Against AI, Political Punditry Can Still Do the Write Thing
Striking Hollywood writers are nervous about artificial intelligence — also known as AI — and I’m not feeling so good myself.
When I see all those bright, clever and mostly young talents out on the picket lines, I cannot help but ask myself: Could we columnists be next?
The strike by the Writers Guild of America, their first since their 2007-08 walkout that lasted 100 days, has brought a new fascinating and troubling issue to the forefront: AI.
The promise of AI has long boggled our human minds. Like putting humans on the moon, the idea of artificial intelligence has been dreamed about for ages — sometimes nightmarishly in forms as varied as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” or HAL the computer in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001.”
Now in an age that has seen astounding acceleration in the output of scientific and technological innovations, we suddenly look up and see artificial intelligence is upon us, producing new wonders by the day, as well as new and troubling questions.
We are beginning to bear witness to a new unease at the thought that these innovations might make millions of jobs held by flesh-and-blood humans obsolete.
In other words, could the anti-AI backlash in the WGA indicate a new Luddite phase?
You may recall the original Luddites from your history classes. They were a reaction in the industrial revolution to machines competing with human workers a period of great social and economic change in England in the early 19th century.
Outraged workers rose up and began to destroy the machines. Fearing the worst, the WGA asked in its latest contract proposal that the entertainment industry agree not to use AI to replace writers. Not surprisingly, the industry declined, agreeing only to “annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology.” That rang alarm bells in writers rooms across the industry,
Should similar alarms be rung by us in the opinion-writing punditocracy?
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