by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
There is a disturbance in the force. It definitely seems as though we’re about to experience a serious case of future shock over the course of the next few months. The entire knowledge economy could be not just drastically transformed by AI, but face serious contraction as well.
It could be that a lot sooner than you might think, the issue won’t be who gets paid for writing what, but audiences deciding that “artisanal art” has unique value unto itself. So, it’s possible to imagine a future where 99% of all art is AI generated, with the remaining 1% being created by humans who make a lot of money.
All of this might happen in the context of a real resurgence in live performances of all sorts. If I could, say, have an endless supply OK Computer era Radiohead, then seeing them live with new stuff will be something that people will pay an even bigger premium for.
Or, put another way, it could be that the average person won’t even notice that most of the entertainment they consume on a daily basis is AI generated. The entire greater showbiz industry will effectively collapse. It could be, in a sense, an extinction-level event for the entire concept of humans producing recorded entertainment.
It might happen so fast that even if the Hollywood writers’ on strike now are able to get some concessions from producers that it will all be moot. The only people in the future making money will be producers and the actors living passively off their full body scans. Otherwise, lulz.
That’s why I think for the Writers’ Strike to be successful, they need to be very, very aggressive on the AI front. They need to demand strict, clear carveouts for human writers. I would prefer a total prohibition on the use of AI to create a movie, but I think that’s probably pushing it.
As I understand it, the entire movie industry pretty much runs on hookers and blow in the sense that a lot, A LOT, of the industry is pretty much just vibes. And I could see from the producers’ point of view that the use of AI would be part of a broader effort to “modernize” showbiz.
Instead of any connection to the human touch, the vast majority of (bad) movies will be AI generated. Live entertainment will gain in value significantly and the only old-school movies that will exist will be high-end movies with a very specific vision.
But, wait, there’s more!
All of this would be happening just as movies and video games fuse. It could be that what movies exist in the future will be immersive in nature and the audience will collectively “play” the movie as a group in some sort of metaverse hellscape.
The point is — these may be the waning days of the Hollywood industry that has existed for about 100 years. It could be that the very idea of a “passive” human generated movie is going to be seen a very quaint a lot sooner than you might otherwise imagine.
The only thing I can compare this to is what is show in the movie Moneyball. A lot of how movies are actually produced is a magical mystery concoction accumulated over the decades. Or, as one producer once famously put it, “Nobody knows nothing,” when it comes to making movies.
So, it could be that because of the techno-capitalist imperative, soon enough, the back end of Hollywood will be done entirely relative to cold, hard metrics. What’s more, the very idea of “mass media” may not longer exist as everyone gets a different very, very specific and very, very personalized movie or TV show each time they sit down to watch something.
There will be no shared reality anymore. No watercooler movies or TV pop moments to share on social media. Professional (human) writers will turn to the live experience to make a living.
