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Comment by gremlinsinc | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this might backfire. In the age of ai when animated characters can be almost created wholly by ai, actors can be replaced by AI, the age of the movie star might be over. I think in the future live performances will be more sought after just to know you're actually watching a real person, at least until life like ai androids are indistinguishable from real humans.

I'm saying this as someone in support of unions in general, but also in support of our ai future, if a little fearful of the Terminator scenario playing out.

I don't think unions can stop ai from taking jobs, I think maybe all unions should ban together for a general strike to force a ubi vote, so that when ai does take jobs people can still eat and pay rent.

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> I wonder if this might backfire. In the age of ai when animated characters can be almost created wholly by ai, actors can be replaced by AI, the age of the movie star might be over.

From what I've seen the conversation is a lot more nuanced. It's not "yes AI" vs "no AI." It's more around can you use my likeness, writing, or artwork to train AI with minimal to zero compensation (what studios want) or with compensation structure both sites negotiate (what unions what). Or can the result of AI be used to undermine labor. Currently, the output of AI isn't up to expected standards for much of anything. Studios are obviously trying to use that output to replace "writing credit" which has a historical structure with higher compensation. The person they pay to go "punch it up" won't get that. The resulting product would be mostly the same, but the person polishing and finishing it does a lot more work with less compensation.

AI is also just a relatively minor part of what unions are trying to negotiate.

Maybe the AIs will take the studio's jobs before they take the artist's jobs (enabling much higher pay for creatives). After all the script is just 5% of the cost [1]. I'm sure there are pieces of the multi-hundred-million dollar movie-production process that are easier to automate that script writing and acting.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0611/why-movies-...

>>I'm sure there are pieces of the multi-hundred-million dollar movie-production process that are easier to automate that script writing and acting.

You assume that is not already happening? How many physical effects people where displaced or had to find different things to do when CGI automated large amounts of physical effects?

How much bigger would be budgets need to be to do physical effects instead of CGI?

I am sure their are tons of other examples of automation and technology that allows a movie to be made with far less people.

That is the natural progress of things.

> I think maybe all unions should ban together for a general strike to force a ubi vote, so that when ai does take jobs people can still eat and pay rent.

Pit the old creatives against the young ones. Nice.

> actors can be replaced by AI

Actors' appearances can be replaced by AI. Their voices can be too.

Actors' performances cannot. Not now and not any time in the near future. Not vocally, not facially, not physically. AI can map one vocal performance to another voice. It can't produce a vocal performance full of emotion that nails exactly what the scene is about, in the first place.

> Actors' performances cannot. Not now and not any time in the near future. Not vocally, not facially, not physically. AI can map one vocal performance to another voice. It can't produce a vocal performance full of emotion that nails exactly what the scene is about, in the first place.

Oh sure these computer programs can play chess, but can they beat a grandmaster? Not now and not any time in the near future! - some guy in the early 90s probably.

Why not?

I mean, why don't we have GAI?

I don't know how to describe it except that performing a role in a fully believable way is akin to writing an engaging believable novel, which AI can't do, and is nowhere near doing, either.

If you try taking a beginner's acting class at an acting studio in e.g. LA or NY, you'll quickly see how difficult and artistic good screen acting is. How hard it is to perform lines in a way that seems like real life, as opposed to seeming like bad acting (melodramatic exclaiming of lines).

Of course, a lot of people don't understand just how difficult and skilled screen acting is, because the entire point is that you're not supposed to notice acting at all. You're supposed to be fooled into thinking these are somehow real characters.

Eh, I think anything that we have a lot of data on (ex: recorded acting) will and can be replicated in the very near future. Sure, you will have the occasional Oscar worthy actor that is some level of creativity that doesn’t work, but vast majority of acting is not finding new ways to show something in a script, the creativity came from the writing and directing choices.

Art was also thought to require human creativity until recently. We’re not going to produce a new paradigm of art or Picasso level impact, but the median artist can be replaced today in most ways imho.

> but vast majority of acting is not finding new ways to show something in a script, the creativity came from the writing and directing choices.

I'm sorry, but you have clearly never worked in film and television, and certainly never in casting. Because your impression of acting is simply wrong.

Casting offices will audition literally hundreds of actors to find the one who can bring the right unique take to the role, that no other actor can. There are TV shows and plays that simply don't get made because they can't find an actor who can play the part with the needed charm and magnetism for the specific role. I'm not talking Oscars, I'm talking bread-and-butter network comedies and procedurals.

People watch shows and movies for the story/script, but they also watch them for the unique spark and charisma that the actors bring just as much. AI is not replicating that in the "very near future", not even close.

Given that some actors effectively play the same character every movie or show they’re in (ex: the rock) and people still seem to mostly like them, why couldn’t you capture an actor’s “spark” (mannerisms) once and replay in different settings forever? What specifically can’t be simulated?

Sure, but competent actors are fungible.

It is a skill set with way more supply than demand.

Expecting to be one of the lucky ones employed in this creative field, and then also dictating the terms of that employment is not going to happen.

If the actors unions become too overreaching the studios will just replace them with new non-union actors (or AI trained by non-union actors).

Good thing valve has made it clear that if you’re using AI generated content that you don’t have fully copyright over it they’re not going to accept your game.

UBI will not stop landlords from sweeping it all. UBI won’t work until we either have rent control or abolish private ownership-for-rent of housing.

When Microsoft increased their housing stipend for interns, all the surrounding temporary housing and Airbnbs went up by that amount a few months after.

> Good thing valve has made it clear that if you’re using AI generated content that you don’t have fully copyright over it they’re not going to accept your game.

Valve isn't really a good example to use here... they have a policy of not hiring union VAs (and the few they have worked with in the last 5 years or so have been publicly mistreated, see how they treated Merle Dandridge) and have definitely made new lines by piecing together old recording sessions in cases where the actor wanted more money or in cases where the actor was deceased.

A lot of people have half-joked that startups are essentially a convoluted method to funnel VC cash to SF landlords...

I guess it won't backfire because the AI revolution will come anyways. I rather think that this strike is a last-ditch effort to contain the AI revolution and squeeze out the last bucks before the flow of money dries up.

Like the self driving car revolution?

That is coming too. It may take a little longer than expected but it will come for sure.

I'm still waiting on that sufficiently advanced compiler they've been talking about.

What compiler? I'm out of the loop on what you're referring to.

A “sufficiently smart compiler” is a (frequently mythical) one that can implement some difficult optimization on its own, rather than needing hints from the programmer. (See e.g. https://prog21.dadgum.com/40.html?0 for some discussion on the topic.)

Ah interesting. I wonder if LLMs can help solve that, although if they don't know the programmer's intent, they likely won't be able to optimize any better either.

/s?

Only half

Difference is that AI can generate good-enough content most of the time. And that is often enough. It is not like what is sold now produced by humans is especially spectacular.

Exactly. Self-driving is a far more complex problem. The car has to get it right, right here on the road, little to no margin for error.

The script-writing AI, voice AI, actor-image AI will be used to create a multitude of options, and all but one will be thrown away anyways. Perfection isn't necessary, realtime isn't necessary, and a human correcting things here and there is always still an option. Compute resources are also far less limited, it doesn't have to fit in a "car" form factor and power consumption.

> human correcting things here and there is always still an option

Isn’t that what we are asking for though? We know there will be fewer people working in the industry. We want to ensure those who will work will be paid fairly.

Asking to be paid fairly is of course possible and sensible. But I'm not sure that it will be successful. Fewer people working will create a huge overhang of qualified experts, at least initially, driving down prices.

No one gets killed by a car or sued by a pedestrian if an AI generated episode of "Love Death and Robots" underwhelms the 17 year olds that put it on while looking at something on their phone. This will spur studios to try to make it work even though it'll probably say no time and money and result in worse outcomes for their catalog of media.

I think maybe all unions should ban together for a general strike to force a ubi vote

The Trump checks/Biden checks caused too much inflation for that to be politically tenable.

Most definitely it will backfire. As a gamer I care very little if a character in a game has the likeness or voice of a big name actor.

Not all unionized actors are "big name".

Indeed. The "big name" actors need the union the least. The fact they support the union indicates they know how tough it is for most actors.

Exactly, I think stories like this one might surprise people a bit

https://ew.com/tv/mandy-moore-pennies-for-this-is-us-streami...

tl;dr - Mandy Moore (a very big name celeb) talks about receiving residual checks of 81 cents for her show that streams on Hulu. I'm not interested whether or not she's rich and doesn't need the money, but if she's being paid fairly with regards to value she's providing.

Personally, if my contributions were bringing my company an incredible amount of revenue, I would be annoyed if I wasn't being paid accordingly.

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