A moving post

I'm moving, and that's why you're getting this instead of the other post I'd wanted to do.

I’m in the process of moving from one state to another. Like water moving from vapor to liquid, or House Party to House Party: Tonight’s the Night.

Anyway, I desperately wanted to have time to finish my “Path to short film production” series, but this move has erased what time I thought I would have to complete it.

So, instead, you’re getting this.

The WGA strike has had me thinking a lot about what the future holds, and honestly, it’s a little daunting for writers. The outlook is grim—perhaps more grim than even many writers realize.

A piece I read this week gets into why the AI threat is considered by the WGA to be existential in nature. Never would I have contemplated the phrase “dissolution of the Guild” until this year. The Guild has seemed sacrosanct, like a political entity that, once created, can never be destroyed.

But the truth is, nothing is permanent if enough pressure is put upon it. That pressure is being exerted by the studios upon the people who are responsible for furnishing the studios with the story content they need to drive sales. Now the studios think their ace is artificially generated content.

“Our business is already accused of having no new ideas, of relying on prequels and sequels and adaptations of pre-existing IP, and now we’re enlisting a tool that is powered by an engine of stories already written,” Damon Lindelof told me. He added, rather ominously, “The rise of AI is the fall of original ideas.”

Damon Lindelof

The line in the sand must be drawn here—like Patrick Stewart says in First Contact. God, I love this delivery.

Let's be clear here: this is far from just something that threatens some smarty-pants, know-it-all liberal filmmakers in Hollywood as Fox News and Far Right "thinkers" on social media might have you think. AI will eliminate tens of millions of jobs — jobs that belong to both liberals and conservatives — and decimate the world economy in the process if people don't begin to act now. That's why you need to pay attention to this strike, even if you're not a screen/TV writer, even if you loathe everything Hollywood represents.

Because AI is coming for you and everyone you care about, too.

Am I worried? I am.

I’m not in the Guild, but I know enough about both the industry and the way this technology can be fielded, the way it can progress rapidly. Studios may be overestimating AI’s abilities in the short-term, but we’re all probably underestimating AI’s ability over the long-term.

It will grow. It will advance exponentially and what you think isn’t possible now (and imagine won’t be possible for years) may be a news cycle away from becoming the new techno-norm. Six months is not so long, and it may be the length of the strike (if not longer). It may also be the advent of a brand new AI client that blows ChatGPT out of the water, or a new LLM that leverages a wildly more inventive source of human creativity and emotional variance.

Whither, then, Western Man?

This, probably more than the mini-rooms, is the quintessential line in the sand. Every other issue is secondary, because if AI wins, mini-rooms will be a luxury.

Pray it won’t come to pass.