Striking writers hold signs as they march and picket calling for better wages outside NBC’s Peacock NewFront presentation in New York
The world is observing World Press Freedom Day on May 3, however, their freedom will be sustained if they will be allowed to write. With the invention of technologies like ChatGPT, many writers and journalists wonder if they will soon lose their jobs. The writers in Hollywood called for protests demanding strict action against the AI so that their jobs are restored.
This week thousands of unionised scribes went on strike demanding better pay and taking aim at other issues, including the rise of generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, the AI-powered “chatbot” that has captivated and alarmed people in creative professions in recent months.
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) demanded that Hollywood’s top studios and networks regulate the use of AI on creative projects. As per a document released on May 1, “AI can’t write or rewrite literary material; can’t be used as source material; and MBA-covered [contract-covered] material can’t be used to train AI.”
Notably, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — the trade association that represents most of the industry’s big entertainment companies — rejected that proposal.
Marc Guggenheim, a co-creator of the superhero shows “Arrow” and “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” said that the studios were trotting out the “same old song and dance” and delaying important decisions on major technological shifts.
“Historically, every time some new piece of technology comes along, the studios say, ‘We understand your concerns, but everything is too new. Wait for the next negotiation cycle,’” he said. “But eventually some precedent gets set and at the next negotiation cycle, they say, ‘I don’t know what to tell you. The precedent is set.’ There’s always foot-dragging.”
As per an NBC report, ChatGPT has shown it is capable of generating narratives that imitate the content and style of previously published works. NBC News asked ChatGPT to write an original episode of the HBO anthology series “The White Lotus,” for example, and the chatbot came back with a six-paragraph outline featuring characters from the first season in new scenarios.
This seriously raises alarming questions, about if AI will take away all the writer’s jobs.
Joshua Gans, a professor at the University of Toronto and co-author of the book “Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence” told in an interview that AI will likely replace humans for some writing tasks like routine letters or press releases.
“But not if we are talking about writing tasks that are complex and require some creativity,” he added. “An AI may be able to write a passable book one day, but it will be more like a “monkey given enough time produces Shakespeare” type thing than something reliable. An AI might write, but a person is going to choose what is published.”
Actor and producer Justine Bateman said in a tweet that other professional sectors should pay close attention to the WGA strike, which she described as a fight over the “devaluing of human effort, skill, and talent in favor of automation and profits.”
In one notable case study that made national headlines, an AI-generated song that imitated the styles of hip-hop artists Drake and The Weeknd sent waves of anxiety through the music industry, deepening existential concerns at the intersection of creativity, authorship, technology and the law.
“Whether it’s music, photography, whatever the medium, there are creatives who are understandably and justifiably worried about the displacement of their livelihoods,” said Ash Kernen, an entertainment and intellectual property attorney who focuses on new technology.
That the WGA and the studios are battling over AI underlines just how much has changed in the entertainment industry since the last time Hollywood writers went on strike in the fall of 2007.
These days, ChatGPT is on hand to weigh in, as the novelist and former WGA President Howard A. Rodman discovered when he asked the chatbot to write a response to a tweet about the studios’ rejecting the guild’s AI proposal.
“The response from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers … seems dismissive of the WGA’s concerns,” ChatGPT told Rodman.
He shared a screenshot from the chat it further says, “The response from the AMPTP seems dismissive of the WGA’s concerns. It’s important to consider the potential consequences of automation on the livelihoods of writers and other creative professionals.”
Most recently, the Godfather of AI, Geoffery Hinton retired from Google claiming the technology can be dangerous to the future and he can not criticise it being in Google, hence he left.
The list of high-profile personalities condemning the invention is long and includes big names such as industrialist Elon Musk, intellectual Noam Chomsky and the 99-year-old retired statesman Henry Kissinger.
Hinton, 75, retired from Google and said, “I want to talk about AI safety issues without having to worry about how it interacts with Google’s business,” he told MIT Technology Review. “As long as I’m paid by Google, I can’t do that.”
Some of the dangers of AI chatbots are “quite scary,” Hinton told the BBC. “Right now, they’re not more intelligent than us, as far as I can tell. But I think they soon may be.”
Hinton is concerned for the “Bad Actors” who may use it for their nefarious ideas such as affecting the elections and even instigating violence.
Leaving Google he made it very clear that Google has been handling the AI quite sensibly, he fears the bad guys out there. He told MIT Technology Review that there are also “a lot of good things about Google” that he would want to talk about — but those comments would be “much more credible if I’m not at Google anymore.”
He is also worried that AI technologies will in time upend the job market. Today, chatbots such as ChatGPT tend to complement human workers, but they could replace paralegals, personal assistants, translators and others who handle rote tasks. “It takes away the drudge work,” he said. “It might take away more than that.”
At the heart of the debate on the state of AI is whether the primary dangers are in the future or present. On one side are hypothetical scenarios of existential risk caused by computers that supersede human intelligence. On the other are concerns about automated technology that’s already getting widely deployed by businesses and governments and can cause real-world harm.
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