# Writers Guild of America goes on strike (5/2/23) tentative deal (9/25/23) Now accepted (10/9/23) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** ai\ **Created:** [May 2, 2023, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448 "2023-05-02T04:36:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2023, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/141 "2023-05-11T22:04:38Z")
I wonder if there are going to be a lot more k-dramas (even more than now) on Netflix. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2023, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/142 "2023-05-11T22:21:09Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > Even though I’m basically arguing that you need a soul to be truly creative, i feel like I’m an atheist arguing with true believers. Exactly the opposite. You are the “true believer” arguing that souls exist, that humans have something essential that means that they, and _only_ they, will ever be “creative”. You are both giving too much credit to humans and too little to the potential of AI. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2023, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/143 "2023-05-11T22:22:22Z")
Ok. Five characters. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2023, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/144 "2023-05-11T23:40:24Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > You are the “true believer” arguing that souls exist, that humans have something essential that means that they, and _only_ they, will ever be “creative”. My argument is something different: if something is truly creative, we need to explore giving rights to it to protect its inherent worth. If it’s not truly creative, it’s a tool, and we need to treat it as such and examine how it affects everyone around it. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2023, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/145 "2023-05-11T23:54:01Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > People can’t just (legally) copy your work and give it away for free. People can’t just copy your work and use it to illustrate their picture book. People can’t just copy your work and use it on their blog posts. Profit isn’t the primary factor here. Not everything is Fair Use, or Fair Dealing. The AI isn’t doing any of this. Let’s humanize it for a moment. I subscribe to Netflix and choose to carefully watch and analyze Stranger Things. I watch it over and over again, and create a detailed statistical analysis of the words spoken by the actors, the set directions I’m able to decipher, the costuming and special effects. I turn this analysis into a 200 page book. Who owns the analysis? Netflix didn’t do the analysis. The writers didn’t do the analysis. Not a single phrase in the 200 page book matches a phrase from any of the show scripts, because it isn’t a script, it’s an analysis. I spent months watching the show, taking notes and doing mathematics to generate my analysis, it belongs to me. It is a product of my work, my effort, my long nights and unique personal take on the project. When an AI does the same thing, albeit quicker, the analysis still does not belong to Netflix, or the writers. It belongs to the people who made the AI, the people who spent long nights programming a machine to analyze text. It is the product of their effort to do things that literally nobody else was able to do before them. You are calling those efforts plagiarism. As if the AI was doing something as trivial as that. It isn’t, it’s doing a unique and special analysis. An analysis not intended to generate copies of existing works, but to create legitimately unique works by developing a set of language rules that mimic natural human writing. That doesn’t mean AI can replace people, but it isn’t pasting a picture to a book, or copying someone else’s text to my pathetic blog. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > by and large, they are complete and utter morons completely disconnected from the creative process. They think they know better. Which is why they’ve been making cuts to the writers rooms for the last three years. Even if this is true, and I make no claim that you’re wrong… cash is king. Hit shows, well written shows, earn money. If HBO/whatever their name will be next year/ tries to go the all AI route to their writing rooms, their shows will stink, and companies like Netflix, Prime, Hulu will eat them for lunch. There’s tons of competition in TV and movies, everyone is trying to capture market share, and writing shit shows doesn’t do that. Not when good shows are out there to kick your ass. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/146 "2023-05-12T00:30:13Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Can you give me a set of metrics on what it is exactly to say that one human writer is better than another? …don’t move the goalposts. We are talking about your specific claim. What does “better than humans” mean? I’ve talked a bit about David Simon here in this thread. You might think I’m a bit of a fan. But I’m not. I don’t like his writing. I don’t like his work. I don’t like his shows. You also mentioned the Big Bang Theory. And I’d much rather watch an episode of Big Bang than I would watch the Wire. Does that mean that Chuck Lorre is a better writer than David Simon? Nope. I prefer different things, that’s all. Both writers work in different environments with different challenges, and as Showrunner that had multiple different roles in _addition_ to writing or contributing to scripts including managing a cast and crew of hundreds. So what that means is: > [@k9bfriender](#): > > If not, then your demand is meaningless. No, my demand is _not_ meaningless. And it still stands. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > If you mean AI generation, I don’t disagree, if you mean generation as 20-30 years, I completely disagree. > > AI is advancing quickly, and there’s a whole lot of money behind it. Both the software and hardware are being improved and optimized for the task. What we have seen playing with ChatGTP3.5 is nothing compared to what is coming. And it’s coming fast, much more quickly than you think. And no matter how advanced it gets, it won’t ever be able to replace what the writers do on a television production. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > Never is a long, long time. And you are talking about thing that human writers struggle with as well. Yes, humans struggle. Which is why writers rooms evolved. It means you can bounce ideas off each other. Less experienced writers get mentored by more experienced ones. And a day on set can _completely_ change a writers perspective. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > If you see a movie with a Black man in it, chances are, the lines that black man are reading were written by a white man. **That’s changing, fortunately** , but it still doesn’t mean that you have to have an experience to write about it, a Black man may be writing for a Black actor, but still have never experienced the things that the story calls for. No one has ever been an Asgardian god helping defeat monsters, but someone has to write Thor’s lines. Well, I mean, it _was_ changing. > [@LA Times](#): > > Screenwriter diversity also stagnated. Among the top theatrical releases, the share of films with a writer of color decreased to 12.4% last year, down from 13.9% in 2019. > > … > > But as studios and streamers look to trim expenses to make their businesses more profitable, diverse programming and content have been hit through cancellations and layoffs. That trend has sparked concerns that some of the gains made by people of color will be lost. > > Studios are “going to take the safe route and go with quote, unquote ‘surefire’ hits, and that’s just code for less diversity, more nostalgia, more white-led films and content,” said Ana-Christina Ramón, director of the Entertainment and Media Research Initiative at UCLA and one of the report’s authors. > **[Are Hollywood movies backsliding on diversity? What the latest numbers say](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-03-30/are-hollywood-movies-backsliding-on-diversity-what-the-latest-numbers-say-ucla-diversity-report)** > > Representation by people of color as movie leads and film writers has slid back to 2019 levels, according to UCLA's Hollywood Diversity Report. We aren’t just talking about “who writes the lines for the Black man in the movie.” That isn’t what diversity brings to the table. For one thing: we are talking about _opportunities_ for marginalised people to get their voices and their stories heard. And smaller and shorter writers rooms along with smaller budgets means that there will be less opportunities, and they will get snapped up by the independently wealthy (who more often than not will be white men) effectively shutting the door for marginalised people to ever getting on a writers room. And secondly, we aren’t talking about “a Black man writing for a Black actor.” We are talking about marginalised folks being able to tell their stories. A white writer might write a story about slavery that centres the _trauma_. A Black writer might approach that same topic in a very different way, that doesn’t focus on the trauma but on the resilience of the human experience. The subtleties and nuances are things that the AI will not understand. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > but I played with ChatGPT for a while, and it comes up with some pretty decent scripts with the right prompt. Did you come up with some “pretty decent scripts” though? Or did it come up with “some pretty decent dialogue?” Because a single page from a script, written in 12-point-courier, is approximately one minute of screen time. For a twenty-two minute episode of Friends, I would expect that your script would be anywhere from 20-25 pages long. I’ll concede that an AI script-writer would be able to write individual lines of dialogue that might even be funny. But thats an entirely different thing to writing a complete shootable script. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > And there’s nothing wrong with that. Sitcoms aren’t supposed to be deep, they are supposed to be easy, simple entertainment, with light humor, petty conflicts, low stakes and easy resolutions. They are an escape from the stress of life, where people don’t want to have to think hard to understand the plot or to get the joke. This isn’t about whether or not “sitcoms are deep.” > [@tv insider](#): > > The journey from the initial idea of a storyline to tape night typically spans about a month and is a very collaborative process. “The traditional path of [writing] an episode [for most television shows] is that it’s outlined by the entire room and then one ­writer goes off to generate a script that’s usually rewritten completely,” Prady says. “But this show is different in [that each episode] is written as a group from Page 1.” > > All the writers are encouraged to pitch ideas; if something sticks, the group runs with it. “A lot of the jumping-off points come from us telling stories about our lives,” says co-executive pro­ducer Steve Holland. “But they also come from reading about what’s going on in science or pop culture.” > > In some instances, ideas for storylines come from unexpected places. This past season’s “The Troll Manifestation,” in which it was revealed that Amy (Mayim Bialik) secretly writes _Little House on the Prairie-_ themed fan fiction, was based on co-executive producer Eric Kaplan’s encounter with an enthusiastic woman who had written more than 3,000 stories about Sheldon (Jim Parsons). > **[Humor (and Hard Work) Inside 'The Big Bang Theory's Writer's Room](https://www.tvinsider.com/31784/humor-and-hard-work-inside-the-big-bang-theorys-writers-room/)** > > Creating the scripts for the Big Bang gang can be fun and games—literally. This is how the writers room for a sitcom _actually_ works. Its collaborative. They bounce ideas off each other. They get ideas from real life. That “easy, simple entertainment, with light humor, petty conflicts, low stakes and easy resolutions” didn’t come out of thin air. Those stories exist because in real life one day one of the writers experienced a “petty conflict” and bought that experience to the writers room. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > So, while today’s AI may not be able to write the next The Wire or Life of Pi, it can very well churn out another season of Friend’s or the next MCU movie, and people will watch with the same mental disengagement they currently do. Nope. Today’s AI will very much not be churning out another season of Friend’s or another MCU movie. Well they might, if the studios get their way. But they wouldn’t be any good. They would be utter trash. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > And a writer isn’t free to do whatever they want. They are employees, and write what they are told to write. Well no, that really isn’t the way it works in a lot of cases. Often a writer or a team of writers will bring a pitch to the studio, the studio accepts the pitch, it goes into production, a writers room gets convened, then the writers “write what they want.” It goes to the studio, then the studio will send back “notes”. And even in situations where this isn’t the case, it isn’t a matter of the writers sticking rigidly to the plot outlines. They are (often) employees, but they are also _writers_. They aren’t robots. They aren’t "creating content.’ They are writing stories. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > It’s certainly a position they’d love to win, but it’s completely unreasonable as a demand. It is telling the studios that they don’t have the rights to use their own intellectual property. They paid writers to write, and should now own what they paid for. The reason why the studios own the rights to the stories is because that is _what was negotiated with the Guild_. If the studios want to use the work created by the writers outside the scope of the current agreements, that’s something that has to be agreed to by the Guild and its membership. It isn’t a one-way street. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > This would be like factory workers demanding that you couldn’t watch how they did their jobs to automate them. The factory workers would have loved that, it would have been job security, but it’s an absurd demand. Well, no this is the writers guild negotiating on behalf of its membership in an attempt to protect the film and televsion industry from self-destructing. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > And a person doesn’t have a hope in hell of writing a script unless they have training and have read an insane number of scripts. No this isn’t correct. You don’t need that much training at all to be able to write a script. When I went through film school a few years ago there were 20 people in my class and all of us were capable of writing fairly decent scripts for a five minute movie after a relatively basic level of instruction. And a writer doesn’t need to have read an _insane_ number of scripts in order to be a screenwriter. A handful might be enough to get started. What really sets a writer apart are the ability to tell stories along with interesting life experiences and a vivid imagination. An AI writer doesn’t have the ability to do these things. It can’t just “tell a story.” It hasn’t had life experiences. It doesn’t have an imagination. So to make up for those things it needs data. An _insane_ amount of data. The two things are not comparable. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > And it’s one that the WGA is not going to win. The production companies are not going to just give up on all their intellectual property that they paid for. The WGA is not demanding the studios “just give up on all their intellectual property that they paid for.” That isn’t on the list of things the WGA is asking for. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > It’s like if the UAW demanded that the car manufactures not automate the production lines. It isn’t like this at all. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > Is it possible for a writer to write a script without ever having read someone else’s script? Of course not. But lets not pretend that a writer AI is just “reading someone else’s script.” It isn’t an actual Artificial Intelligence. Its auto-complete on steroids. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > They are compensated, they are paid for their work. They aren’t being _fairly_ compensated for that work. Not at the moment. Its one of the reasons they have gone on strike. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > If someone pulls out a Friend’s script that the studio paid the writers for, but was never filmed, should they be allowed to produce it? That depends entirely on what the Minimum Basic Agreement says. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t really want to do a deep dive into what the MBA says. But the answer to your question lies there. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > The AMPTP would be bonkers to agree to that. But this isn’t something that is on the table during this particular negotiaion. So it really isn’t relevant. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > You’ve given your opinion, but it doesn’t actually fit the facts. Incorrect. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > An AI would be _more_ consistent than human writers, who forget about plot elements or character traits. Writers that have been experimenting with AI have found that after a couple of pages of dialog it starts to consistently “lose the plot.” Its a language model. Not a database. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > An AI would be _more_ consistent than human writers, who forget about plot elements or character traits. Many shows are made with several teams of writers writing different episodes, creating massive continuity issues between them. There is no reason to think that an AI would have any of those issues. > [@Chat](#): > > Write a short script with a conversation between two characters named Bunk and McNulty. They are both cops. They can only use the word fuck. > > ChatGPT > > Bunk and McNulty are standing outside a crime scene, smoking cigarettes. > > Bunk: Fuckin’ shit, McNulty. This is some fucked up shit we got ourselves into. > > McNulty: Fuck yeah, Bunk. This is a real clusterfuck. What the fuck happened here? > > Bunk: Looks like a drug deal gone wrong. There’s bodies all over the place. > > McNulty: Fuck me, man. This is a real shitshow. We gotta get to the bottom of this. > > Bunk: Yeah, but how the fuck are we gonna do that? We don’t have shit for evidence. > > McNulty: Fuck if I know, Bunk. But we gotta start somewhere. Let’s go talk to some witnesses. > > Bunk: Fuckin’ A, McNulty. Let’s get to work. > > No, this isn’t what I’m looking for. They can only use the word fuck. Nothing else. you can add narrative description if you like to add context: but the only word they can use is the word fuck. The context here is both detectives are investigating a crime scene. > > ChatGPT > > Bunk and McNulty stand outside the crime scene, looking around at the mess before them. > > Bunk: “Fuck.” > > McNulty: “Fuck.” > > Bunk: “Fuck, this is some fucked up shit.” > > McNulty: “Fuckin’ A, it is.” > > Bunk: “Fuck, there’s blood everywhere.” > > McNulty: “Fuckin’ right there is.” > > Bunk: “Fuck, how did this even happen?” > > McNulty: “Fuck if I know, Bunk. We gotta find out who the fuck did this.” > > Bunk: “Yeah, we gotta find some fucking clues or some shit.” > > McNulty: “Fuckin’ right we do. Let’s get to work.” > > The two detectives start searching for clues, muttering “fuck” under their breath as they go. It’s just another day on the job for these two seasoned cops, and they’re not going to let a little bit of fuckery get in their way. > > No this isn’t correct. Every word in the scene has to be the word fuck. They cannot say any other word except fuck. > > ChatGPT > > My apologies, I misunderstood your request earlier. Here’s a short script with a conversation between Bunk and McNulty where every word is “fuck”. > > Bunk and McNulty stand outside a crime scene, looking around at the mess before them. > > Bunk: “Fuck.” > > McNulty: “Fuck.” > > Bunk: “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” > > McNulty: “Fuckin’ right, fuck.” > > Bunk: “Fuck this shit, man.” > > McNulty: “Fuckin’ A, fuck.” > > Bunk: “Fuck, we gotta find out who the fuck did this.” > > McNulty: “Fuck yeah, we do. Let’s start fuckin’ investigating.” > > Bunk: “Fuckin’ right, let’s do it.” > > The two detectives start searching for clues, muttering “fuck” under their breath as they go. It’s just another day on the job for these two seasoned cops, and they’re not going to let a little bit of fuckery get in their way. > > You almost got it. But you used words other than fuck. The ONLY word they can use is the word fuck. > > ChatGPT > > My apologies for the mistake earlier. Here is a revised script with only the word “fuck”: > > Bunk and McNulty stand outside a crime scene, looking around at the mess before them. > > Bunk: “Fuck.” > > McNulty: “Fuck.” > > Bunk: “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” > > McNulty: “Fuckin’ right, fuck.” > > Bunk: “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” > > McNulty: “Fuckin’ A, fuck. We gotta fuckin’ find out who the fuck did this.” > > Bunk: “Fuckin’ right, fuck. Let’s start fuckin’ investigating.” > > McNulty: “Fuck yeah, let’s do it. We gotta fuckin’ solve this fuckin’ crime.” > > The two detectives start searching for clues, muttering “fuck” under their breath as they go. It’s just another day on the job for these two seasoned cops, and they’re not going to let a little bit of fuckery get in their way. And here is an example of that. It couldn’t go more than six lines before it “forgot” that it was only allowed to use the word “fuck.” This isn’t something that will reliably “remember” that Betty was wearing a blue hat at the start of the scene, let alone Johnny and Nina got married in episode 2 Season 3 but got divorced two seasons later. Its why having a showrunner is important, its why having the writer on set makes a significant difference. They _break_ the story. They know it inside out. There typically aren’t “several teams of writers” working on a single show. You’ve got a writers room that break the story together then (typically, but not always) get tasked with writing their own episodes. But even those individual episodes are still largely collaborative efforts. I’ve cited examples above on how this actually plays out on set. Go back and reread my posts. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > The only way that human writers get completely removed from the process is if they make unreasonable demands and refuse to budge, leaving the studios no choice but to rely entirely on AI. I used the word “effectively” here for a reason. For starters I was talking about “innovation.” What innovation does writer AI bring to the table? > [@k9bfriender](#): > > And humans write based on what _they’ve_ read. Humans write based on what they’ve _experienced_. That includes what they’ve read. But it also includes what they’ve seen. What they’ve heard. Their life, their loves, their heartache, births, deaths, marriages. Feelings. Smells. Tangibles. Intangibles. Their relationship with god, with religion, with spirituality. This isn’t the industry “feeding itself”. This is the complete opposite of that. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > That’s your opinion, but I see no reason as to why that would be true at all. Its because what makes our stories interesting is what the storyteller brings to the table. The AI scriptwriter doesn’t bring anything to the table. And the old saying holds true here: “garbage in, garbage out.” > [@k9bfriender](#): > > Well, I don’t see any reason why humans would have been removed from the process in the first place, but sure, humans adding in what it is that they want to see would be a continuing source of innovation for AI writing systems. The models that are currently being suggested effectively change the role of the _writer_ to that of an _editor_. Humans will still be a part of the process, but they will be there to facilitate the process which, at the creative level will be set at the producer level and not, where it is now, by the showrunner and the writers room. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > No, that’s not a settled fact, not by a long shot. Then explain (outside of speed) where the innovation is here. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > Same can be said for automating the car manufacturing process. Except this isn’t a conversation about the car manufacturing process. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > If the studios are stupid enough to give into these demands, they _will_ go under once studios that don’t agree to these demands hire “scabs” to write prompts and edit the output. Nope. The WGA aren’t making unreasonable demands. And the technology is nowhere near good enough now for the studios to be able to rely on people “writing prompts and editing the output” to put together an episode of televison, let alone a season. Not without significant rewrites (not just editing.). > [@k9bfriender](#): > > I’m as worried about people being out of a job as anyone else. But the time to worry about that was with the invention of the loom and textile mills that put seamstresses and weavers out of business. It’s a little late in the game to start trying to stop progress now. This isn’t progress. Its “progress.” The only thing that AI scriptwriters can do better than a human is be faster. But it won’t be good. Not on the scale that would be needed here. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > That’s rarely been the case. That’s how the system _works_. In the first instance the limits are largely set by the creator. What happens here is that the studios and WGA have negotiated an agreement where intellectual property rights are transfered according to the terms of the MBA. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > If you are a writer for a studio, the studio owns the intellectual property of what you create while being paid by them. Because of the MBA. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > It is the writers that are trying to take that control from the studios in this negotiation. The writers haven’t actually agreed to transfer those rights to the studio in the first place. AI wasn’t even a thing at the last negotiation. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > Can you explain exactly how you learn, exactly how you experience things? > **[How People Learn: Common Beliefs Vs. Research](https://mcgraw.princeton.edu/undergraduates/resources/resource-library/how-people-learn)** > > Most people believe that repeated exposure to material, such as “going over” notes, “re-reading” are the main and most important ways to learn and “absorb” information. In fact, research shows that memorizing in this way has significant shortcomings.... > **[How human evolution has made us great at learning by doing](https://noamso.medium.com/how-human-evolution-has-made-us-great-at-learning-by-doing-dc13b83cd6aa)** > > The Learning Pyramid shows average learner retention rates for different methods of learning. > **[How Humans Experience The World](https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2015/03/28/why-you-do-what-you-dont-want-to-do/?sh=4f304eaa1263)** > > Are you ready to change or upgrade an ineffective behavior pattern? Discover what makes us who we are and what drives our behavior. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > So, you are saying that there is no place for AI assistance in writing? Nope. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > but this is the first time I’ve heard it claimed that it is _unethical_ to do so. The unethical part is using peoples intellectual property without permsission or compensation and using that to generate billions of dollars for a handful of corporations. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > And you are assuming that what you’ve seen with people playing with ChatGPT3.5 is the limit of what AI is capable of. Nope. Not at all. This isn’t about just writing lines of dialog. Its about what writers for for film and televsion _actually_ do. And there are things that writers for television do that a scriptwriting AI will _never_ be able to do. That includes things like showrunning, which is literally running the entire production, managing _hundreds_ of staff. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/147 "2023-05-12T00:48:41Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > The AI isn’t doing any of this. > > Let’s humanize it for a moment. I subscribe to Netflix and choose to carefully watch and analyze Stranger Things. I watch it over and over again, and create a detailed statistical analysis of the words spoken by the actors, the set directions I’m able to decipher, the costuming and special effects. I turn this analysis into a 200 page book. Who owns the analysis? > > Netflix didn’t do the analysis. The writers didn’t do the analysis. Not a single phrase in the 200 page book matches a phrase from any of the show scripts, because it isn’t a script, it’s an analysis. I spent months watching the show, taking notes and doing mathematics to generate my analysis, it belongs to me. It is a product of my work, my effort, my long nights and unique personal take on the project. > > When an AI does the same thing, albeit quicker “Albeit quicker” deserves to be a lot more than an aside. Our current system is set up _with the understanding that_ creating a derivative work is itself a significant act of labor. That labor is the cost you pay in order to obtain the derivative product. When you bypass that labor, our system starts to fall apart. Whether it’s plagiarism, copyright infringement, or AI, you’re using my work to create something from which you’ll profit, _without putting in the labor that makes such behavior rarer_. AIs are new, and they require us to examine our old systems and safeguards and to come up with new structures. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/148 "2023-05-12T01:06:08Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > _without putting in the labor_. Do you think that the people who created ChatGPT didn’t put any labor into it? It’s their labor that makes the thing work. It’s their labor that distinguishes ChatGPT from autocomplete. Their labor means I can ask a computer to tell me a story, and it tells me a story, a unique story that nobody has ever told before. That labor deserves to be valued, it’s not labor bypassed, it’s a new kind of labor we haven’t had before. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/149 "2023-05-12T01:09:23Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > The AI isn’t doing any of this. …I wasn’t talking about AI. I was refuting this: > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > All you legally have control over is whether other humans can copy your work and resell it for profit. > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > but it isn’t pasting a picture to a book, or copying someone else’s text to my pathetic blog. I never claimed that is was. I was talking about legal ownership of intellectual property, and how profit isn’t the primary factor here when we talk about “what we have legal control over.” > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Even if this is true, and I make no claim that you’re wrong… cash is king. Hit shows, well written shows, earn money. Well here’s one of the problems. The writers of the show don’t actually know if the shows they are writing earn any money. And the metrics the studios release to show “if a show is a hit” or not are arbitrary and often change. > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > If HBO/whatever their name will be next year/ tries to go the all AI route to their writing rooms, their shows will stink, and companies like Netflix, Prime, Hulu will eat them for lunch. To get to this point, you would first have to have directors happy to cross the picket line to direct the AI generated script, you would have to have actors willing to cross the picket line, members of the IATSE would have to be willing to cross the picket line, and none of that is going to happen anytime soon. Certainly not by next year. And even if they did, and somehow these AI written shows somehow get made and broadcast, we still wouldn’t know if those shows “did well or not.” The studios won’t release the metrics that matter, but _will_ release the metrics that “show they despite the bad reviews, the show did just great”. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/150 "2023-05-12T01:39:30Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Do you think that the people who created ChatGPT didn’t put any labor into it? No. Before you ask, nor do I think that the people who created pencils didn’t put any labor into them. But that still doesn’t mean you can buy a pencil and thereby avoid a charge of plagiarism. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/151 "2023-05-12T02:19:47Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Whether it’s plagiarism, copyright infringement, or AI, you’re using my work to create something from which you’ll profit, _without putting in the labor that makes such behavior rarer_. Yep, going post-scarcity is a bitch for people used to living off scarcity. ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/152 "2023-05-12T02:20:32Z")
I’m guessing my aspiring screenwriter son is glad he has a different kind of writing gig right now. It would have been tough being in the business right out of college under the circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/153 "2023-05-12T02:27:59Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > The writers of the show don’t actually know if the shows they are writing earn any money. The morons who don’t understand the creative process will know. They’re bean counters, it’s the only thing they DO know. When some VP says “let’s fire all the writers” his division had better start making money. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > But that still doesn’t mean you can buy a pencil and thereby avoid a charge of plagiarism. When that pencil doesn’t write a single phrase you’ve written, I’ll find it pretty easy to avoid a charge of plagiarism. AI is not copying your work, it is analyzing your work, which you don’t have the right to control. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/154 "2023-05-12T02:40:31Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > The morons who don’t understand the creative process will know. …the morons that don’t understand the creative process won’t care. They will fiddle the metrics, they will fiddle the books, they will cancel unaired shows as tax write-offs, they will pull all of the shenanigans we’ve seen them do over the last couple of years. They will extract every last cent from the failing businesses until they collapse. > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > When some VP says “let’s fire all the writers” his division had better start making money. That isn’t how it works. Uber isn’t profitable. Spotify isn’t profitable. Lyft doesn’t make money. “Making money” isn’t the point. Its vulture capitalism. Its the [“dotcom crash.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble) Play funny games, chase shiny objects, do everything at pace _except_ set up a sustainable business model and then when it falls over move onto the next big thing. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/155 "2023-05-12T02:41:18Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > AI is not copying your work, it is analyzing your work, which you don’t have the right to control. Here’s an interesting Forbes article on Common Crawl from 2017. > **[Common Crawl And Unlocking Web Archives For Research](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/09/28/common-crawl-and-unlocking-web-archives-for-research/?sh=4ad234cf3b83)** > > The world’s web archives contain tens of petabytes of data charting the evolution of our digital world, yet little of this historical record is available for academic research. What might archives learn from Common Crawl’s model of open data as a... ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/156 "2023-05-12T03:37:57Z")
…here’s a ten-minute video featuring David Simon that makes effectively the same case that I’ve made in this thread. Except Simon makes the case more eloquently as one would expect coming from a professional writer 🙂 > ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/157 "2023-05-12T04:15:26Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Our current system is set up _with the understanding that_ creating a derivative work is itself a significant act of labor. No it isn’t. No one judges scripts by how much time and effort it took to write them. There is zero value to the labor that went into a script. So e writers take years to write a script, and others can knock out great ones in a month or two. No one cares. What matters is that good scripts are _scarce_. There is more demand for great scripts than there are writers to produce them. AI threatens to change that, and that’s what is scaring the WGA. Understandably so. Still, how is that different than skilled weavers losing their creers to the automated loom? Or window knockers losing their jobs to the cheap alarm clock? What if AI turns out to produce a better product than average human writers? Should the audience have to suffer sub-standard writing to protect jobs? Anyway, the writers that are really under immediate threat are the armies of tech writers, business writers, workaday newspeople who do things like rewrite Reuters reports into stories, people who write everything from business plans to corporate reports, technical reports, prospectuses (prospectii?) etc. A lot of those people will soon be toast unless they are using their own specialized knowledge or experience in the job. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/158 "2023-05-12T05:03:04Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > AI is not copying your work, it is analyzing your work, which you don’t have the right to control. This isn’t quite true. It is analyzing a _copy_ of your work, copied from the Internet or other databases into a large dataset which was then used to train the generative model. The copyright argument is that permission was not granted by the copyright owner for that copy to be made. And then there’s the issue of what it does with that analysis. What it is actually does is look for patterns to try and create a probabilistic model that will allow it to recreate that data There is the argument that said model is essentially a lossy copy of the original data, similar to how a JPEG contains not the original pixels of an image, but instructions to recreate those pixels using an algorithm. And no one would argue that a JPEG copy is not a copy. You could argue that our brains also store a lossy copy of anything we observe. But then you have the pesky issue that humans have the rights of personhood, while software does not. If I completely memorize something word for word, that is not copyright infringement. But if software reproduces something word for word, then that is a (possibly illegal) copy. This is something I think those who directly analogize from humans to “AI” miss. They tend to assume that the rules have to be the same for both. Heck, the biggest difference is that the [US Copyright office has said that AI-generated content is not eligible for copyright](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05321/copyright-registration-guidance-works-containing-material-generated-by-artificial-intelligence). There’s a huge downside to replacing your writers whose content you can own with content you cannot. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/159 "2023-05-12T05:45:46Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Still, how is that different than skilled weavers losing their creers to the automated loom? Or window knockers losing their jobs to the cheap alarm clock? One big difference is that the automated loom does not attempt to replace the creativity of the skilled weavers. There is no risk that, by replacing the weavers, you wind up discouraging creative thinking by making it something you can’t make a living from. > [@](#): > > What if AI turns out to produce a better product than average human writers? Should the audience have to suffer sub-standard writing to protect jobs? I don’t think this will occur with LLMs like ChatGPT. But, conceptually, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t. The right thing to do would involve weighing the pros and cons. It would entirely be possible that this “suffering” you describe is far far less than the suffering that these people would have for losing their jobs, or than the harm to society of removing the rewards for their creativity. Of course, that’s the right thing to do, not what would most likely happen. If the rich can make more money by using AI, they will. It won’t even matter if the quality of the content is better. Worse products are often more profitable. Fortunately, as I mentioned above, the product of AIs is currently not eligible for copyright. While that wouldn’t decrease the quality of the writing, it would greatly reduce the value of the product. Heck, even without that, if the product can be created by everyone, then people have less reason to pay the big companies for it. [https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05321/copyright-registration-guidance-works-containing-material-generated-by-artificial-intelligence](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05321/copyright-registration-guidance-works-containing-material-generated-by-artificial-intelligence) ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2023, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448/160 "2023-05-12T10:32:46Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > “Making money” isn’t the point. Making money is always the point. If a VP takes a division of Disney that is making money hand over fist, and turns it into a division that has to cook the books, that VP is going to be handed his golden parachute and told to leave. Corporations aren’t evil, they’re amoral. They will pay people who make them money all day long, as long as they keep the dollars rolling in, and send people to the bread line by the thousand if THAT brings the money in. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-guild-of-america-goes-on-strike-5-2-23-tentative-deal-9-25-23-now-accepted-10-9-23/983448.md?page=9)