Anonymous Strike Diary: ‘The Eastside Warrior’ on the “Killer Robot Elephant in the Room”

“We’re the first to stare down our rising AI Overlords, but we won’t be the last.”

The Hollywood Reporter has been running a weekly series called Strike Diary. It features Hollywood screenwriters and TV writers who anonymously share their thoughts about the strike. Here’s how the article describes this week’s subject:

In his latest picket-line dispatch, the seasoned EP doubles down on the battle to protect human writers from getting “Napsterfied” by AI, and warns studio heads that the bots will betray them, too

Here are some excerpts:

Listen, our backs are against the wall, and we know it. Even the (many) ransacked donut boxes on the picket line have “Fuck AI” written on them. We’re the first to stare down our rising AI Overlords, but we won’t be the last.* So, let’s talk about the Killer Robot Elephant in the room.

Because, after all, we are writers. All many of us do is think of every possible way the world could explode.You’ve seen Terminator 2 — some of you have even accidentally seen Terminator: Genisys — but our job is to think of Terminators 10 through 20. We know how this story ends.

And we know when it starts: when the AI Lords of Creation descend on Capitol Hill. Though to be honest, it was especially disturbing to see OpenAI’s Sam Altman admit to Congress this week even he doesn’t understand what new hell he has wrought. That maybe AI needs boundaries. No shit.

However, it felt a little fucking disingenuous because there was at least one boundary OpenAI could care less about: U.S. Copyright law. They blew right past that one when they hoovered up all our work into their industrial strength bullshit machine without our consent. Sure, they’ll talk all day about an International AI Monitoring Agency (a very good idea), but they suddenly get really defensive when someone mentions maybe paying people for what really powers GPT4.

Most articles I’ve read about AI focus on the actual technology. What The Eastside Warrior does in his essay is shine a light on the behind the scenes legal and business machinations by tech companies to create a legal framework within which they can do whatever they hell they want when it comes to AI and pre-existing content.

The essay ends with this warning:

The film and television business is on the verge of being Napsterfied. As Billy Ray put it last week, it’s all just data to them.

For more essays in The Hollywood Reporter Strike Diary series, go here.

For the latest updates on the strike and news resources, go here.