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Comment by Charlie_26 | Hacker News Reader

I’m an actor and a software developer. And AI replacing us (the nobodies, the extras, ie not Tom Cruise) scares the shit out of me. Long live the theatre I guess.

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I'm resigned that it was all inevitable, but also just upset that we spent all this effort learning to automate away the parts of life that are actually interesting first.

How did people decide that writing and art and music and theatre were the things that we needed to automate out? Especially with these fields, it's not even about removing drudgery - the very process of creating is the interesting part!

It has also been super gross to me to watch these infant technologies be thrown at removing humans from creative tasks. The whole point was supposed to be to automate the mundane, boring bullshit so we could do more things involving higher thought, not less.

This is how industrial factories work though. Instead of things like pottery, food and such being crafted it's now just bog standard and crappy. There are benefits in bog standard and crappy though.

There are no benefits to bog-standard, crappy replacements for genuine human-crafted creative products.

Period.

These tools should be applied to solving real problems. Instead, they're being used to solve nonproblems like "how can creatively-bankrupt but affluent parasites extract more money from human creativity while paying as few other human beings as possible?".

It's gross, and it's also pathetic, because the models aren't even /there/ yet. They're certainly gonna get there, but I can't help but feel my future is being robbed at the behest of people who want to remove humans from humanity, rather than remove humans from mundanity, and all we're going to end up with is a pile of statistically-average mediocrity.

No one decided that. Those are just the things with the most quantifiable datasets to absorb and also not quantifiable enough to have to provide sources for their origins.

I’m gonna strike a guess that the more interesting part is also the most expensive part. Replacing that means saving money.

I don’t believe it’s the inevitable yet. What if it’s shit and you don’t want to see hundreds of AI extras? Never mind an AI Tom Cruise (who won’t be getting any academy awards if he’s entirely computer generated).

It's only a question of time when the AI extras seem real enough that most people won't notice (especially in fast-paced scenes etc).

The only hope is that people aggressively vote with their wallets against this, but I don't think this would last long.

The theatre's an intersting concept, like live music. I understand that every town once had plenty of performances and shows, but then came record record players, and the "best" would outcompete the local shows, ditto for movies and tv. Seems this is a continuation of such.

Hey, I'm a fellow actor/SWE. Wondering what's your story. Feel free to reach out, there's no contact details on your profile.

Nice to meet you. We need to make an AI agent that gets us all the work. I’ll send you a message.

Messaged you on IG!

Assuming he's not immortal, I wouldn't be surprised if after Tom Cruise dies, his estate (Scientology?) will keep making Tom Cruise movies.

Already happened (in multiple ways) with Tupac. Released posthumous albums and reproduced his likeness holographically. I think its inevitable that actors will do the same.

It's not such a big difference between watching at home a concert, and going to a fake concert. Both are not connecting you to the artist, just giving you their music and performance. Arguably it's much more impressive if you go to the holographic concert - you have a bunch of vibing people to mingle, impressive sound systems and fancy visuals all around.

It’s all about brands and recognisability

AI won't replace you. It will enhance you and give you way too much work to cram into a small window of time. AI will be a series of trials and errors first, before it becomes something that you will learn how to finetune.

I remember the Web was this chaotic place of info "at your fingertip" and no one mentioned how difficult it is to find stuff. AI is just as fancy and shiny.

"AI will enhance you" is a really hard sell for voice acting. Voice actors are paid to use their physical training and experience in order to perform as directed in a unique way. Even if a voice actor were to go "now I trained this model on my own voice so I don't have to perform anymore", no sensible game studio or animation director would want to pay full price for an AI performance. The AI isn't going to be able to satisfy the precise demands of the director at a recording session, at least without a lot of domain specific training and extra work.

It's like telling a guitarist that AI will empower them because now the computer will play music for them.

An actor could probably additionally sell access to an AI version of their voice on the side, but doing that is devaluing their voice, arguably.

> It's like telling a guitarist that AI will empower them because now the computer will play music for them.

I don't need AI for that - we've had drum machines for ages and now VSTs that can emulate pretty much any instrument. They do empower me because now I can create music that isn't limited to the instruments I own and can play without needing to hire an orchestra.

That's not empowering a guitarist to play guitar in some new or better or more efficient way.

Drum machines and VSTs are tools for any composer to synthesize a composition. They solve a different problem for a different set of people that can include but is not limited to guitarists. And as you pointed out they predate AI.

How do drum machines and VSTs make you better at playing guitar, or allow you to do that more efficiently or for higher pay? How will AI do that?

Don't guitarists record themselves playing a tune in a hundred different ways before settling on one that is the most appropriate?

> no sensible game studio or animation director would want to pay full price for an AI performance. The AI isn't going to be able to satisfy the precise demands of the director at a recording session, at least without a lot of domain specific training and extra work.

You’re assuming that it will be used for production. With a model than can spit out sentences on demand, game writers can try out a lot of different dialogue for draft storylines then have the final version recorded by the voice actor.

I'd 100% expect game studios to move to pure AI voices as soon as it's feasible to do so. There are even very strong use cases for it, like using it to voice generated dialogue so that NPCs don't need to be scripted word-for-word.

The entire genre of Internet video, too, is likely to do it, albeit because of cost.

Movies and TV may keep using voice actors if it's the prestigious thing to do. Who knows. The point about directing the actor is also good, but I don't know how long it would last.

TTS is already used for placeholder dialogue in games, yeah. That has been the case for a long time. There's not really a precedent for using fake versions of an actor's voice, but placeholder TTS dialogue has accidentally slipped into large releases before, and a few notable games have come out using AI instead of voice actors (The Finals, one of Cyan's games, etc)

Even if you're right that AI will "enhance" actors' skill, then that will raise the bar to an un-realistic standard that consumers will then expect. That's not a good thing.

I so want you to be right, but do you know what ‘enshitification‘ is?

And another thing > no AI is going to replace your Daniel Day Lewises. Your Tilda Swintons. These people are real human beings who are perfect on screen without AI adjustment.

I’m a good actor too btw.

Simulate a character acting in various fashions and styles and saying the same exact thing. Show off the character in your likeness to other people. Ask them which simulation is best.

Go to the stage acting just like that simulation.

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