It’s time for workers across Hollywood (and maybe the world) to ensure humans keep their jobs.
The great Roger Ebert once said cinema is the ultimate empathy machine. Well, many years later, we’re dealing with regular machines attempting to take human empathy out of the process, and we need to stop them. No matter what it takes.
This week in Vanity Fair, there was a fantastic article about how the WGA strike is really just the first skirmish in what is about to be the human war on artificial intelligence. In Hollywood, the writers are on the front lines right now as the AMPTP refuses to negotiate provisions to protect our jobs from AI.
This may look like just the writer’s fight right now, but what’s coming is sweeping changes that will affect the entire industry.
AI is coming for your jobs. There will be measures for it to replace writers, producers, editors, directors, and executives.
If we don’t nip it in the bud now and ensure that creative jobs stay with human beings, we’re going to have a lot of people out of work.
As the studios gobble each other up and answer to corporate overlords who demand rising stock prices and profitability to increase an impossible percentage each year, they’re looking to cut jobs where they can. We covered the massive layoffs across Hollywood. And the cutting of overall deals during the writer’s strike.
But as automation comes into play, we need to make them see we should be respected for being humans. Creativity is something only we can do. From green lighting ideas as important as Citizen Kane to writing ideas as unique as Everything Everywhere All at Once, it all comes from the human experience.
The biggest thing being taken for granted right now is the idea that computers can replicate what we think and feel. Maybe someday they can. But today, it’s not even close. The idea that we don’t need a human in the chain in Hollywood is simply wrong.
Humans have emotions. We understand nuance, stakes, and intention. We can learn experiences, share wonder, and ultimately connect in a way automation cannot. At best, computers are going to spend time reflecting on humanity because they’re not humans, we’ll only ever be a nature program to them that they can mimic but never truly recreate.
They cannot anthropomorphize us because they have no idea what it is like to live and breathe.
That’s also why they have no place in Hollywood–outside of maybe a tool for inspiration or to make sure we get paid on time.
I have to admit that the strike and the occasional stupid note make me wonder if we need human executives, but we do. We need human beings running Hollywood and participating in storytelling and creation because the process is beautiful. It is collaborative. It’s teamwork.
We need more diverse and interesting voices working in this town and in entertainment across the world, and we need them to be human.
Because if you take human empathy out of the machine, it’s just a machine.
No set of widgets and gears can write and direct Casablanca or Do The Right Thing.
They can barely get you to the theater on time.
The fight for human creativity is now, and we have to win. If not, then the only thing left is nuts and bolts.
