Addressing the AI in the room (why the WGA strike concerns us all)
Over the last couple of days, media outlets have been abuzz with all the juicy, complicated details of the WGA strikers. The Writers Guild of America went on strike in the early hours of May 2nd, so this past Tuesday.
The first question from anyone hearing that (provided, of course, that they can be made to care enough) is… why?
I’d say 6 out of 10 media articles on the topic are answering that wrong. Or maybe Google is simply pushing those articles to the forefront, who knows?
I spent the better part of an hour, scouring through search hits for the WGA strike on Google, yet it was only when I inputted the words “WGA” and “AI” in the search box that I actually got any results on that.
Until then, I’d read media coverage (much of it from quite reputable outlets) that essentially boiled down to :
Hollywood writers are on strike for more money.
That’s the long and short of it, and sure, it’s a worthwhile cause in itself. As one headline had it, living the dream should indeed pay a semi-decent wage.
Except there’s something dangerous in making this all about money because it’s not.
At their core, 95% of strikes are about better conditions, including more money. I know that. Even people who don’t normally follow strikes know that. As such, it’s a hard story to sell.
I hear some guild is picketing, I’m probably gonna assume they want better pay, and disregard that, because while most decent people might agree that writers deserve a decent salary and job stability, there’s not much they can personally do about it.
People are lazy and largely self-centered. More than half of the media coverage for the WGA strike features at least a few paragraphs on which shows are being impacted by the strike. In other words…
… how does this impact me?
That’s what people who aren’t writers want to know, at the end of the day. Even the ones sympathetic to the cause, and that’s worrying. Because of the much more somber, much more real underbelly of the WGA strikes.
A.I. in the writer’s room (for now)
One of the more interesting demands of the strikers has to do with the use of artificial intelligence, such as Chat GPT in writing television. As a writer, I’m the first to say a robot lacks the finesse and fine social attention that makes human writers…well, human, and thus more engaging.
But aside from being a writer, I am also a realist. A.I. has already been making tremendous, terrifying advancements in online fields such as copywriting, with many smaller media owners asking, why should I pay an in-house writer, or even a freelancer when a robot can do it for free?
And to be fair, much of the content circulated online can be passed over to the robots easily. Much of it is repetitive, recycling material from other existing publications, and requiring very little genuinely human input.
Five years from now, in a world where most of the online content Consumer Joe takes in is generated by A.I., is it such a stretch to assume his favorite TV series is written by a robot, also? Why? Every one of us has our own median intellectual level for the content we consume, and if the majority of the content I consume is written by A.I., then I really don’t think I’d notice such a difference if the next big blockbuster was penned by a machine, also.
So, it’s a very plausible and reasonable concern for the 11k+ protesters that one day in the near future, A.I. will be taking over their jobs. Now, obviously, that’s a simplistic view. It’s not the “machines” coming for anyone’s job, that’s just humanity’s penchant for anthropomorphism. Rather, it’s a plausible fear that greedy, callous, self-centered executives will pass on the “human voice” a human adds to a script, and opt for the cheaper, more convenient option.
After all, A.I. isn’t likely to go on strike and disrupt the transmission of several important channels. Not in the near future, at least.
And true to that logic, I understand studios have refused the WGA’s demands to limit AI input in the writing room. At least, in the preliminary stages.
Why you really should care.
One of the things that bug me most about this whole A.I. business is the clever-dick, egotistic jerks who think “Oh, I don’t care, it could never come for my job”.
Oh, really?
When they laid off thousands of supermarket cashiers, in favor of self-scanning check-out, you didn’t say a thing. Most of us didn’t. Why should we? We’re not cashiers.
We liked it. It was speedier. We didn’t have to make awkward chitchat with the old woman scanning our avocados.
Now that the writers are protesting, some people are bound to wonder, why should I care? I’m not a writer. And besides, they could never take my job.
Why? Because you’re just so special and clever? Most people aren’t. I mean the vast, 99% majority of people. You might think you’re a “genius” at your job, but I’d argue that’s wishful thinking. Rough estimates show that only 2–3% of people qualify as actual geniuses. Maybe you’re in that small pool of people, but the chances are much, much greater that you’re not. And that while you may, indeed, be good at your job, your boss might not care.
See, I do think you might be a genuinely awesome person with exciting, innovative ideas. Only, here’s the rub. It takes a lot of chances for you to prove that, typically. Most of the people we look up to, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs for instance, had entire careers to prove it.
If your future job goes to the A.I. by default, then you ain’t got that chance to prove yourself. And all your great, innovative ideas end up in the bottom drawer of your at-home desk.
Which is why I, for one, will be keeping an eye on the WGA strike. I do hope these people get the stability and compensation, and all the other important talking points they’re asking for.
But I also hope they talk more about the A.I. in the writer’s room, or it won’t be their room much longer.
Who knows, maybe ten years in the future, the A.I. will be braver than us, and won’t shy away from addressing the human in the room. Maybe.
Note: As ever, this is an opinion piece, reflecting my own. If you’d like to share yours, please try to do so mindfully and respectfully. At the end of the day, it’s just a bunch of thoughts on the Internet. You don’t have to agree with it, and if you don’t, feel free to move along.
