NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE E arlier this month, actors represented by the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG–AFTRA) joined the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Why? Because, among other concerns, both groups fear that technology threatens their livelihoods. As Reed Alexander, a correspondent for Business Insider who formerly played the role of Nevel Papperman in Nickelodeon’s hit show iCarly put it, “Everyone is afraid that AI is coming for their jobs, with robots taking over, Terminator-style.” But this reactionary Luddism is, as usual, unfounded.
Since May, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike against what it calls an “assault on compensation and working conditions.” Additional grievances include “stagnating wages [and] rising living costs,” as well as fears that “AI could one day supplant” writers. On July 13, actors represented by the SAG–AFTRA joined the writers’ strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. After a unanimous vote to strike, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief negotiator for SAG–AFTRA, identified AI as “an existential threat to [actors’] livelihoods.” Additional qualms include the reduction of residual payments because of streaming and AI’s ability to substitute live actors with photo-realistic virtual replicas, for the use of which actors fear they will receive little to no compensation.
Anxiety surrounding technological innovation is understandable and recurrent; nobody is eager to lose his job. I am also a writer — one who stubbornly refuses to use ChatGPT. However, if AI truly is capable of making writers “obsolete” (Alexander’s term), then we ought to find more productive employment. If AI can produce series, movies, or political-economy-related op-eds more cheaply and quickly — and make them more entertaining — than human writers can, it should substitute us. (That’s a big “if,” and I’ll return to that caveat.)
That said, history offers many examples of innovations that have increased prosperity despite the objections of those with a stake in the status quo. Coachmen were threatened by the invention of the automobile in the late 19th century and were gradually replaced by personal cars and public transit. The distributional costs borne by the coachmen were real and painful in the short term. Those costs, however, paled in comparison with the huge gains enjoyed by all following the introduction of a faster, cleaner, and cheaper vehicle.
To be fair, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison to the current case: Some of the actors’ concerns are more legitimate than those of the coachmen of yore; there’s a legal and economic argument to be made that an actor should have the ability to copyright his likeness and receive royalties for its use, just as artists do with their paintings and authors with their novels. But objecting to the training of AI on screenwriters’ scripts to imitate their style and produce a show’s new season is on shakier ground — this is, after all, what human beings do: We learn by integrating information from others to iterate, innovate, and produce new things. Reinventing the wheel would be as inadvisable for AI as it is for us.
Towards the end of his piece, Alexander notes that, thanks to entertainment companies’ slashing 15,000 jobs, writers and actors “are confronting slim pickings.” The reality is that Hollywood is becoming more capital- than labor-intensive. Fewer people are needed to create what consumers demand; for many actors and writers, it may be the case that their most productive role in the economy is no longer in Hollywood.
The alleged threat from AI is worrying not only actors and screenwriters. Some journalists are now signaling their solidarity with bohemia. The editorial board at the Chicago Tribune has taken a militant stance against AI: “Just because AI could write this editorial, kind of, that does not mean it should be allowed to do so. Humans have to stand with humans” (emphasis added). I agree with the last sentiment, but all humans are also consumers. To privilege certain producers at the expense of consumers is to stand against some humans in favor of a privileged class, whether it’s actors, journalists, or screenwriters.
The striking creatives are not petitioning the state; they are making demands of studios. Private parties are within their rights to make voluntary arrangements through such negotiations. But if consumers (read: you, me, and everybody else) are to benefit from innovation — i.e., an increasingly valuable basket of goods and services — the distributional costs of creative destruction must be accepted, in both the public and private spheres. To demand unproductive employment in Hollywood is as absurd as the petition of 19th-century French economic journalist Frédéric Bastiat’s fictional candlemakers:
Pass a law ordering the closing of all windows, skylights, shutters, curtains, and blinds — that is, all openings, holes, and cracks through which the light of the sun is able to enter houses. This free sunlight is hurting the business of us deserving manufacturers of candles. Since we have always served our country well, gratitude demands that our country ought not to abandon us now to this unequal competition.
Apply the same perverse logic to Hollywood, and you would have seen traditional animators who drew each cartoon frame by frame petition the state to outlaw the introduction of the time-saving innovation of digital animation and computer-generated images. Were traditional animators successful in passing such legislation, animated media would cost more to produce and be more expensive for consumers. Though, to the hypothetical petitioners’ credit, at least we would have been spared the uncanny valley ([Don’t] see: Cats). The strikers embody the candlemakers’ spirit even if they’re acting within the private sector.
Screenwriters and actors have served consumers well for generations, but this does not afford them the license to demand that production studios and, ultimately, moviegoers subsidize a less efficient form of production. To do so would be to misallocate labor, hinder specialization, and, most importantly, waste consumers’ hard-earned dollars.
But — and here’s the other side of that aforementioned caveat — if better movies are made with live actors and human screenwriters, then WGA and SAG have little to worry about: Consumers will demand the better product, they will refuse to pay (or pay significantly less) for an inferior one, and writers and actors will have their bargaining power naturally restored.