AI has been a constant whining point of late and I’ve spoken about it at some length, not that people like it very much. Guess what? AI isn’t going to go away. Learn to deal. Of course, lots of people hate that fact, but you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

Last night, I caught a new video by Red Letter Media on it, I’ll link it below if you want to take a look, but I was thinking about it afterwards and I think that the time is coming rapidly where everything that people fear most is going to come to pass.

So let’s talk about it.

 

First, of course, here’s the video in question. It’s really just a launching point for my discussion, but it’s still fun because… well, RLM.

Now I will agree that there are at least some legitimate concerns surrounding modern AI. Yes, at least some of it is trained on copyrighted source material. That doesn’t have to be the case. You can train your LLM on public domain or privately owned material quite easily. I know people who have their own AIs that are trained exclusively on their own property and it works just fine. Therefore, all of those concerns are going to go out the window sooner or later and I don’t really find the whining worthwhile regardless.

Most people are using it as an excuse. What they’re really afraid of is losing work. Too bad, so sad. Learn to compete. Because there are tons of artists out there already using AI to improve their ability to compete. Those people aren’t whining. They’re making money.

Of course, this all comes down to the demand that they somehow deserve to be successful and that’s not how reality works. You have to earn it, you don’t just get handed money. Technology marches on as it always have and there have been industries before that have been driven out of business by technological advancements. In just the last 20-30 years alone, traditional print media, video rental stores, the photographic film industry all went the way of the dodo. Encyclopedia publishers don’t exist anymore. Most travel agencies are gone.

Kodak barely exists anymore because they failed to innovate. After going bankrupt in 2012, they came out the other side as a corporate-focused company instead of a consumer-based one. The same went for Polaroid. Blockbuster and Borders both went under because they couldn’t keep up with the modern tech curve. Pier One, Bed, Bath and Beyond and  Toys R Us either don’t exist or are a mere shadow of their former selves. K-Mart and Sears barely exist at all because they failed to shift to the new online reality. The list goes on and on and on and this isn’t just a modern thing.

Linotype operators and switchboard operators don’t exist anymore. Technology moved them out and they couldn’t adapt. Map makers and carriage makers aren’t a thing anymore. The point is, you have to keep up with technology or technology will bulldoze over you. Welcome to the real world. Try to deal.

Whether anyone likes it or not, the writing is on the wall for a lot of the entertainment industry and AI is going to take a lot of them down. It’s not possible today, but in a couple of years, you’ll be able to make a full feature-length movie without any actors, any directors, any script writers at all. The computer will do it all and you won’t even be able to tell the difference. This is what people are afraid of, but guess what? Too bad. You have to adapt or die and the industry has not adapted quickly enough.

It wasn’t that many decades ago where model makers did a lot of the heavy lifting in special effects. That industry is largely gone too, now that CGI has taken over. There are still small pockets here and there, but the industry had to adapt or die. Those that couldn’t adapt, died.

The day is coming rapidly where movie stars will be a thing of the past. Tom Cruise might be the last one left. People mostly don’t care who the actors are, they care if they are entertained. AI will be able to make synthetic people who do not owe anything to real people and who can act every bit as well as the biggest names in history. These people are going to have to go get other jobs and their multi-million dollar salaries are going away. Too bad, so sad. Some might be able to parlay their skills into something else, and that’s great if they can, but stop crying about it.

Nobody owes these people anything. They have to earn it. The time is coming very quickly where AI is going to be able to completely replace them. A movie might cost a million dollars to make and they can crank them out by the dozens or hundreds every year, With low budgets, they don’t have to have a huge return.

Granted, currently, AI can’t write worth crap. That will change in the next 12-18 months, most likely. There are new models coming out all the time that are looking better and better. Soon, you won’t be able to tell the difference between AI and reality, no matter what’s on screen. Hollywood will cease to exist and it couldn’t happen to a group of more deserving assholes.

I wouldn’t say if they all acted like Tom Cruise, but they don’t. They aren’t grateful. They insult their audience because they are just egos on overdrive. Will a lot of probably nice people get hurt in the transition? Almost certainly and that’s a shame, but I’m sure a lot of really nice carriage-wheel makers got hurt too. Adapt and survive. Nobody owed them a living either.

I’m sure this will piss people off, but too bad. Reality is what it is. It’s not going anywhere and neither is AI. It will continue to be developed and it will continue to be refined. Nobody owes Hollywood a damn thing.

It’s time they grew the hell up and dealt with it because it’s not going to end with them. The whole video game industry is going to be next. Won’t that be fun? Couldn’t have happened to more deserving pricks.