SAG-AFTRA & WGA Strikes: Fighting for HUMANITY in Art

Right now, today, in 2023, AI is threatening our livelihood. And by “our” I mean all of us. Artists, actors, writers, designers, coders, truck drivers, cashiers, radiologists, producers, and eventually, everyone else.

The change we’ve seen in the last 25 years is a drop in the ocean compared to what we’ll see in the next 5.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Here, today, right now, those developing generative AI are threatening to put a lot of us out of work. In October of 2020, the World Economic Forum said that while AI would likely take away 85 million jobs globally by 2025 (and we’re more than halfway there, by the way), it would also generate 97 million new jobs in fields ranging from big data and machine learning to information security and digital marketing.

But here’s the thing: The jobs it’s taking away aren’t the same jobs it’s creating. It’s not creating jobs for creatives. It’s taking them away. Good luck quitting your job as an actor and waltzing into a machine learning job.

And for a prime example of just how this is happening, look no further than our own industry and the current SAG-AFTRA and Writer’s Guild of America strikes against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which includes the major streaming services and Hollywood studios.

The AMPTP wants to be able to use generative AI like ChatGPT to replace writers altogether. It wants to be able to scan background actors, pay them a half day’s wages, less than $100, then use those scans as often as they want forever with no additional compensation, consent, or control of the actors themselves.

Right now, the technology exists for studios to be able to create entire new seasons of TV shows using AI which were never shot. AI can write the script, digitally recreate the actors, make them say whatever they want in their own voices, and output the shows with virtually no artistic professionals involved at all.

And because the expired contracts couldn’t even see such a scenario coming when they were negotiated just a few short years ago, the studios intend to do just that. Hell, Chat GPT didn’t exist a year ago.

If the studios have it their way, they will completely eliminate the artists from the art.

If the corporations have their way they will completely eliminate the workers from the work.

And right now, today, in 2023, the artists have leverage that we will never have again. If we don’t stand strong now, we’ll never have this chance again. We are literally fighting for the soul of our livelihoods.

And this is happening in so many fields. In another few years, self-driving cars will eliminate rideshare drivers, taxi drivers, truck drivers, bus drivers, and eventually, even boat captains and airline pilots. AI can already read xrays and other imaging more reliably than human radiologists.

We are at a unique point in history where we can see in the windshield the elimination of a vast majority of all work.

Which is great! On the surface, for a few days.

Except, how do we then exchange value among each other? How do we generate income for ourselves? How do we put food on the table for our families and how do we make a living doing what we love?

How do we make a living at all?

And if the vast majority of people are out of work, who then buys the products and services produced by the machines?

I’m not sure the AMPTP, or Google or Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, or anyone has figured that out yet.

And it’s that one thought that gives me hope.

If they, the corporations developing and using AI put us all out of work, they’ll have no one left to feed the machine. There will be no one streaming the content because no one will be able to afford food, much less Netflix. There will be no one riding the bus because no one will be able to pay to ride.

What the corporations and tech companies haven’t figured out yet is they need us, and by us I mean a healthy economy where the vast majority of people can work and exchange value and depend on each other.

They need us to survive.

But if the doomsayers are right and AI causes mass, pandemic unemployment, the have-nots, outnumbering the haves by orders of magnitude, will rise up and a full-scale dystopia will erupt.

And so, the current strikes in Hollywood are not just about writers and actors. They’re about what work means to us as individuals and as a society. They’re about the basic human rights to work, and to create, and to serve each other.

Work gives us purpose and meaning. It gives us a way to contribute to society and to the people we serve. It gives us pride. Something to get up in the morning for, something to call ourselves.

What’s the first thing we ask a stranger? So, what do you DO? Well, I’m a welder, I’m a doctor, I’m a server. A teacher. A butcher, a baker, a TV show maker. What we do is part of our identity – in fact, often too large a part.

That’s the way the world used to be. There was a time when we knew the value of the worker. We knew that prosperous employees made good customers. If people make good money then they will spend and save and invest good money.

But then came the 60s and 70s and Milton Friedman and trickle-down economics and we replaced the employee at the top of the value chain with the shareholder and transferred all the risk from the corporation to the workers. And in the process, we decimated loyalty on both sides.

Corporations now fire thousands at will, not because they’re fighting to survive, but because they won’t make quite as much profit as their projections said they would.

Employees have learned the hard way. Gen Z prides themselves on job hopping and freelancing because they grew up in a world where workers are completely expendable.

But workers are ultimately customers. What good is having the world’s best whatever, if there’s no one left who can afford it?

The same writers and actors who are drawing a line in the sand against AI right now are the same ones who are customers of Disney Plus, Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Apple TV Plus, Discovery Plus, Peacock, Max, and all the rest.

I believe that most people don’t want to see art created solely by machines. They want to see art created by humans with a soul. No matter how good the production, we want to know that behind that creative work is a human who thinks and feels and hurts and bleeds and wonders and worries and loves like we do.

You cannot separate good work from the worker. Art from humanity. Good work and real art is by definition created by humans. Otherwise, it’s all just 1s and 0s.

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