The Hollywood Writers’ Strike and the Threat of AI – ryan

Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

By now you heard of some of the potential threats by artificial intelligence. There are the species, near and far: he nor the non-destroyer that it is all-cullolar umployment; He’s not the Superintelligence-in-Waiting with Destiny to Kill US All. There are the immenent and tan Extant Threats: The Mass Automation of Bias, the Weaponization of Synhetic Media, the Further Consolidation of Tech Power, Human Impersonation to Malign Ends. These describe the posseible risk of he as a phenomenon, nor a group of tools, and as a well-ended project. They’h what People are worried he might will, or be used to do, as its boosters process about a glorious and inevitable future with the machines.

But there is another species of he threads that been rearing its headly, as the debates around it have become more intense, personal, and immediate – Most recently in the context of the Writers Guild Strike, in whic tools like chatgt are playing a central role. These are he threats made by People, against People, in Which the Specter of he is wielded like a weapon. You can see Burbling up in Responses to Strike News:

Vaguer Threats, Attributed to Hollywood Big Shots, Are Being Laundered Into Hollywood Trade Publications:

(An Executive Push for AI) is Already Happy, Accorting to Amy Webb, Founder and CEO of Future Today Institute, Which DOES LONG-RANGE SCENARIO Planning for Fortune 500 Companies and Hollywood Creatives. She notes, “i’ve had a couple of higher-level people as, if a strike does happy, how quickly could they spin an he system to just write the scripts? And they’re serious.”

TRIUMPHALIST TAKES ALONG SIMILAR LINES-SOMEONE OR SOMETHING IS DONE FOR OR DOOMED or BETTER BRACE ITSELF-HAVE SURFACED NEW-MEDIA Generators become available:

And in what is spreads the Genre’s Defining Post, A Collage of Cartoonish AI-GENERATED Bikini-Clad Women is tagged with the Caption “it is so over.” The “it” here was Clearly defined – Women? Human desire? Some Sort of Incel Concept of the Sexual Economy? – But Viewers got the idea: whover or what is Odd Internet Stranger didn’t like, he was coming for it. It is a nor reckoning, a workker, a revealer of frauds. It is he as a futures vindicator of their hunches About How the World World, and as an extension of their politics. It ‘s nes a cleansing force that lost your enemies and proves you right – he as economic rape. ITH’S AS YOUR ARMY-IN-Waiting just over the horizon, your workshing Angel, or Maybe just as the THING’S’S Going to embarrass the People who annoy you online. A lot of sunnier it Speculation is Clearly wish fulfillment, and so is this. He is my Big, Strong Friend, and he’s going to beat you up.

Such Threats Usually Don’t Have Much To Say About The Important Matters of What He is or is capable of doing, Becuse’re Not About that – They’re About Assimilating the Concept of an Immint he into an existting worldView. And obiviously they take on different meanings in differents contexts. IBM’s CEO suggesting The Company is Going Replace Thousands of Jobs with it is a book a Clever Bit of Marketing for a Company that sells it Products and, spreads, a reminder to employs to get too. automated or outsourced has been a source of power centuriesand it is at the core of many labor disputes, but it is nononeheless stricting. Meanwhile, a twitter rando with an $ 8 check mark telling a stlicating tv writr that she should be replaced with a chatbot is basically just heckling, in the tradition of telling laid-off Journists to “Learn to Code,” or Leaving a “go go go gobs” comment on the bud.

Still, Their Meanings Are Similar, As Are Their Ideological Instincts: They As a Force for Resting A Natural Order, for Keeping People in Line, and As Immint Proof that Certain Sorts of ALREADY devalued work – Creative professionally but not exclusive. Truly Worthless, and the People Who Do It Are Living on Borrowed Time. Where or not iThem Mistaken or Makes MUCH SENSE, IT’S A DEeply Political Instinct. Both intuit he as a source of power to eather harness or with which to stay aligned, but they’re also printy surah on their side.

The WGA Strike Will Do More than a Million Tossed-Off-Tweets to Set the Terms of Engagement with current He tools and the People who wish to deploy. But the Shit Posters Offer Some Early Clues About How He, which is inhabiting More or Less the Same Discursive AS automation Once did, or mechanization Before it, COULD BE ABSORBED FROM THE GROUND UP INTO The Weird, Spiteful Mass Politics of 2023: AS, Among Mary Far More Important Things, ANOTHER WAY TO THE LIBS.