The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis - The First Anti-AI Strike: The Writers Guild of America Protests AI Writing

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

The Writers Guild of America is striking after not being able to come to an agreement with TV and film executives. At the heart of the matter is the use of AI, and many believe the issues at stake are broadly relevant for other industries as well.

This episode of The AI Breakdown originally appeared on YouTube on May 3rd. In it, we cover the Writers Guild of America's Strike and what it says about how industry might fight back against AI. Before that, however, we cover the day's top headlines, including Samsung banning generative AI, TikTok adding an AI label, and a new chat GPT competitor. Welcome to the AI breakdown brief. The AI headlines you need to know today in five minutes or less. Step back, chat GPT. there is a new contender in town. Well, sort of. Inflection AI has just launched its new personal

AI called Pi. Now, this is a company that's raised something like $285 million. It shares a co-founder with LinkedIn and Reid Hoffman, as well as another co-founder of Google DeepMind. So it's got a lot of clout behind it. The idea of Pi is that it's supposed to be more personal. The CEO, Suleiman, says it's very balanced and even handed on political issues or sensitive topics, but it can also sometimes be funny and creative. This is what it looks like. And part of what makes it different or is trying to be different is that it remembers context from your previous conversations. And in some ways, it feels much less like a competitor to a chat GPT, which is helping people code or write copy. And instead something akin to the call Annie app that we demoed on this channel a few days ago.

Now, whether people actually want that out of their AI remains to be seen. Next up, TikTok is considering a new content label for AI generated content. This is becoming more and more important as AI content is on the rise. Now, part of this is driven by things like the absolutely viral Drake tracks that have been coming out and flooding all over TikTok. But part of it's in a response to fake photos like this one that went viral from Selena Gomez at the Metgala when Selena Gomez didn't go to the Metgala. I think you're going to see a lot more companies take steps like this AI consideration.

in the months to come. Now, bringing it back to chat GPT, there is a new plugin called Code Interpreter that a lot of people are getting really excited about. The neuron here says that people are saying that code interpreter rivals junior level data analysts. Basically, this allows you to upload a CSV file, and the interpreter then, one, provides suggestions for visualizations and analysis, but then actually does them. So an example that they give is someone uploaded a CSV of San Francisco crime data and got bar charts over time, heat maps of distribution, scatterplots of incidents. This is a pretty amazing tool if you think about the way that data can be visualized for more high-impact sharing. And while this might be worrying for data analysts who are seeing

their job prospects change before their eyes, it could be a democratizing force for how data can be useful in society, which in and of itself demonstrates the good and the bad, the challenge and the opportunity of AI in one small little example. of the challenge of AI, Samsung has banned staff use of generative AI after a data leak into chat GPT. So this data leak happened last month and Samsung got very concerned about it. And this is part of a larger trend of companies being concerned with their proprietary data being fed into chat GPT. Now, of course, OpenAI has announced that they have a forthcoming business version of chat GPT that tries to address this problem by having it be private by default. They also just

announced a private mode for everyone else as well. So OpenAI is trying to solve this type of issue. But for the meantime, Samsung has banned generative AI in the workplace on workplace devices. Finally, yesterday we discussed how the White House is taking a bigger and bigger interest in AI. And that seems to be validated in the news that Vice President Kamala Harris is set to discuss AI in a meeting with the CEOs of companies, including Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic on Thursday. Now, interestingly, this doesn't appear to be a press event. type of meeting because it wasn't announced by the White House. It was something that CNBC got their hands on the invitation. The CEOs who have been invited aren't commenting on it, so hopefully they

actually have the chance to have a productive discussion. That's it for today's breakdown brief. I'll see you back here for the full breakdown a little later today. Today on the AI breakdown, we're talking about the Writers Guild of America Strike, which has AI and AI replacement and automation right at the heart of it, and ask, what it suggests about the state of the conversation around AI disruption in industries across America and the world. Yesterday, the Writers Guild of America strike began, and there are many reasons behind the strike. There are questions of wages and lowered prices and use of daywriters and all these sort of things. But right at the heart of it is fears of AI and a concern about what Hollywood executives and studios might use AI

for in the future and how it might impact the people who actually write the shows and TV and movies that we watch. Now specifically, the Writers Guild of America is in contract discussions with the alliance of motion picture and television producers, and they're focused on what they call their minimum basic agreement or MBA. In those discussions, here's how they framed artificial intelligence. What the Writers Guild asked for was to regulate use of artificial intelligence on MBA-covered projects. AI can't write or rewrite literary material can't be used as source material, and MBA-covered material can't be used to train AI. That was rejected by Hollywood executives who countered by offering annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology. The fear is, of course,

that basically executives will create a new process for writing TV and movies, by which AI might be used to come in and do the basics of screenplays, and then Hollywood would hire writers at day rates to punch up or make those scripts a little bit better. Now, is this actually what's going to happen in Hollywood? There are kind of a variety of takes. On the one hand, you have the comical takes like Mike here who wrote a fake episode of Succession using fake AI that's just terrible, obviously making the point that AI can't do this. And of course, a lot of Hollywood writers feel very similarly. At the same time, Sarah Myers-West, who's the managing director of the AI Now Institute, which is a research nonprofit that studies social consequences of AI says that, quote, writers in particular are among

the most likely to be affected. West continues, WGA's desire to institute strong curbs on the use of AI to protect their intellectual property and creative work is well-founded, particularly given the rapid rollout and commercialization of this technology, even as it's a poor substitute for their craft. Too often the need to, quote, study the effects of technologies is used as a way to avert stronger regulation. We should learn from the last decade of tech-enabled crises and listen to organizers' demands. I think IGN news director Kat Bailey's tweet here really captures a lot of the feeling. She writes, The rapid rise of AI, the death of waypoint, and the upcoming WGA strike, making me think again about how writers are considered eminently disposable by folks who have no

idea how writing works, but are pretty sure it's really easy. Now, the question of course I had is holding aside the strike's justification. From an efficacy standpoint, doesn't it create the perfect incentive and opportunity for studios to actually go try the exact thing that writers fear? General Catalyst investor Zach Kukov says something similar, writing, Strike breaking becomes much easier when AI can be a 24-7 scab working for pennies on the dollar. Tough time to be a creative worker like the Writers Guild going into a strike. But WGA is smart to negotiate this now. Their position only gets worse. as AI matures. And indeed, that's also a lot of the response that I got to my Twitter question

as well, that sure, maybe Hollywood might want to do that now, but the technology isn't really at a point yet where it's viable. And so this is exactly the right time to be negotiating exactly this. Adam Conover, who created Adam Ruins Everything said, in terms of companies using AI in order to break the strike, I'd like to see them try. It's not going to work. It's not easier to replace us with AI than it is to find someone to write the scripts, and that's not possible for them to do because it's an extremely skilled profession. Now, of course, the problem with that thesis is that it doesn't necessarily matter if Adam is right, if executives are willing to just churn out crap.

But this, of course, isn't just about the Writers Guild. Justine Bateman here tweets, watch this WGA strike carefully. Understand that our fight is the same fight that is coming to your professional sector next. It's the devaluing of human effort, skill, and talent in favor of automation and profits. And this, of course, broadens out the conversation to more generally what AI is going to do to industries. I saw a very interesting and kind of glib cocky even tweet from Jan Lacoon, who's the chief AI scientist at Meta yesterday. He retweeted something from Benedict Evans that suggested that the AI discourse about jobs destruction is way out ahead of itself. And Jan added,

Every economist I know says that it takes 15 to 20 years before a new general purpose technology has a measurable effect on productivity. The delay is determined by how fast people learn to use it. So no, AI is not going to cause instant mass employment. It's going to displace jobs over time and make people more productive, just like every other technological revolution before that. Now, there are a lot of challenges with this. One, I will say, is just the confidence and lack of humility inherent in the statement, assuming that you can apply the model of previous technology changes to AI.

But the second is, it's just not exactly being borne out in reality. Take, for example, news from earlier this week that IBM is replacing 7,800 jobs that they would have hired for in areas like human resources and back office support with AI and automation. Dropbox announced that they're cutting 500 jobs in their pivot to AI, not because they can automate those jobs away, but because the skills aren't relevant for what they need to build for the future. So between IBM, Dropbox, and now the Writers Guild of America, I don't think that dismissing the concern around AI's disruption. to industries and jobs is quite so easily done. Now, where Jan is right is that one of the impacts of AI will be increased productivity for human workers as well. Planet Money just published a long article about a team of researchers who have been using an earlier version of a chat GPT like AI to help customer service workers, and they found that the hybrid AI human workers were much more

effective, much more productive. The study found that they were able to resolve issues faster, to resolve more complex issues than were previously possible, that customers who had interacted with the hybrid human and AI customer service reps were more satisfied. So yes, there will, of course, be those productivity gains as well. And when it comes to the net impact, I think it is still really unclear. On the one hand, people are concerned about there being technological halves and have-nots based on these new AI platforms.

But on the other hand, people are talking about how entire categories of jobs that currently enjoy a wage premium might no longer enjoy that wage premium might no longer enjoy that wage premium because of AI. That would have the net impact of decreasing inequality, but not by raising people up, but by bringing an entire category of people down, which creates its own set of problems. The point of this is that this conversation is now here in a big way. The Writers Guild of America is probably just the leading edge of something we're going to see more and more. Technologists have long assumed that the forces of technological progress march on unimpeded no matter what. But I think that when it comes to AI for the first time, society is going to ask some

real serious questions about that. Engaging in good faith with that conversation, I believe, means probably not bringing all of our priors to it. I certainly don't know what the right answer is and where society nets out as better than it is now. I know that these tools are powerful and that I'm excited for them. I also know that the disruption could be hugely problematic. But you better believe that this is the beginning, not the end of the conversation. And more and more people are going to get involved, probably in a way that asks, is this really what we want? Anyways, guys, lots of food for thought. If you were enjoying the AI breakdown,

I would so appreciate it if you would take the time to subscribe to it or go subscribe to the podcast version of it. Until next time, guys. Peace.