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As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

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Re: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

#71
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money should Adam Sandler make?

Kylian Mbappe was recently offered $776 MILLION in salary for a 1-year deal as the highest paid soccer (football) player [1]. Jaylen Brown will be making $304 MILLION over 5 years for the Boston Celtics as the highest paid NBA player. Wealth inequality from predominantly ads-based (tv-deals) business models is a cancer to our society. [1]: https://frontofficesports.com/saudi-arabia-reportedly-offers...

> Wealth inequality from predominantly ads-based (tv-deals) business models is a cancer to our society.

How do you solve this? People want to pay attention, advertisers want a piece. They have $enough_profit_to_pay_for_ads, so they do.

Re: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

#72
post #47
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that your likeness as an extra is sold for $250, used in future films via AI deep fake, and you never get paid again. That's my understanding of why they're striking.

I don’t think they need your likeness for an extra. They can just create an army of AI extras and use them without paying for anyone’s likeness. That’s my understanding of the strike anyway.

And that has been done before (pretty much any movie with a crowd just duplicates extras or invents people) but these background, not famous actors, who do a lot of work that people don't seem to realize in order to make a movie feel more real, get paid average worker wages, which is fine.

But film companies were requesting jobs that included "we take a comprehensive copy of your likeness as an 'AI' whatever, and pay you for ONE DAY of work, and then instead of hiring you we just use that likeness in perpetuity, for the rest of time, and you don't get a dime for it"

That just doesn't make any sense IMO. It would be equivalent to a song writer training a LLM on just a single artist's songs and refusing to pay any sort of licensing or royalty.

Re: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

#73
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money should Adam Sandler make?

Kylian Mbappe was recently offered $776 MILLION in salary for a 1-year deal as the highest paid soccer (football) player [1]. Jaylen Brown will be making $304 MILLION over 5 years for the Boston Celtics as the highest paid NBA player. Wealth inequality from predominantly ads-based (tv-deals) business models is a cancer to our society. [1]: https://frontofficesports.com/saudi-arabia-reportedly-offers...

Is sports white-washing by a tyrannical oil state the comparison we want to make here? Could lead to some awkward self reflection for Hollywood and the nation as a whole.

Re: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

#74

The movie Simone [2002] follows a fading director creating a virtual actress to star in his films and the attempts he makes to keep her non-presence a secret as she becomes more famous. Life imitates art imitates life... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_(2002_film)

I also immediately thought of this movie when hearing all of this hubub, we live in the weirdest timeline. How do we get back out of this line

> How do we get back out of this line

The LHC recently had a leak and had to shut down, so we should return to some semblance of normality before it restarts next year and things go off the rails again.

Re: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

#75
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Actors protesting AI protections remind me of factory workers protesting against automation setting in. And in hindsight: rightly so. Automation and outsourcing gutted the middle class in the US to the benefit of a handful of folks that didn't need anymore money. What's the end-game of automating every human job away if the spoils of that automation aren't shared widely?

> Automation and outsourcing gutted the middle class in the US What statistics can we look at that shows that the middle class is smaller and less well off than before (“gutted”)?

The statistics that track the middle class in the US? You say that as if you doubt the middle class is shrinking - it's been studied exhaustively and isn't something that's up for debate. It's both shrinking, and their total share of wealth has decreased dramatically and shifted to the top 1%.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-a...

Re: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

#76
Tom Hanks can generate millions so he gets millions, and Netflix thinks AI can generate millions too, so it's not hard to understand why they would pay a lot for that.

I sympathise with the strike, but I think it's misguided to think they can win against AI. If AI ever gets good enough to replace writers or actors, then someone will make a ton of money doing that. Maybe in Hollywood this will be blocked by unions, but someone somewhere will not have these restrictions.

Re: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

#77
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's mainly hitching on to a pop culture moral outrage, vs an actual pressing issue.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you think that because you don't know any professional actors. It's hard work but it used to be possible to make a living as a working actor without necessarily being famous. That looks increasingly difficult. There's a lot of skill required to do the job well and those skills aren't just transferable to other work contexts.

I am replying to:

> Am I the only one who genuinely doesn't "get" the AI component of the actor strike?

and that blaming "AI" for not being able to make a living as a working actor is kind of a red herring.

Re: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

#78
post #19
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand these responses. Are you trying to push the window to make people feel like it is unacceptable to be critical of a company's actions? What if I am a shareholder (I am, through ETFs) of Netflix and I disagree with this? Shouldn't I be allowed to discuss and criticize the action?

The only thing you need to understand about people that make comments like that is that they don't care about anything unless (or until) it affects THEM personally. The second it affects them, now it's real, now it's "OH this shouldn't be legal". Those people lack empathy.

100% agree. So many of the responses here are of the "why can't they just eat cake?" variety. Actors are striking because (a) they want to still have a viable career and (b) studios still need actors, and AI still needs humans for training. Do I think any of these commenters would be OK if the script was flipped and instead the deal was "We will pay you a thousand dollars to train this AI programmer for a week so we can then fire you and have the AI write all the programs instead."

Borderline psychopathy in my opinion.

Re: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also immediately thought of this movie when hearing all of this hubub, we live in the weirdest timeline. How do we get back out of this line

> How do we get back out of this line The LHC recently had a leak and had to shut down, so we should return to some semblance of normality before it restarts next year and things go off the rails again.

I know this is (maybe?!) tongue-in-cheek, but a part of me wonders how true this could be.

Re: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900k AI Job

#80
post #49

Jokes on Netflix, if AI can generate shows why pay for Netflix when I'll eventually have a personal AI (provided by an open source project, because anything novel in this space is leaky) that generates an entertainment bubble for me?

For the same reason that you still pay for games, even when they run on your machine? There’s a lot that Netflix can sell, including proprietary code, creatively unique prompts, etc.

...you guys are paying for games?
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