On the Failure of Artificial Intelligence in the Writers’ Guild of America: John August’s Dilemma to the Nora Ephron Problem

Back in May, just a week into the the Writers Guild of America’s strike, John August, a member of the union’s negotiating committee and writer of Charlie’s Angels, described his personal dystopia: “the Nora Ephron problem”—a world in which artificial intelligence evolves to become a writer so profound it can mimic the style of a surefire hitmaker.

The agreement struck this week between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) will go some way towards protecting writers against the effects of synthetic Nora Ephron, though it may yet come to pass.

It’s hard to imagine that the studios will tell artists the truth when being asked to dismantle their AI initiatives, and attribution is all but impossible to prove with machine-learning outputs. Likewise, it’s difficult to see how to prevent these tools from learning on whatever data the studios want. It’s already standard practice for corporations to act first and beg forgiveness later, and one should assume they will continue to scrape and ingest all the data they can access, which is all the data. The studios will grant some protections for highly regarded top earners. The majority of the artists are white and male. There will be little to no protection for women, people of color, LGBTQIA+, and other marginalized groups, as in all areas of the labor force. I don’t mean to begrudge the work of the DGA and WGA in crafting terms that may not adequately represent the scope of the technology. But we can go further—and SAG has the opportunity to do so in its ongoing negotiations.

I’ve been working in the entertainment industry since I was nine. I joined the Screen Actors Guild when I was 11 in 1977 and the Writers Guild of America when I was 22 years old the following year. I got my start as a child actor on Broadway, studied film at NYU, then went on to act in movies like The Lost Boys and the Bill & Ted franchise while writing and directing my own narrative work. I have seen labor crises and strikes, but the current work shutdown is the worst, because all three unions were due for negotiations whenAMPTP refused their terms.

But studios are already busy developing myriad uses for machine-learning tools that are both creative and administrative. Will they halt that development, knowing that their own copyrighted product is in jeopardy from machine-learning tools they don’t control and that Big Tech monopolies, all of which could eat the film and TV industry whole, will not halt their AI development? Can the government get Big Tech to rein it in when those companies know that China and other global entities will continue advancing these technologies? All of which leads to the question of proof.

The Luddites: How a Trade Union Can Get a Rigorous Treatment of Technology and its Importance for the Industrial Revolution

Alex Winter is an actor and filmmaker. He starred in Bill & Ted, and his other narrative features include the cult classic Freaked. His current feature documentary, The YouTube Effect, premiered at Tribeca and is now available on digital.

There are plans to meet with the AMPTP next week, but the union is still on strike. I hope they can raise the bar with even more specific and protective language.

I hope everyone takes the time to learn how the technologies work, what they can and cannot do, and get involved in an industrial revolution that can provide tremendous benefit as well as enormous harm. The term luddite can be used wrong to describe those who want technology to go away. The Luddites were skilled at using technology and engaged in technology work in the textile industry. They weren’t an anti-tech movement but a pro-labor movement, fighting to prevent the exploitation and devaluation of their work by rapacious company overlords. If you would like to be involved in fixing the problems we face from technology, become genuinely and deeply involved. Become a Luddite.

Source: The Hollywood Writers AI Deal Sure Puts a Lot of Trust in Studios to Do the Right Thing

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