s going to make making media so much easier for people who aren’t inherently artistic but have a vision they want to show.
There are already teams of humans ready to do all that stuff. AI adds nothing there. The non-artistic person with a vision can already collaborate with skilled artists.
But more importantly, we are not worried about artists using AI as a tool. We are worried about corporate goons using AI to fire all creative staff and generate manipulative trash.
Okay so instead of me just working on a fun product for free in my own time, I have to pay someone a fair wage as if this is a commercial product I’m producing?
There’s several people in this thread arguing we should outright ban the use, instead of coming up with ways to protect artists without artificially limiting AI.
I have to pay someone a fair wage as if this is a commercial product I’m producing?
There’s several people in this thread arguing we should outright ban the use,
I didn’t see anyone ITT making that argument, and anyway this whole debate is specifically and explicitly about hollywood goons using AI to churn out trash without paying the talent. It’s not about some broke artist using AI to bring his vision to life. As I already said. It’s beyond straw man to treat that as the position that’s being criticized
The first company that debuts an entirely AI film will be a game changer, since it’s training set will be all the greats/popular films from Godfather, Taxi Driver, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Inglorious Bastards, and Parasite.
Then everyone will want to get in on the game and we’ll see a huge number of AI films. To be noticable and unique, a certain amount of hallucinating will be allowed. After a couple more years, you’ll see model collapse as the film AIs are now using other AI output as their training input.
AI systems need a steady “diet” of human created material to continue to create material that is relevant and interesting to humans.
Robert Evans has a great episode on “behind the bastards” about AI and children’s books. The majority of Kindle published children’s books and coloring books are AI generated. There are Kindle books on how to make hundreds of AI children’s books a month using AI tools, including how to write the prompt for the AI input.
But why? I feel like people are twisting their arguments against AI. Or they are being twisted against.
Why does an actor care where there lines come from? We live in a world where The Room was written and released, but AI content is going to be the end of media? People aren’t that special. Our thoights aren’t that special. We don’t have souls. We’re just thinking machines, and nothing we create is more unique than something that we created creates.
Because this is about enshitification of life for studio exec profits. It’s not really about where a machine can or should be a part of creative works, but HOW they are being used.
Nearly very industry in which LLMs are being used in the latest hype wave, it’s not being used to improve anything but concentration of wealth in the hands of a dwindling number of individuals by worsening product quality and real ability of any of humanity, outside of those of hereditary wealth, to be get by.
I do too hope the strikes are successful. That said, you’ve likely already been consuming generative technology for some time now. Disney alone has nearly a decade of research into it already. Advanced VFX applications use all sorts of generative tech too. When I was working in LA we referenced public data all the time. I know it’s gotten a huge spotlight on it given private AI capitalizing/evangelizing it all but the very real threat of digital scabs taking people’s jobs needs the biggest spotlight right now. I do think the tables will turn if nothing good can come out of Hollywood and those artists begin weaponizing that same tech against the execs. I see what studios are doing as no different than impersonation & identity theft by using this tech to limit working hours to skirt union protections.
It’s funny to me because all these people are saying exactly what everyone used to say about mobile phones, about the internet, about computers… I know so many people who railed against the internet saying they’d never use it and that computers only make things more difficult - now they’re all yelling on Facebook about how the evil corporations they work for aren’t letting them work from home lol
AI will keep getting better and the way people use it will continue to evolve, there will be truly great things made by obsessive outsiders which speak to people in ways nothing has… Just like with every minor technical or social Innovation in art. Many of the giants of the old era will vanish and many new greats will grow and start to stagnate into conformity…
I’m excited for the future and all the interesting things it brings, we can’t just stop creativity and progress because some affluent performers want guarantees of stability which just don’t exist in reality
They just have to get a real job too, like everyone else.
Would you mind expanding on what a “real” vs “fake” job is? I disagree with the premise entirely but i am not taking you with a loaded question, i am honestly curious about what that means to you (and by extension what other people who use that term might mean)
There’s no such thing as a job necessary for the survival of the human race. The only thing jobs protect is the economic system, which doesn’t care about the human race.
That is one way to view it. However due to everyone, in including blue collar workers, having their lively hoods threatened by AI we need to ask the question if were okay, as a society, for there to be more jobs eliminated than created. Are we okay with the current ways and (some would say the illusion of) the free market controlling everything? Are we okay with letting people suffer needlessly? Would you be okay with looking into the eyes of someone you know and saying “too bad that’s the free market baby!” Because it’s starting with the arts but it’s not stopping there. It’s only a matter of time before it will not need many warm bodies to do things. The knowledge works are next on the list and it won’t be long after that where manual labors will be impacted. This is all WAY before we even hit AGI.
I’m not saying that AI taking jobs is a bad thing. I think it is an amazing thing but we need to start embracing it as an opportunity for things to be more Star Trek and less dystopian hellscape. That means changing this mindset that a lot of us have and start asking ourselves how do we want the world to look in 100 or even 500 years from now.
There are many issues besides AI stuff that are causing this strike.
Yes, with the quick emergence of AI in all industries, we do need strong workers rights agreements and laws to address it, but AI isn’t really the primary issue.
People pick positions in these arguments that are too stringent and not realistic. There will be places where AI is useful in this industry. The union just needs to make sure AI isn’t abused in order to completely replace certain types of laborers.
If it is high quality, why do you care how it was produced?
But it’s not the high quality content that’s threatened by AI, it’s the mediocre gargabe. It’s the endless stream of poor quality TV shows and movies which are produced not as art, but as a means of steady predictibile income for the companies involved. That’s the industry aspect of the business. This side of the business consumes most of the talent in the industry. They all know it’s not good and they all hope they will get the funding to actually work on the things they know will be high quality. I think AI will allow them to do that.
Further more, this strike is not just about AI. I think this aspect is the one media outlets care most about and gets reported on more. The entertainment industry has suffered a major shift with streaming platforms and the movement of money from production studios to streaming platforms has left the employees behind. They’re getting less money from streaming platforms but still do the same work. That’s what the strike is about. The industry didn’t care for them when it changed.
If it is high quality, why do you care how it was produced?
To me, this is comparable to fiction vs. non-fiction.
Personally, I do already find fiction less engaging, because there’s nothing romantic about these stories. With which I’m not referring to a love story, I mean that there’s no sense of wonder of what lead to these events. It happened that way, because a writer wrote it that way.
And yet, the one thing still tying fiction to reality is the writer. You can still wonder what life experiences they’ve made to tell this story and how they’re telling it.
Our current narrow AIs don’t make life experiences, so you lose even that strand of meaning.
Yeah. It’ll be nice if all the drivel in Hollywood were automated.
If you think you’re so good at what you do, then you can be what the AI learns from to improve.
Everyone else? Well, tough tamales. This is what progress looks like and blue collar workers have been feeling it ever since the industrial revolution.
That’s not what progress looks like, but you do you, fam. We’ll be over here on our new federated sites watching stuff made by actual human beings while Hollywood starves to death as everyone else stops watching that garbage.
Or we will campaign the federal government to ban the tech outright and your lazy shill ass will have to actually do something useful to make a living.
We’ll be over here on our new federated sites watching stuff made by actual human beings
slowly puts away stable diffusion community subscriptions
I, too, got mad at the creation of the personal computer and lobbied congress to ban them because they aren’t as real as my subjective interpretation of reality, work, and honesty.
You realize that most actors and writers are barely or not at all paid enough to live. This idea of the rich and famous actor is an edge case that you’re letting become your whole idea of them because they’re exactly that. Famous. But even you have to realize that there are countless others that will be and currently are being affected by the things their striking against. For too many years already writers have been shafted by production companies by hiring them as short term contractors to avoid paying them a fair wage or give them an option for royalties. And when literally everyone in the industry is doing that, then they have no choice if they want to get paid at all.
And being mad because some high profile rich fuckers are participating is insane. Their participation shows just how important it is. They’ll be fine. They have millions and they’re still out there on the picket line anyway because the things the industry does and wants to make worse is bad for humans. That’s what collective action is about and it’s beautiful.
I’m looking for an interaction with the artists. I do not care what an AI produces… and I don’t care what a marketing team or boardroom of producers produces. I’m looking for an artist’s vision.
Then hollywood is the wrong place to look. AI can make it even worse, but hollywood has been mostly devoid of expressing artistic vision long before AI came around.
How exactly are you interacting with them while sitting on your couch looking at a screen?
This is an appeal to purity argument. You’ve invented some higher standard (that doesn’t really even make sense) with the purpose of excluding the thing you don’t like.
That it’s an entirely subjective experience and to presume that someone’s enjoyment of it means that a human had to be involved in It’s creation is such a ridiculous response.
Have you ever seen the paintings that one chimpanzee made? They’re actually pretty nice in composition. Am I allowed to like the way they look even if no human made them?
So long as it’s not a glorified machine learning program designed to commit mass fraud and copyright infringement, then yes. Until then, go cry harder.
No you won’t, you’ll still be sitting in front of your computer having gotten nowhere in life because you expected AI to solve all your problems for you and you couldn’t see it’s just another corporate grift. Like any sucker.
The audience responds en masse by tuning in, paying up, being changed, perpetuating the ideas back into the culture through the filter of their own personality, chatting about the thing, praising or criticizing the artist.
This is an appeal to purity argument. You’ve invented some higher standard
Nope. It has absolutely nothing to do with “purity.” It has to do with humans doing the ancient human thing of making art. Dancing, singing, telling stories. You’re bringing in the abstraction of purity.
Hollywood (in its crudest aspect) is already an AI algorithm for churning out trash. That’s why I tune out already. Because it is not humans telling each other stories. It is pure corporate manipulation. More AI in the hands of producer-goons just means more corporate manipulation and less humans telling each other stories.
AI in the hands of an artist is a tool for exploring and creating. AI in the hands of corporate goons is the total opposite.
To answer your question about quality: it matters because it’s not real. The act of producing something of quality is what makes us better people. It ties into motivation to be better. Computers automating repetition doesn’t hinder that (as much, it does affect learning curves). The notion that computers be used for an output that would normally require creativity is just throwing away the essense of creation, the end product is not the only thing that benefits us. There’s no objective to why it was created, an AI writing something that evokes emotion is a party trick. All it really does is promote consumption and demoralize innovation, and ironically it hides behind innovation as the end-goal of the project. It’s just dead. One of the most beautiful things within creating something of value is the very process of creating it, having the passion and desire to do so, and the will to bring it into existence. AI is a cursed attempt at trying to replicate this process, and by lifting that kind of burden from a human inhuman.
There’s no objective to why it was created, an AI writing something that evokes emotion is a party trick.
Then it’s not valuable. The question still stands: if something is truly valuable, does it matter how it was created? You are not answering this question, you are simply pointing out why AI in your opinion cannot produce art. My question is a bit “tongue in cheek”, of course. It cannot be truly answered without a specific example of creation. I’m asking it to prove a point: we’re dismissing something we don’t understand.
All it really does is promote consumption and demoralize innovation
I’d argue that this is what Hollywood already does. And as you rightly argued through your comment, it brings little artistic or creative value.
To me, it’s the same feeling as the teachers that wouldn’t accept papers written on a computer (after an age where we know how to write) because “it’s less honest”.
I’m not good at drawing. I would love to try to make a game. Anti-AI luddites are happy that I will never produce something because I am incabable of doing something that an AI could easily accomplish.
i refuse to believe AI can replace totally of the human part in the industry. Yeah some of the weak actors will be pushed out as they are not doing the job good enough, but it’s inevitable that one day technology is advanced that AI can actually replace human workforce. Like car manufacturing industry that have massive machines to assemble car parts, but also there are things only human can do. We don’t need crappy scriptwriters writing rubbish soap opera that my 10 year old daughter can write because they are no more generic than a AI churn out script. It’s like hiring a typewriter operator in 2023. Or rubbish actors that are like reading their script out with minimal effort and skills. It does not make sense.
There’s this people called stenographers who are paid quite well, they can write hundreds of words per minute and essentially transcribe a conversation in real time. They are hired by courts to create records of the sessions, by journalists, parliaments and to transcribe subtitles for audiovisual media. They use this cool typewriter like machine called a stenotype that was invented in 1880. The thing is, they tried to replace them with speech recognition computers. They discovered they needed a human to sanitize input for the computer, essentially a person who can speak really fast and really mechanically, repeating what others said in the room, or what was said in the movie or whatever, into an oxygen-mask-like sound proof microphone. So, they still had to pay someone to be there. Many places decided they could just pay the stenographer and receive higher quality products despite the slightly higher costs. Then YouTube tried to use machine learning to auto-create closed captions. Before that they used a community contribution approach that depended on volunteers to take some time to transcribe the subs. That change to automation was such a fiasco that some big YouTube channels now advertise that they pay an actual company with humans to do the closed captions for their videos in the name of proper quality accessibility. Because automated closed caption tends to do interesting stuff and it’s even worse when they try to throw auto-translation into the mix.
The point is, people tend to not understand technology and how it relates to humans, specially techbros and techies who have the most skewed biases towards tech and little sociological understanding. Nothing can be accurately predicted in that realm, and most relations that result from the appearance of new technology are usually paradoxical to common sense.
I agree with you when it comes to AI in its current form - I wouldn’t even call it a party trick, just dumb luck. Machine learning through repetition will use existing ideas and tropes.
However you can provide the model with unique ideas, new tropes, characters, environments, and settings. The model in its current form could generate something nearly usable (script wise) and still be a valid piece of art with some cleaning up. Just because you save time doesn’t make an idea less “good”
In the future we could have near sentient AI that generates actual pieces of art far faster and better than a person can.
I understand your desire to support the SAG-AFTRA strikes, but I think you’re wrong to say that you’ll refuse to consume any AI-generated content.
First of all, it’s not clear that AI-generated content will be of lower quality than human-generated content. In fact, there are already AI-generated images and videos that are indistinguishable from human-made ones. As AI technology continues to develop, it’s likely that AI-generated content will become even more sophisticated.
Second, even if AI-generated content is of lower quality, it’s still possible that it will be enjoyable to some people. There are many people who enjoy watching low-budget movies or reading self-published books. Just because something is not created by a professional does not mean that it cannot be entertaining.
Finally, boycotting AI-generated content will not actually help the SAG-AFTRA strikes. The strikes are about ensuring that actors and writers are fairly compensated for their work. Boycotting AI-generated content will not affect the studios’ bottom line, so it will not put any pressure on them to reach a fair agreement with the unions.
I think a better way to support the SAG-AFTRA strikes is to donate to the unions or to spread awareness about the issue. You can also write to your elected officials and urge them to support legislation that protects the rights of actors and writers.
I hope you’ll reconsider your position on AI-generated content. It’s possible that this technology could have a positive impact on the entertainment industry, and it’s important to keep an open mind about its potential.
Good. I hope they never come back. Theater is better when it’s local and in person, and everything coming out of the machine for the last twenty years has been total garbage.
What’s it going to take to actually do something about these ultra-rich leeches literally destroying our planet and everything good on it to inflate a number in a bank somewhere? How do we actually build up the initiative to stop it?
All our other problems seem largely centered around our inability to appropriately respond to extreme greed. Not only in actually actively stopping it, but in even identifying it or being able to properly censure it in the first place. The moment you start talking about the rich being the cause of our problems, there’s a section of society that starts tuning you out. I definitely feel like as things get worse people are starting to catch on, but even once we’re there, where do we go?
If we actually get to the point of agreeing that excessive wealth is inherently misanthropic and should be a crime in and of itself, how do we make it a crime while so much power sits in the hands of those who’d be on the losing end of that decision?
I hope the WGA and SAG can spark a change in people’s consciousness around labor. I’d honestly love to see a lot more interviews and independent podcasts coming from the picket lines. If there’s anyone who can convince Americans to fight for the value of their labor, it’s the people write and play the parts in the stories they love.
The fact that most people will reflexively reject and wilt at the idea of a wealth cap, or at least enforceablely taxing every dollar made above a certain amount at 99%, is a testament to the many decades of often-subtle propaganda that makes people think that modern western capitalism is the only way. As well as the continuing de-funding of public education and making colleges less accessible.
And another part of the problem (and IMO one of the biggest ones) is that the propaganda is only their first line of defense. If the rich and ultra powerful feel actually threatened, they don’t have to rely on soft power. See Epstein’s fate as well as the Panama papers reporter.
The moment you start talking about the rich being the cause of our problems, there’s a section of society that starts tuning you out.
That’s because this is an insane claim.
If we actually get to the point of agreeing that excessive wealth is inherently misanthropic and should be a crime in and of itself
This is a massive “If.” I could probably never be convinced that one person’s wealth is inherently detrimental to someone else’s well-being.
These are very extreme views. I support the Hollywood strike, my buddy is a union leader (as were both my parents), and I’m a reliably Democrat voter, and I couldn’t disagree more with what you’ve said above.
The thing is, you can’t get that rich by playing fair, it’s only possible at the expense of others. And I can assure you, most rich people are activelty making our lives worse.
I lobbied in my own interest not 15 minutes ago, as part of Citizens Climate Lobby. Just got off a zoom meeting with my rep. Lobbying is not inherently bad.
Can you prove tax evasion? That’s a serious crime.
Also, shameless plug - consider joining your local chapter of CCL! Took me 5 minutes to sign up and all meetings have been via zoom.
Yes, I didn’t mean that lobbying in general is bad, I mean lobbying against the interest of the public. It’s commonly done by basically any big corporation + propaganda to gaslight people into believing that its in their benefit ( an example i have on hand: web.archive.org/web/…/get-the-facts/ )
By tax evasion I mean in general doing anything to not have to pay tax, lobbying against rich people tax, keeping your assets as loans, etc.
Consider that they have the power to massively improve everyone’s lives but are choosing not to.
Perhaps they didn’t personally cause and create some of those problems, but they are still the only ones with the power to make the necessary changes, so the continuation of those problems is indeed their doing.
In what way does the logistics revolution spurred by Amazon’s growth not massively benefit every person who buys anything in the US? You’re seriously suggesting with a straight face, that Microsoft hasn’t saved literally hundreds of millions of lives just in database tech alone?
You’re talking out of your ass here man. Hell, you’re putting billionaires on par with running a government which is simply absurd.
It’s not on rich people to save the fucking world, though Bill Gates has personally done more for the world than most governments ever have. It’s on voters to pass policies that provide them better lives. That’s the point of democracy
We need enough people to agree on both a vehicle and a direction.
There are a lot of people dissatisfied with the current government(s) but don’t agree how to create change; be it through the current system, major modifications to the current system, or even more severe changes.
There are a lot of people who don’t want wide spread poverty/suffering, but don’t agree on how that problem should be dealt with; be it through universal income, massive public projects, or wealth taxation and better competition regulations.
IMO we need a new digital/decentralized/open-source/transparent ‘social media platform’ that can replace the current easily manipulated electoral systems.
We need ideas & policies to be independently actionable from the partisan politics that afaic specifically exist to mitigate change and maintain the influence of money in policy.
Not sure if this is directly applicable but there’s the concept of dual power, where you can organize a bottom up power structure that takes some power from the regular government without needing to either submit to it or outright overthrow it. With that said it has only ever been successful in cases where the government is incredibly unstable to begin with.
I agree that that we do need something like a collective action platform so people can coordinate much better than they currently do. Also something that you didn’t directly mention but I think you imply is that there doesn’t need to be complete agreement before action is taken because there are alot of valid disagreements on how to move forward but there are also alot of agreements as well that are ignored in public conversation because we take those points as a default.
I’ve been working on something similar to this on my own time (which you can see in my post history) but honestly we won’t move forward if we don’t actively start working together properly.
That’s a really good question. Part of the problem, of course, is that the game is rigged: consider how difficult it is to buy food that doesn’t feed the Nestle war chest.
As a society, I think there are moves in the right direction - I just stumbled across something called Community Wealth Building, which is very cool, for example.
But as a private individual? That’s harder. I’d love it if there were an Amazon equivalent out there that sourced exclusively from worker owned co-ops, or at least unionized businesses, but as it is, I’m coming up dry…
I want to add on some quick math. Some people will look at this and scoff, saying that actors are millionaires and are more similar to these billionaire leeches than to us. A billion isn’t a number you can easily wrap your head around – I have trouble putting it into the correct perspective and scale, and I’m an engineer. It’s really difficult. So to try and show exactly how much money we’re talking here, I’m going to use time:
35k seconds, 9.7 hours
70k seconds, 19.4 hours
100k seconds, 1.16 days
250k seconds, 2.9 days
1m seconds, 11.6 days
10m seconds, 115.7 days
100m seconds, 3.2 years
1b seconds, 31.7 years
I haven’t even lived for 1 billion seconds yet, and I’m 28! Even an actor who’s racked up $100m over a successful career is closer to $0 than they are to $1b. Now arguably I’d say $100m is at the point where it needs to be treated similarly to $1b, but even so. The average working adult is closer to an actor in terms of wealth than these disgusting hoarders.
In reality, every dollar isn’t equal, and what this analysis doesn’t take into account is the amount leftover after all necessities are paid for, which is the reason why someone making $35k is not living like a millionaire. The point here is, a billion is incredibly big. It’s unfathomable. Unless the person protesting is a billionaire, they’re on your side against the leeches and absurdly wealthy.
(I suspect this is why actors tend liberal and billionaires tend conservative.)
Good to see some solidarity. I wish it happened more. I’d have thought that the spread internet, allowing easy and covert communication, would have caused a proliferation in the number and efficacy of labor unions, but alas.
The Internet has done a ton of that, around the world. But the news focuses on negative stories because, psychologically, humans are much more compelled by negative stories
we’ve had generations of Americans come and go without the need* of unions, I think the positive communication aspects are outweighed by the negative culture ones
*unions are good for everyone, by need I mean the effects of neoliberalism hadn’t kneecapped the (white) working class until 2008
They’ve been making alternate versions of every movie for china since 2008. Especially disney. Disney is such a cuck to china that they declared all the winnie the pooh characters as public domain to appease Ping.
On one hand, Hollywood is abusive both economically and ethically. On the other hand, I despise copyright-based industries and the workers that uphold them. I can’t bring myself to support anyone in this conflict.
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