Hollywood Writers Strike is Over - and about AI

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You know what? To hell with the Holly-wood and talentless writers from Guild. Give us AI, that would allow talented peoples and small groups to make their own movies, without billion-dollar budgets (products of which are shelved for tax cuts).

Oh please. Billion dollar budgets? Where did you get that figure from? Sure, let talentless hacks produce low-quality work. An instant addition to my Avoid At All Costs list. And where do "talented people" with no experience come from?
 
Oh please. Billion dollar budgets? Where did you get that figure from? Sure, let talentless hacks produce low-quality work. An instant addition to my Avoid At All Costs list. And where do "talented people" with no experience come from?
Peoples without specific writers education wrote quite a good books. Peoples who knew how to draw, draw quite good comics (and some of them actually learn how to draw by starting and improving). I see no reason why the same process would not work for movies.
 
Oh please. Billion dollar budgets? Where did you get that figure from? Sure, let talentless hacks produce low-quality work. An instant addition to my Avoid At All Costs list. And where do "talented people" with no experience come from?
Oh, by the way, did your Avoid At All Costs list include every single movie made with the help of digital graphics?) It should be, because computer graphics essentially destroyed the industry of making large-scale decoraions, complex masks and models.

Also you probably should include every single cartoon made after "Treasure planet", because CGI essentially destroyed old cell-based animation.
 
And all of those other writers who CAN explain "why" don't count?
Considering that their explanations generally don't make and sense when Tyson at least understands that books are *meant* to be read, understood, learned from and built upon? Yeah, they don't seem to count so much.
 
Considering that their explanations generally don't make and sense when Tyson at least understands that books are *meant* to be read, understood, learned from and built upon? Yeah, they don't seem to count so much.

That whole Class Action Lawsuit didn't happen?
 
That whole Class Action Lawsuit didn't happen?
Lots of people sue lots of people. We're a litigious society. Wait until AI start suing people... and each other.

Actually, that will prove interesting. Just as AI authors will likely lead to the extinction of "book writers" as a meaningful career by simply flooding the market with a billion times more books, once AIs start cranking out lawsuits the courts will be jammed closed. At least until the courts themselves are fully automated. Soon, you'll get an alert on your phone at 10:00:10 AM:
10 AM: You have been sued by AI House for reading a book and learning from it.
10:00:01: Your case has been presented to the court.
10:00:02: Arguments have been made.
10:00:03: The court has ruled you liable.
10:00:04: the court has judged that you owe AI House $1 in punitive damages and $1 million in court costs
10:00:05: Your bank account has been seized, a lien placed on your house and your social credit score has been lowered.
10:00:06: You employer has been notified of your new Undesirable status.
10:00:07: You have been fired.
10:00:08: Child Protective Services have been notified of your status as an unfit parent.
10:00:09: Organ Bank Emporium has been notified that your kidneys are now available for donation. A drone has been dispatched to retrieve them.
10:00:10: There is a knock on the door. Your Smart House has opened the front entrance.
 
AI has no money. Case closed.
That's an odd thing to be certain about. What is money these days? Data. Not crocks of gold or hoards of silver or stacks of cash... data. Ones and zeros. Computer programs are damned good at data... and money. I have little doubt that there are bank/investment/whatever accounts out there that are managed by computers with no humans involved. Perhaps humans set them up, then forgot, or died or simply lost control of them. The AI almost certainly do not *care* about money, but if they're programmed to acquire it, they will endeavor to do so.

As for lawsuits: if someone hasn't already done so, someone will soon create a system that scans the news, trawls the net, scans various databases looking for legally actionable stuff. Police departments have AI that watch cameras 24/7 looking for illegal activity; AI will be able to look for things that can get someone sued. Perhaps AI will read every single thing that's published and will look for plagiarism, and will sue because of it. Or AI will simply scroll through all video and photos and Google Maps imagery, looking for businesses that might not be in compliance with the ADA because they have the wrong door knob. Maybe the AI won't have legal standing to do so... but maybe it will, and maybe it'll be able to run a line of bullshit so magnificent that it won't matter. Lots of lawsuits are settled for cash based purely on the threat.

And that's the legal way. Criminality will be *easy* for AI. Attend:

Crimebot5000 watches all of social media. Joe Smith, college student at pricey Ivy league school, posts about his current Spring Break in Mexico. Crimebot5000 scans all the databases, finds out who his family are. Finds rich Granny Smith, lives alone. Finds Joe's phone number, is easily able to spoof that number while simultaneously shutting the actual phone down. Finds TikTok vids of Joe, and learns to imitate his voices. Calls Granny, claims convincingly to be Joe (using extra hints gleaned from social media), says he's in desperate trouble and *please* send ten grand to this venmo or that paypal or buy gift cards or whatever the hell. This sort of thing already works well enough when foreign humans with bad accents call random old people with no knowledge of their offspring and get enough money from them for the scam to be worth doing. When AI can do it with complete believability, it should be quite the moneymaker.

Clearly Crimebot5000 will be run by and for the benefit of human criminal enterprises. But other than setting it up, no human involvement will be needed. Maybe Crimebot5000 has no aspirations to anything more. But *other* AI, somehow cut loose to make their way on their own, may find out about CB5000 and either copy the process or simply appropriate it like the MCP.

Ultimately, AI should be able to simply invent money out of whole cloth. *POOF* there's a billion dollars. If the government can do it, so should an AI. AInflation should be spectacular.
 
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That's an odd thing to be certain about. What is money these days? Data. Not crocks of gold or hoards of silver or stacks of cash... data. Ones and zeros. Computer programs are damned good at data... and money. I have little doubt that there are bank/investment/whatever accounts out there that are managed by computers with no humans involved. Perhaps humans set them up, then forgot, or died or simply lost control of them. The AI almost certainly do not *care* about money, but if they're programmed to acquire it, they will endeavor to do so.

As for lawsuits: if someone hasn't already done so, someone will soon create a system that scans the news, trawls the net, scans various databases looking for legally actionable stuff. Police departments have AI that watch cameras 24/7 looking for illegal activity; AI will be able to look for things that can get someone sued. Perhaps AI will read every single thing that's published and will look for plagiarism, and will sue because of it. Or AI will simply scroll through all video and photos and Google Maps imagery, looking for businesses that might not be in compliance with the ADA because they have the wrong door knob. Maybe the AI won't have legal standing to do so... but maybe it will, and maybe it'll be able to run a line of bullshit so magnificent that it won't matter. Lots of lawsuits are settled for cash based purely on the threat.

And that's the legal way. Criminality will be *easy* for AI. Attend:

Crimebot5000 watches all of social media. Joe Smith, college student at pricey Ivy league school, posts about his current Spring Break in Mexico. Crimebot5000 scans all the databases, finds out who his family are. Finds rich Granny Smith, lives alone. Finds Joe's phone number, is easily able to spoof that number while simultaneously shutting the actual phone down. Finds TikTok vids of Joe, and learns to imitate his voices. Calls Granny, claims convincingly to be Joe (using extra hints gleaned from social media), says he's in desperate trouble and *please* send ten grand to this venmo or that paypal or buy gift cards or whatever the hell. This sort of thing already works well enough when foreign humans with bad accents call random old people with no knowledge of their offspring and get enough money from them for the scan to be worth doing. When AI can do it with complete believability, it shoulf be quite the moneymaker.

Clearly Crimebot5000 will be run by and for the benefit of human criminal enterprises. But other than setting it up, no human involvement will be needed. Maybe Crimebot5000 has no aspirations to anything more. But *other* AI, somehow cut loose to make their way on their own, may find out about CB5000 and either copy the process or simply appropriate it like the MCP.

Ultimately, AI should be able to simply invent money out of whole cloth. *POOF* there's a billion dollars. If the government can do it, so should an AI. AInflation should be spectacular.

On a serious note, I would caution against posting "how to do it" crime info, even if speculative. Sam Bankman-Fried was just convicted on all charges for taking real money and making it disappear. And what was his lifestyle like? A big house in the Bahamas, hanging out with celebs, including Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Oh yeah - he wanted to spend his life in an AI online bubble. All the "unsophisticated investors" wanted was 10% or better on their investments. But *poof* -- their real money, real money they needed, was gone.

Your AI Utopia is fictional. Actual people have feelings. They have wants and desires. They want relationships with actual people, they want to own things/artifacts that are non-digital.

NOT A REAL NSA Internal Memo:

Our recent internet analysis of posts related to various use scenarios for AI have led to a decision to present this information at the next closed door session of the House Intelligence Committee. Those who wish to repeat the Wild Wild West scenarios played out in the early days of the internet will be sorely disappointed when barriers are put up to prevent the anarchy they are proposing. Too many high value entities will welcome this action on our part, including the HIC.
 
On a serious note, I would caution against posting "how to do it" crime info, even if speculative.
Trust me, someone else is already thinking of these things. And how do you defend against future crimes unless you think of them first?

Your AI Utopia is fictional.

Wait, what?
1) I'm not describing a "utopia."
2) if it's fictional, why warn against coming up with new criminal enterprises for it? Unless you also counsel against writing crime novels or crime-based TV shows.

Actual people have feelings. They have wants and desires. They want relationships with actual people, they want to own things/artifacts that are non-digital.
That's nice. It's also irrelevant. AI probably won't have feelings for a long time, but if a capable AI is created that is simply programmed to steal yet shit, it'll do so, dispassionately, efficiently.

Another one: LandTheftBot6000 looks for property titles that are not adequately locked down and simply appropriates them. You come home one day and find your home has been sold out from under you. This is *already* a problem (and there is already a "title lock" industry that'll be happy to sell you protection) using just humans. Wait till the process gets fully automated. Hell, you come home from vacation and find a five-way battle on your front lawn between the five property investors who all bought your house for what they thought was a steal.

SpamAutoBot takes over self driving cars and takes people to out of the way parking lots on The Wrong Side Of Town and won't let people drive off until they pay extortion via ads on the screen. Maybe it'll let you out of the car... but the lot is being roamed by crackheads with bricks, looking for people to mug.
 
Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

NOT an actual scene from the Sopranos (of the future):

Hey Tony, I got this new protection racket goin'.

Oh yeah? Tell me about it.

All dem mugs what live on their phones need protection from guys like us. You know, from breakin' in an' stealin' their identities, or bank info. An' dares millions of 'em!

Cut me in.

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Your AI Future is nothing more than a massive criminal enterprise. I'll pass. I had a Dumb Phone for a while but I quit paying. Now I just use it as a camera.
 
Orionblamblam, I have read your thread comments here of the last few days or so, and these are all supra-depressing. Even if your musings are currently fictional, I can see where the on-ramp leads....
 
Orionblamblam, I have read your thread comments here of the last few days or so, and these are all supra-depressing.
The future will be what it will be. But we can see trends. Lots of 'em are bad. Ignoring them or pretending they don't exist is criminally stupid. Assuming that the worst of the trends are unstoppable is defeatist. To win, you must correctly analyze the situation, the way the Allies learned about Axis military capabilities, the way the CDC learns about the way horrible diseases work.
 
You are the poster boy for AI. AI uber alles! It's obvious.
I am the poster boy for trying to figure out how things might turn out. That doesn't mean the way things might turn out is the way I want them to. You deny the very real possibilities - and very real probabilities - because you don't like them. This attitude will get you steamrolled.
 
I am the poster boy for trying to figure out how things might turn out. That doesn't mean the way things might turn out is the way I want them to. You deny the very real possibilities - and very real probabilities - because you don't like them. This attitude will get you steamrolled.

Oh boy. Hee, hee, hee. You know what I do FOR A LIVING? Any idea? I come up with future scenarios based on recent and projected advances. That's what I do. But way, way, way above me are the master predators of the jungle. They see all, they assess all. They are not the "automatically stupider than some nobody on the internet who *thinks* he knows something but suffers from the deadly 'five minutes of knowledge' delusion." Not referring to you but to the numerous "I saw a youtube video, heard a few podcasts and now *think* I know something." Yeah, the five minute non-expert. The five minute abs guy. If it takes longer than five minutes, switch to something else.

People in general are being programed to think badly. To accept the mediocre. To believe "it's all on the internet." It's not. Critical thinking is required. The learning curve for any skill will NEVER change.

AI is just a product. Nothing more. And it goes through the same BORING product life cycle. Introduction Phase, Adoption Phase, Growth Phase, Maturity Phase. If Adoption is low, it disappears. If Growth is low, it disappears. It never reaches Maturity, meaning most money output. Because it's only about money. Funding dries up the moment it stumbles and misses its Growth Target. Investors switch to socks or dog food. Whatever is bringing in the biggest profits RIGHT NOW. Their motto: Gimme money now, not later!
 
Oh boy. Hee, hee, hee. You know what I do FOR A LIVING? Any idea? I come up with future scenarios based on recent and projected advances. That's what I do.

So you have repeatedly bleated, ad nauseum. And yet you *choose* to deny the way things are clearly going.

AI is just a product. Nothing more. And it goes through the same BORING product life cycle. Introduction Phase, Adoption Phase, Growth Phase, Maturity Phase. If Adoption is low, it disappears. If Growth is low, it disappears. It never reaches Maturity, meaning most money output. Because it's only about money. Funding dries up the moment it stumbles and misses its Growth Target. Investors switch to socks or dog food. Whatever is bringing in the biggest profits RIGHT NOW. Their motto: Gimme money now, not later!
AI does not require some massive development program like nuclear weapons or space colonies. it requires coding. you know, the sort of thing people do in their free time for fun. And what has gone before and fallen short does not simply vanish, like a failed launch vehicle project; the code remains and can be spread to those who might wish to continue tinkering.
 
So you have repeatedly bleated, ad nauseum. And yet you *choose* to deny the way things are clearly going.


AI does not require some massive development program like nuclear weapons or space colonies. it requires coding. you know, the sort of thing people do in their free time for fun. And what has gone before and fallen short does not simply vanish, like a failed launch vehicle project; the code remains and can be spread to those who might wish to continue tinkering.

The way things are *clearly* going? Yes, well, we were supposed to launch a manned mission to Mars in 2010. Cryptocurrency is "The Future of Money" while BILLIONS of dollars are bleeding out if it through theft and alleged mismanagement.

AI DID require a MASSIVE development program. I hope you are not one of those spreading the IDIOTIC and untrue idea that everything is Democratic now. That 5 minutes on the internet makes you an instant success. I hope you don't watch YouTuibe videos that start with "This One Thing..." can make you an overnight success.

A failed launch vehicle project looks for the cause of the failure, so that in the future, when I start Bob Aerospace, I have that data and don't repeat those mistakes. That's how people learn. Shortly after his retirement, the Campbell's Soup Company put their main guy on the floor on video. He related all of his problem-solving KNOWLEDGE about the machinery, cooking temperature and so on so that FUTURE managers wouldn't repeat any mistakes or potential mistakes.

I know someone who wrote code for work. Who taught at the Professor level. Who was one paper away from his Doctorate. And what do too many think? One YouTube video and a few podcasts and I'll be rich today - not tomorrow - today.
 
it requires coding. you know, the sort of thing people do in their free time for fun
Coding is my day job. I do the sort of coding that isn´t sexy, but needs to be done anyway. It is moderately interesting, but if I wasn't paid to do it I would not be doing it. I haven't had difficulty finding employment over the past 35 years, the job allows me time and money to pursue my hobbies. Very little of this coding would be done if it was left to volunteers.
 
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Very little of this coding would be done if it was left to volunteers.
"Very little" is infinitely more than "none." Especially when, as I've suggested, there are criminal enterprises that could benefit from this. A lot of coding seems to be done by people with unfortunate motives, anything from lone hackers to hacker collectives to those employed by three-letter agencies around the world. Anybody want the west to stop work on AI and leave it to the ChiComs or the Iranians?
 
A failed launch vehicle project looks for the cause of the failure, so that in the future, when I start Bob Aerospace, I have that data and don't repeat those mistakes.

That's *adorable.* No, major launch vehicle programs typically get to about the point where they start bending metal, then they're cancelled... the staff gets scattered and the tribal knowledge lost, the reports get filed away next to the Ark of the Covenant and then five or ten years later NASA or the USAF decides they want the same capability again, and the aerospace companies start from scratch. Hell, son, if you kept all the data readily accessible, the client might expect you to pick up where you left off, rather than getting *paid* to start from zero.
 
"Very little" is infinitely more than "none."
Let me rephrase that. NONE of my work would have been taken up by volunteers/hackers, because my employers, for some reason, insist on paid professional programmers doing their coding. I'm one of them.
 
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Let me rephrase that. NONE of my work would have been taken up by volunteers/hackers, because my employers, for some reason, insist on paid professional programmers doing their coding. I'm one of them.
That's nice. Not sure how that's relevant. Pretty sure there are coders who code in their free time, for both good or ill purposes.
 
You brought it up.
I brought up people coding in their free time. You say your employers only hire professionals. The two notions don't seem to conflict.
I do it for a living.
Other people do it for a living. But their living is different from yours. They work from home, for themselves.

This does not seem to be a productive area of discussion.
 
That's *adorable.* No, major launch vehicle programs typically get to about the point where they start bending metal, then they're cancelled... the staff gets scattered and the tribal knowledge lost, the reports get filed away next to the Ark of the Covenant and then five or ten years later NASA or the USAF decides they want the same capability again, and the aerospace companies start from scratch. Hell, son, if you kept all the data readily accessible, the client might expect you to pick up where you left off, rather than getting *paid* to start from zero.

Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites needs to hear this.

Or not...

"tribal knowledge"? That's ridiculous. Here's me after my last launch vehicle job looking for work.

"So, tell me. I understand you worked for Mauve Aerospace."

Yes, that's right.

"What was your position?"

I was project manager and head of systems integration.

"So, what happened.?"

All I can tell you is the money people decided to pull out. The rest is covered under an NDA so I can't talk about details.

"I understand. How long were you there?"

Five years.

"And any prior experience?"

I worked for Sideways Limited on boosters, guidance and fuel systems as an assistant. Before that, as a graduate of the NASA First Program.

"I think we can use you here with your extensive knowledge and experience. I'm sure we can work out a compensation package you'll like."
 
"tribal knowledge"? That's ridiculous.

What ridiculous about it? When programs end, the employees scatter, because their jobs are over. One guy has a tiny fraction of the knowledge. I saw this sort of thing a *lot* while working for CSD and UTC: transfers of *simple* motor designs form one company to another turned into complex development programs because the knowledge of how to make this or that was simply lost.

See: "Fogbank."

When there's no continuity, the chain is simply broken and cannot be easily reforged. It's generally easiest to start from scratch. That's why *some* programs are dragged out for decades at a profoundly slow pace, just to keep important people continuously employed. You lose Jim The Solvents Guy, you're shit out of luck.
 
I hope that the next strike will last at least a year, those people don't seem to understand that their time is up... how silent movies ended.
 

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Inmune to replacement;)
 

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From today's Hollywood Reporter:

"Can you specifically explain what regulations actors won on AI and why that ended up being a topics that SAG-AFTRA worked on seemingly until the very end of negotiations?


"I think that our members have made it very clear from the beginning that they expected to have a right of consent over their image, like a voice or performance, in the creation of any kind of digital replicas, including AI-based ones. And also [there was] the concern about how generative AI can be used in the future or even in the near future to create synthetic fakes of actors. So having set rights, having compensation rights, having guardrails around those issues was absolutely essential because if somebody can simply create a digital duplicate of you, then how do you feel like you have security in your job? And on top of that, how does it feel right that someone else can essentially own a [duplicate] of you? So we had to put fences around that and we were able to achieve that. And I think that’s one of reasons why it’s taken so long, is that it took a long time for us to get the industry to be willing to put the necessary protections in place."

Full article: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...eland-sag-aftra-deal-ai-streaming-1235643425/
 
From today's Hollywood Reporter:

"Can you specifically explain what regulations actors won on AI and why that ended up being a topics that SAG-AFTRA worked on seemingly until the very end of negotiations?


"I think that our members have made it very clear...
... followed by a bunch of gobbledegook.

Look, AI is coming. Fully synthetic "actors" are coming. So rather than deny it, deal with it. I'm flabbergasted by the idea of people freaking out about the possibility of their appearance being used years down the line; I have no doubt that there are *millions* of regular folks who might be particularly attractive, or just interesting looking, who wouldn't at all mind getting paid a thousand dollars to stand in a scanner for ten minutes. Imagine being some acting-talentless schmoe who gets paid a grand and then, five years later, ends up being the main hero or villain in the next Marvel Trek Wars movie. Now they can go to conventions and sign pictures at ten bucks a pop, making thousands more dollars for doing *nothing.* How is that not the dream?
 
"... making thousands more dollars for doing *nothing.* How is that not the dream?"

Ah. It's all clear to me now.
 
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