Writers Strike & AI

[Xath]

You don't seem to understand the strict limitations inherent to generative AI in these matters. They can rapidly approach a plateau for certain skills, and that plateau may be higher than the average human plateau, but that plateau has significant limitations a human brain does not. Innovation, for example, is entirely impossible for generative AI. Not a matter of "currently out of reach"; the systems used cannot generative innovative concepts.

We haven't hit that plateau yet and who knows how high up it actually is. People are freaking out over chat gpt but the publically available version stopped being given data past 2021. If you want to actually see how fast ai creation is accelerating look at the art scene where ai work is nearing the point of being indistinguishable.

[Gumble]

We haven't hit that plateau yet and who knows how high up it actually is. People are freaking out over chat gpt but the publically available version stopped being given data past 2021. If you want to actually see how fast ai creation is accelerating look at the art scene where ai work is nearing the point of being indistinguishable.

Just imagine what the military will do with it.....

People like Endus saying it will never be as good as humans vastly overestimate humans and underestimate where AI is RIGHT NOW.

Where it is going, and what it will be used for..... buckle up.

[eschatological]

nope. its like commissioning a painter to make a painting of a shitty subject in a specific shitty style with mediocre paints on mediocre canvas and giving them barely enough time to finish a draft of a painting and then complaining that the painting is bad and its all painter's fault.

there is only so much you can do no matter how good you are.

you think show and movie writers have far more power over what they end up producing or how they get paid for it than they actualy do.

It's like the famous story of Michaelangelo, who came into his workshop every day for 4 months to stare at a block of marble, and when one of his patrons asked him what he was doing, he said, "I'm working."

The block of marble a few months later turned into the Statue of David. AI can't do shit like that (even if it can eventually overcome the technical limitations of carving marble), it can only copy it.

[loras]

Just imagine what the military will do with it.....

People like Endus saying it will never be as good as humans vastly overestimate humans and underestimate where AI is RIGHT NOW.

Where it is going, and what it will be used for..... buckle up.

Yeah, like all those self-driving cars, automation making menial workers obsolete....

It's seriously amazing how much hyped up people lose of their critical thinking faculties.

[baskev]

The writer is never the one who's driving. Ever. That's what the director is for. Meanwhile the director(s), editors, actors, producers and, yes, the writers are doing what they think is best. Which may not result in anything watchable.

Thats right most of the time. BUT AGAIN, man people really need to learn to read. When its show by leaks, statements by people that the writers do not know stuff.
They also follow directions of writers.

And when different shows/movies have different everything except the same writers. And they have the same story problems. kinda easy to see who is to blame.

So what you're telling me is that you read some "leaks" who have "proof" and are now convinced that's entirely the writer's fault. Maybe wallow in conspiracies less. You know what a leak tells me? It tells me that someone in another area of production is not getting their way and wants some angry fans on their side.

Nope, i am not saying that. You are filling in stuff here. For a gotcha style moment. Henry cavill in the witcher has been very nice. But it has been said several times by the writers that he was to stickler for the lore. The writer of the books said the show had litttle to do with the books.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...h=63b26f30145a
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a...uit-explained/

many more to find. People with trusted sources say the same things.

You're not bringing proof. You're just making loud statements.

Nope, its common knowledge at this point. Its been even talked about in the freaking media and by per example jenna ortega herself.....so why do i need to proof it when the actress herself says it :S. Like i know more then her?
And you are just asking for proof. So how can you say i do not bring proof. if you did not even ask me to bring proof.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv...ng-1235479818/

Bob Clark is an excellent example. This is a dude who's made some genuinely great movies but who's also made a few very bad duds in his career. Although he doesn't fit in with your narrative of some villainous writers crushing your favourite properties.

It does fit with the narrative if the movies where mad in the same couple of years. but 20 years is a lot of time. Skills can get lost, bad habbits can form, market can change etc etc. And the movies where also a different type.

And i am not saying writers are villians. I am saying in bob clarks example. its a massive time period between the movies. And that is part of the context of the situation. That like asking if muhammid ali was still a good a boxer before his death as he was in his prime. Times change.

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[QUOTE=Kaleredar;54126754]And there are good writers that write bad movies, same as their are good directors that make bad movies, producers, etc, etc.
I agree. But there are also bad writers that get to make bad movies over and over again etc.
And i do see a increase of badly written plots/stories. And you hear more and more about people not getting the core of the story.

This is all completely subjective. Or at the very least, can have wildly differing results.

Nope its not. When a core of something is something. You can not change it. Because you change what it is in that case.

Lots of extremely popular and beloved movies have plotholes. In back to the Future 2, why is old Biff able to bring the time machine back to the 2015 future that Marty and doc are in after having given younger biff the sports almanac in 1955? According to the rules of the film universe, the universe should have immediately changed to a 2015 version of the Biff 1985 where he's successful. But it doesn't. Massive plothole in the universe right there. But people still love Back to the Future part 2.

Yes i agree. But the plotholes are getting bigger and bigger. And more noticable. Like i said if a todler can spot them.

Many properties have tone/character shifts from their original form. The 21 Jumpstreet film was completely different in tone from the 21 Jumpstreet show. It went from being a police procedural drama to a slapstick buddy-cop comedy. Complete change-up of the tone of an intellectual property. But people still love the 21/22 Jump Street films.

Yes, but again. And fun movie does not mean its written well. And tone's of movies or tv shows can shift and still be fun and written well. take ds9.
I agree with you on that.
i think you and others are missing my point, i agree its not all the writers fault. And they should get more money. I am just saying, there are also some really bad writers, who keep getting jobs and the bigger bucks they should not get.

And being a "super fan" doesn't mean a project will come out good. The Rings of Power TV series showrunners were both huge Tolkein fans. The series was not particularly well recieved. Meanwhile, Andor, probably one of the best Star Wars things... ever... was showrun by a guy who really doesn't care about Star Wars, and just wanted to tell a good story.

Yes, but i am talking about context of a good story that at its base is correct. If Andor had the enterprise and kirk in it per example.
I was more talking that the base of the story was better know by the cast as the writers. And things can be changed to make it better. But if the core of the story needs to be correct by the actor or actress. Something is wrong with your writer staff.

And those are just three examples off the top of my head in relation to the three examples of "obvious problems that should be easily avoidable" you gave, wherein what you said clearly wasn't a problem. There are scores of examples of an idea working in one iteration, and not working in another.

Yes, again i agree.
Think you are being a bit to either left or right, up or down about this.
I am not saying all writers are bad.
And there are many examples of you being right or me being right.
I am just saying, bad writers should not be rewarded. And i question if all should be paid better.

Same goes for my proffesion. I see people fail more and more. While i think the good co workers should get a better salary. I do not think the bad ones should even work in my field.

If you don't know how to fix cars you probably shouldn't go about telling people how to fix them, and should take only mincing guesses at what's actually wrong with it. You might know enough to see the check engine light is on and that means something's wrong, but that doesn't mean you know that that light is actually telling you that your crankshaft is out of position, and that absolutely doesn't mean you know how to fix the engine.

My point^. why pay someone who can not even do the basics correct.
If you write a tv series about a dark gloomy girl. That is anti fashion, anti color etc. And you make her worry about dresses for a prom...( wednesday tv series). what does that say about the writers?

I bring up politics only because that is precisely what people identify as being what's "wrong" with a movie when that almost is never the case. Captain Marvel wasn't a hum-drum movie because it had Brie Larson and she said a thing about male reporters that one time, it was a hum-drum movie because it had a generic script and unclear characterization.

I liked that movie. Story wise it was close to her basics of her origin. Script was indeed a bit generic. But it made sense.

And I'm saying it's not so simple. "Stop hiring the bad writers/directors, only hire the good ones" is not a simple prospect.

Rian Johnson directed The Last Jedi, a film some people who call themselves Star Wars fans disliked (often for varying degrees of stupid reasons, but we wont get into that here.) And Rian Johnson also directed Looper and the two Knives Out films, all three of which were widely acclaimed. Rian Johnson ALSO directed Ozymandias, widely considered to be one of the best episodes of Breaking Bad, an extremely well-regarded show.

So someone saying "Don't hire Rian Johnson, he's a bad director" because he made a Star Wars film that some people don't like clearly isn't a concept that holds much water. And you can say that for many other directors/writers who have had good and bad projects. Spielberg, Lucas, Scorcese... the list goes on.

I agree, but we need to start somewhere. And i do not think we should fire them. It is more a out loud question.

Rain johnson is a good example. His star wars movie was indeed bad. Mostly for the story flow, and the killing of people etc. But the rest of his work is okay, good, great or even epic.
I am not saying writers like that should be fired. Or paid less.

But there are writers out there, who keep making the same crap over and over again. And while Rain did not make a great star wars movie. It did have much of the basics correct. And way less plot holes then Jar Jar abrams movies have.

Again. This is very black and white how you are talking. I do not meen it like that. i think a long the line of people who writer crap, time and time again. like jurasic park movies ( then new ones).

[Xath]

Just imagine what the military will do with it.....

People like Endus saying it will never be as good as humans vastly overestimate humans and underestimate where AI is RIGHT NOW.

Where it is going, and what it will be used for..... buckle up.

Yup and it's accelerating there is a reason people who actually have a clue are scared as hell of what's going to happen. Once it becomes more cost efficient to have self driving trucks there's going to be a chain reaction of jobs disappearing.

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It's like the famous story of Michaelangelo, who came into his workshop every day for 4 months to stare at a block of marble, and when one of his patrons asked him what he was doing, he said, "I'm working."

The block of marble a few months later turned into the Statue of David. AI can't do shit like that (even if it can eventually overcome the technical limitations of carving marble), it can only copy it.

Except it can, it can create thousands of permutations of an image or concept in the time it would take a dedicated artist to make one. They don't have to be perfect every time it can just spew them out. In a typical AI image set you get maybe 3 usable images out of 100 but those 3 are made faster than it takes an artist to do one.

[Rocksteady 87]

Yup and it's accelerating there is a reason people who actually have a clue are scared as hell of what's going to happen. Once it becomes more cost efficient to have self driving trucks there's going to be a chain reaction of jobs disappearing.

And, you know, a lot more jobs appearing. Like the people designing and building them, and programming them, and maintaining them, and so on and so forth.

"Oh no, automobiles are going to make a lot of jobs disappear!" cried the same people as you back in the 1880s. Or when computers came out (which, incidentally, is why George Jetson being a "button pusher" was considered an insult during the Jetsons.) Or any other time some new technology or advancement in society came about. Fuck, Nog Son of Throg lost his shit in the same way when Crog invented the wheel. And the annals of history remember well how Drog felt when Rogg made a stone knife. Fortunately for Rogg he had a stone knife on him when Drog came at him with a rock.

Yeah, outdated jobs will disappear. But a fuckton of new ones come along with it, too.

[Endus]

Yup and it's accelerating there is a reason people who actually have a clue are scared as hell of what's going to happen. Once it becomes more cost efficient to have self driving trucks there's going to be a chain reaction of jobs disappearing.

The fear comes about because capitalist economic models are predicated on labor as a fundamental production tool; workers labor, and are paid for that labor, and that pay is what they use to consume the products created by the capitalist system.

When you knock out that worker compensation baseline, the entire system comes crumbling down, and the capitalists at the top will absolutely fight you the whole way if you try and implement any kind of reforms to address this, because if they have to pay workers less, they can keep more of that revenue for themselves, and any addressing of the system's imbalances will go after that revenue and get it flowing back to the consumer class. And since those capitalists have nearly all the power, it's really difficult to make meaningful headway on this issue.

So AI might lead to the complete economic collapse of capitalist systems at the same time that capitalists are fighting to maximize personal gains and furthering that collapse. Because those capitalists are, largely, absolute fuckin' morons. They're in place largely by accident, not merit.

And yeah; this is a problem, but it was always a problem, and AI's just accelerating the collapse. A lot of people have been pointing out these flaws since the days of Ford inventing the assembly line. This is just the latest automation that's putting the entire system at risk.

[JDL49]

That's really unlikely to be the case here. Extremely so.

The way they are acting more so than you are saying. But that said it would mean the studios burning a bridge.
These shows generated enough revenue in the past that a studio could in recent years get away with being
over-generous to the writers*. But the audience does NOT want commercials and without them costs have to be
cut.

*I don't think they ever intended to be over-generous, it just worked out that way.

I am of the opinion that the guild can get a fair deal on minimums but if it goes balls to the wall on staffing and
current level residuals it's in a bad position. If, as I think, revenue on TV shows is going to continue to decline I
can see the studios drawing a line in the sand. YMMV.

[Kaleredar]

And, you know, a lot more jobs appearing. Like the people designing and building them, and programming them, and maintaining them, and so on and so forth.

"Oh no, automobiles are going to make a lot of jobs disappear!" cried the same people as you back in the 1880s. Or when computers came out (which, incidentally, is why George Jetson being a "button pusher" was considered an insult during the Jetsons.) Or any other time some new technology or advancement in society came about. Fuck, Nog Son of Throg lost his shit in the same way when Crog invented the wheel. And the annals of history remember well how Drog felt when Rogg made a stone knife. Fortunately for Rogg he had a stone knife on him when Drog came at him with a rock.

Yeah, outdated jobs will disappear. But a fuckton of new ones come along with it, too.

Except that, in the case of AI as it pertains to art at least, it isn't doing a job better like how cars are demonstrably better than horse drawn carriages or how computers are better at tabulating and storing numerical data than doing it on paper, it's just doing a subpar job faster for less.

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Except it can, it can create thousands of permutations of an image or concept in the time it would take a dedicated artist to make one. They don't have to be perfect every time it can just spew them out. In a typical AI image set you get maybe 3 usable images out of 100 but those 3 are made faster than it takes an artist to do one.

Unless you have actual artists involved in the process you'd have nothing but non-artists effectively signing off on things they have no clue about the artistic veracity or cohesion of. And that's the way you get studio over-interfered bullshit without a uniting vision.

Non-artists seem to have this idea that the only hurdle to "becoming an artist" is simply learning how to paint or model or whatever, and that that is the sole barrier to being an "artist," or at least an employable one. That simply isn't the case. And trust me, I'm actually employed as an industry artist.

Hell, apply that same example to screenwriting. Most people can type out sentences. The formatting of a screenplay isn't particularly difficult to master. So really here's almost literally no barrier to entry for just writing a screenplay. But can you write a good screenplay just because you know how to type? Would you know a good screenplay from a bad one by reading it? Now apply that logic to a painting or other form of art.

Can you create a cohesive world built of individual concepts even if you knew how to paint? Would you know good concepts from bad when you saw them? And no, I don't mean in a "they're painted with pretty colors and the people have the right number of fingers" way, and if someone thinks that's what "concepting" is then their answer to my question can be taken as "no." Because an AI can show you all kinds of things, but you're basically just taking what it throws at you and trusting that the algorithm has shown you something good, because you lack the capacity beyond going "oooh, pretty" to assess any piece's actual merit.

[jonnysensible]

Except it can, it can create thousands of permutations of an image or concept in the time it would take a dedicated artist to make one. They don't have to be perfect every time it can just spew them out. In a typical AI image set you get maybe 3 usable images out of 100 but those 3 are made faster than it takes an artist to do one.

yea but its only a plagiarism machine. none of this AI shit can operate without its training material which is kept hush hush not because 'rivals will copy us' but because its clearly training itself on copyrighted material and trying to avoid paying for it.

None of these things have an actual business model that won't immediately explode if they weren't stealing so much data.

[vizzle]

Again, you're underestimating how fast this will evolve. Generative AI is simply the beginning of something much more powerful. Besides that, it's nearly identical to how a human learns and produces stuff, so unless you're making the argument that most humans can't generate "novel content" as well (since literally everything they've ever witnessed has in some way, shape, or form led them to think of exactly what they're dreaming up), we can skip the minutia.

You're misunderstanding what ChatGPT is, lol.

This isn't something that will scale. The current way that ChatGPT works isn't something that will scale beyond to what it currently is; it's not going to evolve beyond what it does right now, because what it does right now it does very well. They're going to need to build something different -- something that is actually uniquely "artificial intelligence", which isn't what ChatGPT is -- for it to start scaling and evolving in the way you think ChatGPT is.

It's like when the abacus was first invented, and then thinking that abacus will eventually start doing your taxes because it's really helpful with math. No, we needed to invent computers, which isn't an evolved version of an abacus; it's something different entirely. In this scenario, ChatGPT is the abacus, and the computer is something that doesn't exist yet, although you think they'll just add improvements to ChatGPT to turn an abacus into a computer.

ChatGPT is -it- for a while. This is generative AI, which is barely AI at all. I know it's easy to get lost in the techno babble when you don't really understand it, though.

[Kaleredar]

yea but its only a plagiarism machine. none of this AI shit can operate without its training material which is kept hush hush not because 'rivals will copy us' but because its clearly training itself on copyrighted material and trying to avoid paying for it.

None of these things have an actual business model that won't immediately explode if they weren't stealing so much data.

Honestly that's the most galling thing to me, its merits as "art" completely aside. All of this stuff was trained off of stolen work. That they then charge you to utilize.

It'd be one thing if this was all free, because well... no one is really making money off of it, and nobody can copyright AI-generated art because it isn't made by a human and copyrights can only exist for human-created works. Likewise, it'd be an entirely different thing if the makers of these AI programs paid artists or otherwise obtained their permission to use their artwork to train their AI.

But they aren't doing either of those things.


And of course these aren't artists making this, they're programmers effectively dicking around trying to earn as much money as possible while investing as little as possible and giving as little credit to others as possible.

No wonder these mega-corporate studios like these AI guys so much. They're cut from exactly the same cloth.

[Biglog]

AI is going to effect a lot of jobs including writing in coming years. But AI's not replacing writers for shows and movies yet, and that's not really why this strike is happening.

The cause of this particular strike is much more due to reduced wages from cord cutting, not AI. Cord cutting has lead to a lot less cable/sat provider revenue, so the tv providers have less money to pay for shows, which means they then have less money to pay writers. That's what's happening now and has been growing for several years. One big place you can see the impact of cord cutting has been on extra regional coverage of news and sports on cable. Both areas have seen major cuts in both writing and news/sportscasters on-air. Most of that has either been entirely eliminated or is on a shoestring budget now where they've let the majority of the experienced higher wage writers and casters go. The same reason there are a lot fewer of those 18-24" satellite dishes around today.

The bad thing for writers is the tsunami wave from AI on writing jobs isn't even really impacting it significantly yet, this effect from cord cutting is just the show opener. Writing's unfortunately getting a double-whammy this decade from both cord cutting now and again soon from AI.

[Rennadrel]

AI is going to effect a lot of jobs including writing in coming years. But AI's not replacing writers for shows and movies yet, and that's not really why this strike is happening.

The cause of this particular strike is much more due to reduced wages from cord cutting, not AI. Cord cutting has lead to a lot less cable/sat provider revenue, so the tv providers have less money to pay for shows, which means they then have less money to pay writers. That's what's happening now and has been growing for several years. One big place you can see the impact of cord cutting has been on extra regional coverage of news and sports on cable. Both areas have seen major cuts in both writing and news/sportscasters on-air. Most of that has either been entirely eliminated or is on a shoestring budget now where they've let the majority of the experienced higher wage writers and casters go. The same reason there are a lot fewer of those 18-24" satellite dishes around today.

The bad thing for writers is the tsunami wave from AI on writing jobs isn't even really impacting it significantly yet, this effect from cord cutting is just the show opener. Writing's unfortunately getting a double-whammy this decade from both cord cutting now and again soon from AI.

It's almost like the ever increasing costs of having cable or satellite TV were becoming unsustainable. Now with all the streaming service options, people are going to find other ways to access content in an era of extremely high inflation. Streaming was great when it was just Netflix and you had one cost to watch the majority of the content out there. Now that it's all divided up, people have to pick and choose which services they want to watch. And when companies on average aren't producing as good of content, or at least the best shows and films are divided across several service options, it is very hard to get people to maintain their subscriptions.

So now writers are going to feel the double edged sword that is budget cuts and AI threatening their jobs. But I still maintain that your value is only equal to the quality of the work you put out. And there's been some abysmal content released in the last year or so when it comes to the writing facet of entertainment.

[vizzle]

AI is going to effect a lot of jobs including writing in coming years. But AI's not replacing writers for shows and movies yet, and that's not really why this strike is happening.

The cause of this particular strike is much more due to reduced wages from cord cutting, not AI. Cord cutting has lead to a lot less cable/sat provider revenue, so the tv providers have less money to pay for shows, which means they then have less money to pay writers. That's what's happening now and has been growing for several years. One big place you can see the impact of cord cutting has been on extra regional coverage of news and sports on cable. Both areas have seen major cuts in both writing and news/sportscasters on-air. Most of that has either been entirely eliminated or is on a shoestring budget now where they've let the majority of the experienced higher wage writers and casters go. The same reason there are a lot fewer of those 18-24" satellite dishes around today.

The bad thing for writers is the tsunami wave from AI on writing jobs isn't even really impacting it significantly yet, this effect from cord cutting is just the show opener. Writing's unfortunately getting a double-whammy this decade from both cord cutting now and again soon from AI.

Lmao "cord cutting" happened a long time ago. There's a reason why these talks involve the major streamers just as much as anyone else, and those streamers lose nothing with cord cutters.

Reduced wages isn't coming from cord cutting, because Netflix and the other streamers don't lose anything from cord cutting.

[Ivanstone]

Thats right most of the time. BUT AGAIN, man people really need to learn to read. When its show by leaks, statements by people that the writers do not know stuff.
They also follow directions of writers.

And when different shows/movies have different everything except the same writers. And they have the same story problems. kinda easy to see who is to blame.

You do realize you've not brought one concrete example of a bad writer who's constantly getting work while shitting on your favourite stuff right? Not one.

I'm sure you'll post another link with the usual Witcher blather whilst ignoring that a lot of people like the Witcher TV show.

[jonnysensible]

You do realize you've not brought one concrete example of a bad writer who's constantly getting work while shitting on your favourite stuff right? Not one.

I'm sure you'll post another link with the usual Witcher blather whilst ignoring that a lot of people like the Witcher TV show.

seth rogan

[JDL49]

Lmao "cord cutting" happened a long time ago. There's a reason why these talks involve the major streamers just as much as anyone else, and those streamers lose nothing with cord cutters.

Reduced wages isn't coming from cord cutting, because Netflix and the other streamers don't lose anything from cord cutting.

1) The reduced wages have to do mostly with NON-Streaming part of this and are
in fact a direct result of cord cutting,

2) Cord cutting hasn't stopped.

3) Outside of Netflix,no streamer of any size is making a profit. So setting aside the hobby streamers like Amazon
or Apple you have to be subsidized and SHOCK ! the funds that for that come from up stream revenues that
have been gutted by cord cutting. Its relevant.

[Fencers]

SAG-AFTRA strike authorization is being strongly speculated to go into action.