More Than Television and Movies: AI, Art, and the Struggle for Humanity
More Than Television and Movies: AI, Art, and the Struggle for Humanity
As social media breaks into splinters and conditions deteriorate in general, I want to ask once again for your support. A lot of what I detail in this article has already taken place in academia, which was at the forefront of this new, exploitative push, and having left the halls of higher education...
As social media breaks into splinters and conditions deteriorate in general, I want to ask once again for your support. A lot of what I detail in this article has already taken place in academia, which was at the forefront of this new, exploitative push, and having left the halls of higher education to provide analysis and work to find solutions, I rely on DISPATCHES FROM A COLLAPSING STATE,
The idea, all along, has been that it will “free” us from our labor, creating a more level society. But that’s been the lie since the beginning of industrialization, and those with the power and the money to create the technology have always used advancements to harm the labor force and increase exploitation and profits.
Is Jared not aware of what life was like for the average person in a pre-industrial society? This is looking at history through an extremely rose-tinted lens. Sure, there have been periods where robber barons ruled supreme, but that's not inherent in industrialization. There were literal barons before then, with feudal serfs under them who were slaves by a very slightly different name.
AI can only provide a simulation of that. It can steal ideas and expressions from past writers, from past CONTENT, but in the end all it gives is a thin impression of humanity.
And if modern writers can be fully replaced by that, that doesn't give a very high review of those writers' capabilities, does it?
I loved Star Wars as a kid, saw so much in it that resonated with me. Now, watching it juiced for everything it’s worth by Disney and peddled out as a corporate product on a corporate timeline designed to maximize its profits is as disgusting as anything I could imagine.
Disney did that without any use of AI. Studios don't need AI to roll out soulless sequels and reboots and paint-by-numbers summer blockbusters bereft of sense or creativity. They've been doing that for decades. If you're upset that such movies do well, that's not AI's fault. The fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves.
Meanwhile, the streaming structure will continue to make the writer, the actor, the creators, less and less important, choosing to destroy dreams for tax write-offs and exploit everything it can exploit.
Again, streaming has been a thing for decades. Netflix was founded in 1997. Series and movies have been wiped off of streaming services for tax purposes for years. AI has nothing to do with this.
We have an opportunity to strike back. We have a chance to stop this before it gets to be too late.
Well, no. It's already done.
What you want is for a way to make television and movies without needing those big giant greedy corporations to be involved at all. And surprise, that's the sort of thing that AI could be poised to deliver. The cheaper it gets to match the special effects of "big-budget" hollywood movies, the more AI voice actors or even virtual actors that hobbyists can use in their productions, the more "real art" will be able to compete with those soulless studios.
Just like with industrialization, the machines are neither good nor evil. It's all in how you use them.