Guild behind actors' strike fears video game workers also at risk from AI The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has authorized its members employed in the interactive media industry at giant games studios – including Activision, Epic Games, and Electronic Arts – to strike. Interactive media workers already have their own agreement with Big Content, but it …
i suggest you listen to Tim Harford's recent podcast episode Cautionary Tales on Luddites.
The problem with new tech is not necessarily that it eliminates work but how the transition is managed for those already working.- how to give some protection for those who have their skilled obs suddenly cut out from underneath them but not able to take on other work.
probably counts double in US where the social security blanket is threadbare and healthcare is so often tied to employment
So many people think luddite equals anti-tech or anti-progress, the Luddites simply wanted retraining, redundancy payments and people to be taken care off if technology replaced their jobs. The mill owners had all the power and money, they had support of the militias and they used it to murder innocent people, shut them up and paint the Luddites forever as backward and moronic. The Luddites cared about people, people were the backbone of the Industrial Revolution but the mill owners simply wanted profit above all else and to hell with the labour they beat out of men, women and children.
All sounds very familiar to today, you speak out against anyone with power and they will tar you as bad or "cancel" you as the kids put it, destroying you, your ideas and your career.
That depends on which country. There are successful countries with strong union representation, collective bargaining and retraining programmes like Germany, there's the UK where union representation is low and collective bargaining only exists in a handful of industries, and then there's the US where even Workers' Holiday was moved to another month so the proles don't get the wrong idea.
+1 for Cautionary Tales.
As he pointed out (backed by academic research), that it took over 100 years for average people to actually benefit from the Industrial Revolution.
Ignorant people go "it bought great benefits for humanity", ignoring the mass population were forced to live in slum housing, life expectancy DROPPED, horrific injuries were common place (think young girls getting their scalps ripped off as they crawled under looms, or people dying of chronic lung disease in their early 20s, due to toxic fumes).
The people that always benefit from massive change are the rich and powerful.
Big difference is that CGI came on-stream very, very slowly over decades: we got some really ropey stuff that was only used because it was still better than using a black backdrop with holes for starfields. As it got better, everyone could adjust. It helped that a lot of it was laughable - e.g. the animated acrobatics in that daft Van Helsing movie.
Plus acting against a real set still has advantages of quality, knowing where everything is without having to keep it all imagined - or just not corpsing when trying to keep an eyeline with a tennis ball on a stick (blooper reels can be an education in themselves!).
Actors have adjusted to the use of Serkis Folk and seeing themselves replaced by CGI, but they still did the acting.
But this step is a short, sharp, shock as they get snipped out of the process entirely.
Before some independent film made on a shoestring hits the big time (think Blair Witch Project and its $60,000 budget) which makes use of AI not just for background extras but for everyone but the leads. Sure because of the tiny budget you will be able to tell they are a little "off" so you'll know but just like people ignore cheap sets and iffy special effects in such movies they will ignore that and enjoy the overall movie.
Then we'll start seeing films with small budgets from studios - the kind of films that today can't afford to hire any actors you've ever heard of before but are where no name actors can get their big break today - using AI, and that AI will be better and you'll really have to look hard to tell. In 10 years there will be films with no human actors at all, and people who have seen the film will be surprised to hear that. Once all those roles are done by AI, there won't be any way for new actors to break into the biz. We'll keep reusing the exist stars, but there won't be any new stars - at least not actual humans who can show up on red carpets and have scandals.
They'll just call it anime and slowly crank up the pixels to a billion. Voices can be done in Korea or somewhere just like the drawing was done for The Simpsons, outside the reach of the union, and only the US-based holding company has to shush the labor folk. If the unions are successful they'll put the US film industry at a slight disadvantage until everyone stops expecting live people and the generated stuff becomes indistinguishable from real. As you say, this will come in a trickle and then a flood.
It still takes a lot of money to make a movie, even a crappy (or woke) movie, with a high likelihood of it losing money overall when box office ticket sales circle the drain.
Hollyweird wants to do it cheaper, using robots. Actors want to continue getting prohibitively expensive salaries.
I think the robots will win. THEN Hollyweird can still excrete lheir worthless woke / crap movies but at a lower overall cost.
(the actual problem is that Hollyweird forgot how to make a movie worth seeing in the theater, and how to sufficiently market it so that people do not wait for the disk)
Big difference is that CGI came on-stream very, very slowly over decades: we got some really ropey stuff that was only used because it was still better than using a black backdrop with holes for starfields. As it got better, everyone could adjust. It helped that a lot of it was laughable - e.g. the animated acrobatics in that daft Van Helsing movie.
Adapt of die. I suspect there were much the same arguments when those pesky horseless carriages came along, taking people's jobs. What's a poor cabbie to do?
Sure, CGI's come a long way but it doesn't matter when the writing sucks. Admittedly I'm a fan of YT critics like Critical Drinker and Disparu, but no amount of realistic CGI will make up for bad writing. This, I think is the crux of the problem.
Writers are complaining about 'starvation' wages, minimum sized writing rooms, residuals and a bunch of stuff. So a minimum of 10 weeks work at $10k+ a day. $100k+ for <3 months work isn't exactly what I would call a starvation wage. Then minimum 10 writers. Why? It strikes me that could just overcomplicate things in a too-many-cooks kinda way. Then again, there are some perhaps more sensible ideas, like more structured career paths from junior-writer-showrunner. Then there's the residuals. So how much is 1 minute of my monthly Netflix or Prime sub work? Especially when many people get Prime subs for saving on shipping, not necessarily the shows.
And if the writing sucks and the show fails, shouldn't writers share the risk, as well as any rewards?
The previous WGA stuff around voice acting was interesting because the demands didn't seem that great and pretty reaonable. The current strike does not, and makes it look like the unions are going to negotiate themselves out of a job. If writers are so valuable, and unappreciated by Hollywood and the big studios, they could always go indie.. Blair Witch was hugely successful on a teeny budget. Writers could work on stuff like that and negotiate a profit sharing deal. If they're any good.
But then the strike also highlights one of the problems with many modern shows. The characters often seem to have a strong sense of entitlement rather than being entertaining. Perhaps this is why people are turning off Hollywoke and looking for other sources of entertainment?
For gaming, that also gets funny. I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3. It's all very modern, and pretty much anything goes when it comes to relationships.. But it also probably goes too far. I'm playing the Dark Urge, which is a character with a few.. quirks. I got given a choice to slay my lover. It was a bit of a suprise to discover my romantic interest was a companion I'd only chatted to a few times, and didn't think I'd shown any romantic interest in. So it was a simple choice of 'Ok', because then I could carry on romancing Shadowheart. Apparently she's the most popular choice for romancing, probably because she's the only human female companion I've found so far. Ok, there was a bard, but.. <spoilers>. But there are similar issues, like I met a druid in my party, there was a party in my camp and we had a quick drink and a convo. Next day, it was all about romance.
I have no idea why it was written like this, but chatting with LGBT(etc) friends.. Life isn't like that. One conversation or drink doesn't imply a romantic future, and LBGT people are being critical of the way some of these choices are being forced on players and maybe reinforcing predatory stereotypes. Perhaps that's what writers want, but it's not really very representative or reflective of the diversity of encounters I've had in my lifetime.
" So how much is 1 minute of my monthly Netflix or Prime sub work?"
I think this is the question that completely breaks the economics of streaming services, you either have hundreds of millions of subscribers or you go bankrupt.
All these current services are going to have to consolidate like crazy if the studios don't want to go under with them.
All these current services are going to have to consolidate like crazy if the studios don't want to go under with them.
Yep. It seems much like the eternal content vs carriage from the cable and satellite days. Content is close to worthless without distribution, distribution is close to worthless without content. And then the Internet came along throwing a big spanned in the works with the idea that both content and distribution are 'free'.
Some services are maybe trying to eat the elephant. Sure, Amazon can afford to maybe spaff $1bn on RoT.. I mean RoP, but Amazon has shareholders who expect a return and start wondering why Studios is a money pit. Amazon's execs are apparently asking the same question, heads will no doubt roll so it's maybe a bad time to be demanding more money. Netlfix probably has the right idea by looking around the world for content, and maybe finding the next Squid Games. They've certainly been finding Korean stuff that's a lot more fun to me than a lot of the big US (or UK (Bbc)) shows. I just want to be entertained, not brainwashed.
I think it's much the same with games, and the prospects for indies. Don't oversell the messaging, just make fun content. Being too heavy handed on that stuff breaks the immersion, especially when it's badly or clumsily written. I think it should also be a good time for indies because if the big studios are bleeding cash and losing revenues, the distributors and audiences are still hungry for content. That may not be affordable on WGA rates, but there could be good opportunities for good writers who can negotiate good back-end deals to share the rewards.
That's odd. Most of the LGBT (don't know about the others) people I knew DID go out nights with the specific goal of having a new physical relationship overnight and they thought life was terrible if they ever had to return home alone. I don't know if it was different outside of Buckhead in Atlanta...
And then it took a little over ten years to go from the awesome CGI in Iron man to the horror of Ant-man 3.
ChatGPT is not taking over writer's jobs, they are losing them because streamers are tired of losing billions and they have stopped greenlighting everything, even Netflix, the only ones making any money, have had to stop doing it.
The economy of streaming platforms is nonsense anyway.
Actors weren't paid residuals on streaming platforms because contracts didn't specify that they must, hence a load of old series like Sopranos and Six-Foot Under stay on HBO Max but new series like Westworld which had residuals specified in the contract were unceremoniously pushed to other platforms with advertising because once the "all you can eat for a flat rate per month" model comes up against modern contracts which specify residuals per customer view it all falls apart.
Secondly if your theory about writers' jobs were true then streamers wouldn't be against the WGA's demands, however it seems they do wish to fire writers and get ChatGPT to come up with even worse dreck than the likes of Netflix have been producing recently on the cheap.
Secondly if your theory about writers' jobs were true then streamers wouldn't be against the WGA's demands, however it seems they do wish to fire writers and get ChatGPT to come up with even worse dreck than the likes of Netflix have been producing recently on the cheap.
It's a business. If the shows being written aren't performing, then something needs to change. It's been fun looking at some of the criticisms of Wheel of Time. There's a large fan base who love the books, and thinks the show sucks because it's nothing like the original. Then there are fans of the show who've never read the books, so don't understand what the fuss is about. Then there are people like me who aren't really invested in the books or the lore who just think the show sucks and is boring. Or there's the Witcher, with the titular character being reduced to a bit part. If shows tank and don't make any money, there aren't any residuals owed.. Give or take Hollywood accounting.
It's quite a bizarre situation. In pretty much every other business, if it doesn't make money, you don't get paid or pay rises. If it's cheaper to automate, sorry, businesses aren't charities. They have a fiduciary duty to maximise ROI and shareholder value. It's also a suprise that producers, show-runners etc really don't seem to understand their own market. If you're producing product aimed at a minority audience, why be suprised when the majority don't care? It's like all the shows that think they're doing female empowerment, but can only do so by creating caricatures of men.
Haven't you read the offer the studios made to the WGA?
They agreed to pretty much everything they asked for, including AI controls, except for the size of the writer's room.
They don't want to have fewer writers in the shows they have left, but they don't want to have to hire more of them either.
The reasoning made by the guild about getting more writers so they learn the business makes sense, but not at 11,000 dollars per week.
So you're saying that everyone is cut out to be coder? That tells me you've never coded a thing in your life or worked with any IT people! I know lots of devs and some are shit hot and some are bloody useless and couldn't tell a struct from a dead rat. I also know a lot of admins and ops, they may not be coders by trade but some can run rings around paid full time coders with what they put together just to make admin tasks easier.
Not everyone is cut out to be a footballer, a doctor or a road sweeper, everyone needs to find something they enjoy, can do and can get paid. Simply telling people to just jump on a bandwagon chasing after money is why some professions are full of muppets with barely a clue what they're doing and IT, like most professions, certainly has its fair share.
Hmm.. someone seems to take life a little too seriously... To answer your question I've been coding professionally for best part of 30 years.
As you seem unaware of the origin of this this comment, it is in relation to various media outlets mocking the coal miners in WV when the mines closed and they lost their jobs. It was then repeated back to said media people when they subsequently lost their jobs a couple of years later and got oh so butthurt about it. So it is fine to punch down especially when you are attacking people you dislike but it is the end of the known universe if the tables are turned and those you mocked make fun of you.
Learn to code!
Or does that only apply when the elites destroy blue collar jobs.
Odd seen so many bitching about AI coding on here
Give it 5-10 years and that'll be mostly obsolete.
Desk jobs are amongst the easiest to replace. Why employ 25 coders when you can get AI to do most of the work and just the odd person to check and ammend.
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