"I'm confused as to what type of ideal world this argument is fighting for."
Sucks
Twitter was in ablaze this week when in response to the ongoing Writer's Guild strike, a guy decided to let the people know that writing work doesn't matter anymore, actually. ChatGPT can just do it.
"Oh no. A writer's strike. Whatever shall we do," tweeted a user who goes by the moniker "powerbottomdad1." "If only there was some kind of machine that could endlessly pump out textual content so we didn't have to rely on these flaky humans."
Unsurprisingly, this unceremonious tweet from powerbottomdad1 — who's notably followed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — struck a chord with folks who value human labor and creative processes. (Also, asking to be compensated fairly for your work when it's purchased by and viewed on streaming platforms isn't really being "flaky," but we digress.)
"Based on this person's username I'm inclined to believe they're trolling *however* this opinion is mega common amongst ppl in tech," tweeted another. "I'm confused as to what type of ideal world this argument is fighting for."
"A lot of points to be made here," someone else chimed in. "But where the fuck do you people think bots like ChatGPT generate their content from? They're amalgamating thousands of human-written scripts into what is essentially a mad lib based on your prompt."
Points Made
Gotta say: all of these angered netizens have a point.
On its face, of course, there's the sheer callousness of the comment, which doesn't exactly offer much sympathy to folks who might lose their jobs to automation. Even Goldman Sachs tried to soften the blow when they estimated that about 300 million jobs stand to go the way of the AI in the not-so-distant future.
Also, as another user suggested, referring to creative writing as "textual content" is wildly depressing.
Even if a robot can churn out a passable script — already a far-fetched assumption with today's tech — a lot of folks seem to have forgotten that humans aren't robots, and the creative process isn't just about making as much content as possible. Or it shouldn't be, at least. When it is, we get things like Netflix's "The Gray Man" and Amazon Studios' "Citadel." And given the fact that these machines are taught to mimic human stories by mixing and regurgitating machine-free human work, plagiarism is definitely a concern when it comes to replacing human scriptwriters, too.
Sadly, though, considering that the strikers' demands regarding protection from AI demands were struck down, the studios just may go down this road.
More on automation: IBM Replacing 7,800 Human Jobs with AI, Including Human Resources
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