“I just don’t see how we survive”—Tyler Perry issues Hollywood warning over AI video tech

Perry: Mind-blowing AI video generation tools "will touch every corner of our industry."

See full article...

 

[Aurich]

On thinking on this a bit more, the thing that gets me is that Tyler Perry's net worth is estimated to be around a billion dollars. He's going to be okay for the rest of his life. So the problem is that it rings just a tad hollow to see him pulling a "won't someone think of the poor production crew!!!" at the exact same time he's doing something that will royally screw over a whole bunch of people in production. The more cynical (and realistic) take on this is "Tyler Perry laments how many people AI will make obsolete, while salivating over how much money AI will save him in not having to pay a bunch of obsolete people."

I suggest reading the other posts where it's been explained why this isn't actually all about him. He's lamenting that there's no point in building out all this new studio space that people won't come and use. There's no salivating over AI saving him money.

If HBO doesn't film there, if Marvel doesn't film there, if AMC doesn't film there, then what?

Don't confuse the fact that he makes his own movies with all this space being some personal project just for his films.

 

[Celery Man]

Government protection for the entertainment industry, why? It's not like Hollywood is vital to society and there are many, many skilled professions and industries that are now dust because they're no longer relevant. It is, sadly, just the way an industrialised, rapidly changing society works and why it's so important for countries to provide easy access to lifelong training for people to reskill if their skillset becomes less relevant.

Or maybe Sam Altman and the OpenAI board need to retrained instead of everyone else in society.

 

[Aurich]

Yeah but many people do care - witness the popularity of people who point out the autotune effects and decry it, eg Rick Beato, and the popularity of Alt music for example. So I think this kind of thing is self correcting in the end.
It is the "industry" that changes.

It is weird on the one hand people saying everybody will be out of a job, and others crying doom that there won't be enough young people because of population trends turning down. I think those are contradictory.

I think it's worth pointing out that with every new tech comes new uses. Autotune for instance isn't just for pitch correction, people turn it up purposefully high to get that warbling robotic edge as a style. It's like putting distortion on your electric guitar, some people prefer a clean, more acoustic sound and decry the youth and their noisy guitars, but creativity always finds new uses.

This song for instance, just skip through it briefly if dancehall tunes aren't your thing, but he's not compensating for being out of pitch, he's purposefully amping it up for a vibe:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg3TjbN69vE


I'm sure people will find a way to twist AI too. There's always new and creative uses. But just like autotune can be boring and make everything a little bland and overly perfect AI feels best right now at making "more of what you've seen already".

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

Or maybe Sam Altman and the OpenAI board need to retrained instead of everyone else in society.

One man's "retrained" is another man's "shot in the street"

 

[IceStorm]

The answer is to just stop consuming linear media.

Why start a series, when you know Netflix will kill it after three seasons because they don't want to pay actors?
Why watch a new movie, when you know Disney+ will delete it for tax purposes two weeks after it's put on the service?
Why get invested in any media you cannot physically own, when it will just be deleted?

I don't care about creepy 60 second video clips created by prompts, because at this point the studios have already shot themselves in the foot by deleting content and not making it available in physical form, all for "tax purposes".

 

[85mm]

FWIW, autotune and pitch correction are two different things.

Autotune is a very stylized and obvious vocal effect where your voice’s pitch is changed to match that of a note being played on a keyboard. Think T-Pain and a lot of stuff mid/late aughts. It can be a legit effect, as much as delay or phasing or flanging.

Pitch correction isn’t supposed to be obvious, and involves “snapping” the pitch of your voice to the nearest note. So if you sing a little flat, pitch correction would bump your pitch up just enough to make it on key.

I’ve realized that most people mean “pitch correction” when they say “autotune”, or haven’t kept up with popular music in the last 15 years or so. Autotune is used much more sparingly now, and as an intentional effect, versus pitch correction which is applied to most Top 40 songs (the ones owned by big labels, at least).

Perhaps I'm wrong on the terms, though I'd always thought autotune was pitch correction applied automatically rather than by someone manually correcting individual notes. Either way though, my point is that a significant proportion of the music buying public has been quite happy to buy and listen to music where much of the human subtilty has been extracted in favour of mechanised sterile perfection. It suggests there'll be a large market for derivative AI generated formula content.

edit: I'm not talking about the stylised stuff, more the huge amount that's trying to be subtle, but stands out like a saw thumb to those who care about it.

 

[jason8957]

I remember when the original Star Wars was really cool for the "special effects"

Then CGI got big and it was just "effects"

Now we have AI and it will just be "sigh".

 

[Aurich]

FWIW, autotune and pitch correction are two different things.

Autotune is a very stylized and obvious vocal effect where your voice’s pitch is changed to match that of a note being played on a keyboard. Think T-Pain and a lot of stuff mid/late aughts. It can be a legit effect, as much as delay or phasing or flanging.

Pitch correction isn’t supposed to be obvious, and involves “snapping” the pitch of your voice to the nearest note. So if you sing a little flat, pitch correction would bump your pitch up just enough to make it on key.

I’ve realized that most people mean “pitch correction” when they say “autotune”, or haven’t kept up with popular music in the last 15 years or so. Autotune is used much more sparingly now, and as an intentional effect, versus pitch correction which is applied to most Top 40 songs (the ones owned by big labels, at least).

I just made a similar point, so I do agree with you.

But just to be pedantic about it, that's all auto tune, or more specifically Auto-Tune, the name of the product by Antares.

It's just about how you set the dials. You can make it subtle, for gentle pitch correction. You can dial it in heavier for absolute snapping where you're dead on with every note every time. Or, you can crank it up past the human limits and get that robotic effect, like the track I just posted, which has it dialed in to "more than human, not really full robot".

Exactly as you said, but it's all the same product doing it. So you're not wrong in your point, but calling it all auto tune is technically correct. I still upvoted you.

 

[SportivoA]

It‘s a weird feeling. I’m the kind of person who is typically in favor of technological progress. I’d be of the opinion that automation is usually a good thing in the long run, if we’re talking about physical or repetitive work that nobody really enjoys. Robots scrubbing toilets, working on farms, fixing rooftops in 80 degree summer weather, modeling protein interactions to create cancer drugs, etc etc.

As much as those seem like obvious tasks, you can't implement those as easily. Entertainment can be "we got this right-enough" while robots need to be "get this [complex task] right every time." Crushed tomato? Falling roof tile? Chipped toilet? Those are all physical reality challenges that the human supervisors have to check on repeatedly, not just when the <media type> generation cycle finishes. Self-driving (real, complete algorithms) cars still aren't here and the proper testbed platforms for them are extremely expensive. Purpose-built robots and their potential failings for even just the three tasks you mentioned are also going to be far off. Not to mention that these positions are low-capital to employ (underpaid, vulnerable) humans who are easy enough to motivate to get things correct enough of the time, with acceptable probabilities of liability.

 

[C.M. Allen]

Billionaires and their multi-billion-dollar companies aren't investing in AI technologies and tools out of the kindness of their cold, dead, shriveled hearts. They're investing to eliminate jobs, increase 'efficiency' and maximize 'profits.' If it puts billions (not an exaggeration) of people out of a job, that's someone else's problem.

All profit must be made for the line to keep going up, sacrificing whatever is necessary on the alter of profit. So speaks the Capitalism God.

 

[BlueCandle]

Why is it that when people are on their way up they don't want government to get in the way, but when they see they will start to go down, they want government to catch them.

 

[Geofferic]

20 years ago or so I would never have guessed that Ars would become a bastion of Luddites.

 

[tuple]

My issue with AI is how our end stage capitalism sees everything. Cheapest and fastest always at the expense of the people.

Even when it literally doesn't work.

 

[Fred Duck]

So wait.... He's very concerned about what AI could do to the industry in wiping out the need for hundreds of crew members to produce films. Yup, totally agree. And his answer is to cancel his plans to expand out his studio, thus wiping out the need for hundreds of crew members to produce films. Um, that's one way to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What?

The situation now is as if Tyler Perry were in charge of the Chicago Daily Tribune and early morning on 2 Nov 1948 had just learnt that Truman might actually defeat Dewey.

His pausing construction is not "wiping out the need for hundreds of crew members" since that need may or may not exist in future.

Your further suggestion he not pause is akin to printing MORE papers with the headline Dewey Defeats Truman instead of waiting to take the new information into consideration. A self-fulfilling prophecy would be if Mr. Perry had said, "I’m thinking this will touch every corner of our industry AND have decided we shall be at the forefront of its usage."

It's not that he's just blindly listening to experts. The "heavy snowfall" predictions have been made and he is looking at the temperature and clouds with his own eyes. You suggest he make no blizzard preparations?

But damn, you don't HAVE to use AI. You can try to resist the changes to the industry to keep it from happening. In fact, vocally noting that you're going forward anyway might help other studios do the same thing. While pausing expansion sure as hell will make others ponder the exact same thing.

If you weren't aware, the hit American retailer Wal-mart told their suppliers to move production to China. Many made the move. There were a few companies that resisted and while a noble gesture, many of those are no longer with us.
Source

It's not that relocating to China was a guaranteed lifeline but unfortunately, the Vogons may be correct.

___

Now for our regularly scheduled joke.

Tyler Perry Studios, which the actor and producer acquired in 2015, is a 330-acre lot located in Atlanta and is one of the largest film production facilities in the United States.

Well, that was a fortunate name, then.

 

[cerberusTI]

20 years ago or so I would never have guessed that Ars would become a bastion of Luddites.

It is not, but even relatively enlightened and well educated people get nervous when confronted with large changes which may impact them negatively and suddenly.

 

[tuple]

I don't think capitalism works if you can get the end product without using actual humans to make it. If people aren't being paid to make the thing that they end up buying, then who's buying it?

Be quiet. The techbros are masturbating...

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

20 years ago or so I would never have guessed that Ars would become a bastion of Luddites.

Do you often find people are enthusiastic about things that have a very serious potential to leave them unemployed and facing a need to completely restart their career, at substantially lower compensation IF they can find work?

if I were someone working in the film industry and looking at this technology, I'd be thinking that this could very much be a monkey's paw curl interpretation of "I wish I didn't have to work until I'm too old to enjoy life"

To say nothing of what will be made with this technology and the harm that will come from it.

 

[davidkassa]

I'm of mixed mind on this issue.

On the one hand, filmmaking is not an essential line of work. Not in the way that firefighting, surgery, water system maintenance, ambulance driving, etc. are essential. Using laws and regulations to force a non-essential industry to stagnate, for the sake of preserving a particular set of jobs, is a pretty big and risky ask.

On the second hand, generative AI has the potential to take the human touch and soul out of storytelling. Already, financial-metrics-driven decision-making has more or less killed Hollywood's appetite for anything genuinely new, creative, different, and risky. A pretty big chunk of modern American cinema and TV is just endless rehashes of forgettable, formulaic plots and bland stories, re-rendered with new CGI. Generative AI might make that worse.

On the third hand, generative AI might have the potential to democratize the film-making process, taking control out of the hands of a handful of studio execs and allowing thousands of wanna-be screenwriters to realize their visions despite not having massive budgets or backing. Most of it will be worthless dreck. Some of it might be genuinely new and good.

On the fourth hand, a lot of people are going to be out of work in short order, in an industry where work has historically been boom-bust, bonanaza-drought, at the best of times. In a country with no social safety net to speak of, sudden mass unemployment can lead to very volatile situations, particularly in areas where the cost of living is already unsustainably high.

On the fifth hand is the one that really worries me. Western democracies, led by the USA, have been drifting towards a "facts don't matter, truth isn't real, my made-up opinion is just as valid as your scientific reality" trend for several decades now. Generative AI has the potential to completely upend what few remaining sources of public truth are still somewhat trusted by the populace. Right now, if you see a prominent politician on live video saying "We are going to end democracy, we are going to turn this country into an authoritarian Christian state" you can be pretty sure he actually said that. Next year, it'll be easy to brush such a clip off as the work of an opponent's AI, whether it's real or not. Without a widely accepted basis for discerning truth from fiction, democracy might die entirely.

I see you asked AI to draw you a set of hands.

 

[SraCet]

So he turns the oil tanker around a few minutes after he sees an article on the internet?

I'm seeing a few possible scenarios here:

- He's telling the truth

- He intended to invest $800M in the project but was getting cold feet and this seems like a good excuse to pull back/out

- He intended to invest some amount of money on expansion, less than $800M, but now he's claiming $800M to exaggerate his wealth or his status or to improve his odds of making the news

Well, he made the news, anyway.

 

[jonah]

CGI has already replaced extras in many situations. Within the next 5 years I expect AI and CGI will be able to replace many non-core and non-speaking parts. It's not going to make the big names obsolete any time soon, but that won't help those replaced already.

Is there anyone really clamoring for parts as an extra in a film or TV show? It's shitty work that you get paid a shitty amount for (a somewhat less shitty amount if you're a SAG member, but the proportion of union v non-union extras is always low).

 

[TheThirdDictor]

Perry is very astute in his observations about how Generative AI might affect studios, and I understand his comments about regulation, but no regulation will stop this. No regulation could have saved buggy whip manufacturers or punch-card makers or companies that made horse-drawn plows.

The only choice is to adapt. And, like the developments that affected those things, this will advance the state of the art and the benefits to humanity. Not only is regulating our way out of the AI revolution impossible, it's a bad idea.

It's important to note that while the machines that have come before us have dramatically changed the composition of the workforce, it didn't eliminate the need for workers. It opened up new opportunities and forced people to change what they did, but it didn't eliminate the need for people to work. This looks to be shaping up the same way.

I'm fairly deep into GenAI, and the more I see how it actually works, and the ways it is already transforming work activities, the less "scared" of it I become. Now AGI might be a different story. GenAI will transform work and society (it already is, for the better, IMO), but AGI has the potential to introduce an entirely new "being" into the world to coexist with us, which will be an order of magnitude more complicated. We've seen how it often works out when we just try to coexist with existing people and other beings, so it may not be a stretch to recognize that AGI may become an existential threat. But GenAI? It's really not. Just incredibly transformative.

 

[Thom Kidd]

Can't wait for AI Madea.

Heh... AI will probably churn out the final Madea flick: Madea's Dead: Funky Cold Madea.

 

[Celery Man]

I just made a similar point, so I do agree with you.

But just to be pedantic about it, that's all auto tune, or more specifically Auto-Tune, the name of the product by Antares.

It's just about how you set the dials. You can make it subtle, for gentle pitch correction. You can dial it in heavier for absolute snapping where you're dead on with every note every time. Or, you can crank it up past the human limits and get that robotic effect, like the track I just posted, which has it dialed in to "more than human, not really full robot".

Exactly as you said, but it's all the same product doing it. So you're not wrong in your point, but calling it all auto tune is technically correct. I still upvoted you.

Pedantry alert!

Auto-tune is a type of pitch correction, but not all pitch correction is auto-tune.

They’re different in how they know what note to adjust your pitch to. Auto-tune is matching pitch alongside a MIDI track, basically. There’s an external source of intended notes. “Normal” pitch correction is not based on any external inputs beyond the singer’s voice.

Anteres makes the canonical auto-tune plugin, but there are pitch correction plugins from other companies that can’t make the auto-tune sound. Waves makes one I used to use.

It’s kind of like “TASER”… technically it refers only to the guns that shoot an electric prod made by the TASER company, but it’s used colloquially to include stunguns as well (which are not guns, but I digress).

 

[sigmasirrus]

Don't worry, I am sure Sam Altman has us all covered! /s

“When these treasures from AI are claimed, poverty as we know it, social injustice, loss of biodiversity—all these multitudes of problems are just gonna become relics of the past and humanity is gonna stride through the Pillars of Boaz and Jachin naked into the glory of a golden age”

This guy is loony!

 

[Sajuuk]

20 years ago or so I would never have guessed that Ars would become a bastion of Luddites.

Turns out it's hard to perpetually jerk off to technology as some abstract "cool new thing" when you realize there actually is social and economic fallout. Also helps when you can view, you know, human beings as more than numbers on a spreadsheet.

 

[sword_9mm]

Why is it that when people are on their way up they don't want government to get in the way, but when they see they will start to go down, they want government to catch them.

Most animals are selfish. Just because we can SEE it doesn't mean we're any different.

Same as privatize the profit socialize the cost.

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

Perry is very astute in his observations about how Generative AI might affect studios, and I understand his comments about regulation, but no regulation will stop this. No regulation could have saved buggy whip manufacturers or punch-card makers or companies that made horse-drawn plows.

The only choice is to adapt. And, like the developments that affected those things, this will advance the state of the art and the benefits to humanity. Not only is regulating our way out of the AI revolution impossible, it's a bad idea.

It's important to note that while the machines that have come before us have dramatically changed the composition of the workforce, it didn't eliminate the need for workers. It opened up new opportunities and forced people to change what they did, but it didn't eliminate the need for people to work. This looks to be shaping up the same way.

Imagine being, say, 50 years old and working a good job with comfortable middle class income. You've done ok, and hopefully in another decade and a half you will be able to retire.

Now imagine your job going away, and every job with that title going with it. Imagine starting over because none of what you do is relevant anymore, and you now get to compete with everyone else who doesn't have a job or a useful skill set because their industry is gone too.

On a factual basis, you might not be wrong, but we're talking about human beings here.

I'm fairly deep into GenAI, and the more I see how it actually works, and the ways it is already transforming work activities, the less "scared" of it I become.

Clearly you don't work in a job that you can see being replaced by it. Neither do I (for now), but a lot of people I know are and it's not something they feel is going to be good for them.


Frankly, your entire post comes off in a very "Millions of other people might lose their jobs and have their lives destroyed while I profit from it, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make" way.

 

[alansh42]

Is there anyone really clamoring for parts as an extra in a film or TV show? It's shitty work that you get paid a shitty amount for (a somewhat less shitty amount if you're a SAG member, but the proportion of union v non-union extras is always low).

It's how you break in to the business. Like any other entry-level position.

 

[Edgar Allan Esquire]

My entire reaction to the unveiling of Sora has been total disgust and anger. Why do we need this? Why are so many people working hard to make this happen? If this ends up being a tool to democratize VFX, awesome. But I’m horrified at the possibility of human-made filmmaking being 100% replaced by this kind of thing.

It‘s a weird feeling. I’m the kind of person who is typically in favor of technological progress. I’d be of the opinion that automation is usually a good thing in the long run, if we’re talking about physical or repetitive work that nobody really enjoys. Robots scrubbing toilets, working on farms, fixing rooftops in 80 degree summer weather, modeling protein interactions to create cancer drugs, etc etc.

But something about the idea of fully generative “entertainment” makes me feel profound revulsion. Who the hell actually wants to live in a world where cinema, music, and art is replaced with AI generated slop? I’ve seen comments elsewhere from people along the lines of “Omg! I could have AI make new episodes of my favorite cancelled shows!” or “Now I can jerk off to self-insert anime porn!” I just can’t comprehend what kind of dead-eyed husk of a human being would think like that.

I sincerely hope my reaction will look laughably overdramatic in a few years.

It's not too hard to imagine if you look at art/media, not as a celebration of human expression or elevation of culture, but as a commodity. Plenty of people consume media made by exploitive publishers, but it satiates their boredom. Is it really a surprise that people would jump at the chance to turn their fanfiction scripts into movies on the cheap? I've seen more than enough Stans forgive bad writing or plagiarizing as long as it ships their OTP or flexes their kink.

Heck, there's plenty of shows and films I'd watch/purchased more if they released a version with/out certain tropes, characters, or plotlines. Would be it a company twisting the work of the writers and directors to get more sales? Sure, but I can't say I wouldn't be tempted by a cinematic experience that lets me make substitutions like I do with a meal order.

People giving money to things that are cheap, adequate, and/or convenient despite ethical, social, or economic downsides isn't particularly novel.

 

[enlightened.doggo]

The enshittification of cinema continues. First they replaced quality practical effects with bad CGI and copious blur. Then they replaced the dearly departed with deepfakes. Next they will replace entire sets with prompt engineering. Quantity of media will increase and quality will decrease. Between this and streaming there is a good chance that movie theaters will cease to exist when it is all said and done.

 

[gregorerlich]

It's easy to get caught up in the hype and make extrapolations from early progress - but it's really hard to say how difficult future improvements will be. These things are enormously complex, and tend to get exponentially more so for even minor functional improvements.

This is really our only hope - that the current "leaps and bounds" progress hits a hard wall of needing too much training data and compute/electricity to continue, and it stalls out before basically destroying life as we know it.

Because despite what Sam Altman thinks, there is a 0% chance of utopia and a 100% chance of catastrophic societal collapse and mass misery if he achieves his aims.

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

Because despite what Sam Altman thinks, there is a 0% chance of utopia and a 100% chance of catastrophic societal collapse and mass misery if he achieves his aims.

Not HIS society. Just the one that actual human beings live in.

 

[numerobis]

So he turns the oil tanker around a few minutes after he sees an article on the internet?

I'm seeing a few possible scenarios here:

- He's telling the truth

- He intended to invest $800M in the project but was getting cold feet and this seems like a good excuse to pull back/out

- He intended to invest some amount of money on expansion, less than $800M, but now he's claiming $800M to exaggerate his wealth or his status or to improve his odds of making the news

Well, he made the news, anyway.

It’s way beyond an excuse. I bid as a vendor on a project at that studio*; the producer wanted to be sure all us vendors could be ready to start in spring 2023 (I’m not in Atlanta but the software can be done remote). The studio space was obviously going to be a big chunk of the cost.

The strikes forced a delay, no big deal, but then AI started getting real and the producer is holding off on committing tens of millions of dollars on a traditional production lasting two years when AI might let projects starting next year finish before his project, at half the budget.

So that’s several million in revenue that the studios aren’t going to recognize for a while, and perhaps forever gone, because of AI.

It’s not the only issue in the industry; there’s also that the streaming services (basically Netflix and Amazon) poured billions in to buy eyeballs, and stopped doing that when interest rates shot up. The industry is thus overbuilt for the current revenue totals.

AI compounds that: the industry is built for twice as much investment more per year than actually is coming in anymore, and we expect AI to reduce production cost by an order of magnitude, we’re just unsure if it’s a base 2 or base 10 order of magnitude.


* Technically I don’t 100% know it was that studio because of secrecy etc, but from what they told me about the facilities I don’t think it could be anywhere else.

 

[numerobis]

Is there anyone really clamoring for parts as an extra in a film or TV show? It's shitty work that you get paid a shitty amount for (a somewhat less shitty amount if you're a SAG member, but the proportion of union v non-union extras is always low).

You seem to now be old enough that you no longer know any aspiring actors. But yes, there’s still flocks of actors hoping to get on set. If they aren’t making shit pay and working conditions on set where there’s at least a possibility of advancing their career, they’re making shit pay and working conditions waiting tables.

 

[TheThirdDictor]

Imagine being, say, 50 years old and working a good job with comfortable middle class income. You've done ok, and hopefully in another decade and a half you will be able to retire.

Now imagine your job going away, and every job with that title going with it. Imagine starting over because none of what you do is relevant anymore, and you now get to compete with everyone else who doesn't have a job or a useful skill set because their industry is gone too.

On a factual basis, you might not be wrong, but we're talking about human beings here.





Clearly you don't work in a job that you can see being replaced by it. Neither do I (for now), but a lot of people I know are and it's not something they feel is going to be good for them.


Frankly, your entire post comes off in a very "Millions of other people might lose their jobs and have their lives destroyed while I profit from it, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make" way.

How does recognizing the inevitability of change equate to being uncompassionate towards those who will be affected? Of COURSE the transition will be painful for many. That is so obvious, I didn't think it needed to be stated. And there are plenty of things we can and should put into place to deal with this that will also be ENABLED by these changes. Things like a universal basic income, and other advanced social protection systems that SHOULD have already been in place (here in the US) for a while now.

My point was specifically about his call for regulation, as I noted in my first sentence. There is no regulation that can possibly stope this or slow this down. None. Nor would it be advisable even if there were.

Like with any other economic sea change, there will be winners and losers. And we have an obligation to help those who will be affected by this negatively. OBVIOUSLY we have that obligation. But pretending it somehow can be prevented or implementing possibly well-intended (but inevitably useless) laws isn't doing that.

We SHOULD talk about things like a UBI and how to manage the structural changes, but to do this effectively we have to start from the recognition that this is absolutely, unquestionably inevitable and that wasting breath on things like trying to regulate it out of existence or artificially propping up jobs that can no longer be justified by the economics we live it isn't helping. It's hurting, and will only distract us from the hard discussions of HOW we will respond - not whether it is possible to prevent it se we don't HAVE to respond.

 

[Quasius]

This. I expect AI to be useful for maybe background stuff and special effects, but you still need real actors to carry a film.

I wish I thought this was true...

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

How does recognizing the inevitability of change equate to being uncompassionate towards those who will be affected? Of COURSE the transition will be painful for many. That is so obvious, I didn't think it needed to be stated. And there are plenty of things we can and should put into place to deal with this that will also be ENABLED by these changes. Things like a universal basic income, and other advanced social protection systems that SHOULD have already been in place (here in the US) for a while now.

My point was specifically about his call for regulation, as I noted in my first sentence. There is no regulation that can possibly stope this or slow this down. None. Nor would it be advisable even if there were.

Like with any other economic sea change, there will be winners and losers. And we have an obligation to help those who will be affected by this negatively. OBVIOUSLY we have that obligation. But pretending it somehow can be prevented or implementing possibly well-intended (but inevitably useless) laws isn't doing that.

We SHOULD talk about things like a UBI and how to manage the structural changes, but to do this effectively we have to start from the recognition that this is absolutely, unquestionably inevitable and that wasting breath on things like trying to regulate it out of existence or artificially propping up jobs that can no longer be justified by the economics we live it isn't helping. It's hurting, and will only distract us from the hard discussions of HOW we will respond - not whether it is possible to prevent it se we don't HAVE to respond.

Your whole theory is predicated on the idea that the wealth to come from all of this magical AI isn't going to be concentrated amongst a tiny amount of people who will never share it willingly, and will control enough power to prevent it from being taken by government.

 

[TheThirdDictor]

Your whole theory is predicated on the idea that the wealth to come from all of this magical AI isn't going to be concentrated amongst a tiny amount of people who will never share it willingly, and will control enough power to prevent it from being taken by government.

And how do you think trying to regulate our way out of this would be any different? Do you REALLY think those people don't have sufficient influence over pretty much every country in the world to make sure that no regulations would get in the way of their windfall?

 

[DovePig]

This guy is loony!

Ahem, it was a satirical quote of Peter Isherwell from the movie Don't look up, just paraphrased, replacing "comet" with "AI", to clear things up – though the movie's Peter Isherwell was a pretty well done satire amalgam of all the various libertarian tech bros, Altman included.
_{(unless you were talking about me being a loony, which I can wholly endorse) ;-)}

 

[cwaynerl]

I'm reminded of the old stories of the buggy whip businesses failing when automobiles became common and how they tried to regulate the industry to maintain their business model. I'm sympathetic of the potential job losses in the entertainment industry (who needs more jobless and/or homeless people. If this would reduce the costs of movie production and it gets passed to the consumer I'm all for it but knowing how greedy every executive is these days it would only increase their profits by still charging the same in theaters.