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

theintercept.com

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

#121

Post by OO000oo »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #10
OO000oo wrote: post #6

I don't see what the problem is. This is perfectly legal. Private companies can do whatever they want with their own money.

Legal and moral are not the same. The law is largely beholden to massive corporations that are entrenched enough to abuse people in the pursuit of profit. One of the only levers we have to fight back is to call out these abuses and loudly call attention to them.

> One of the only levers we have to fight back is to call out these abuses and loudly call attention to them.

This is a ridiculous non-solution that has never really worked in practice. At best, it might revise the legal/PR strategies of the corporations and enables even more dishonesty on the part of various nonprofits who ostensibly "support" a related cause. More often, it's simply a big fat waste of effort.

Historically, organizing labor to withhold labor power to win political power for working people is in fact the only strategy that has actually worked. This is not what the actor/writer guilds are doing, though. They are merely bargaining for economistic industry-specific measures, not the political interests of working people as a whole.

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

#122

Post by creer »

Imnimo wrote: post #5

>So $900k/yr per soldier in their godless AI army when that amount of earnings could qualify thirty-five actors and their families for SAG-AFTRA health insurance is just ghoulish, How many actors could Adam Sandler's $250M Netflix deal pay for?

Don't you think Netflix would enthusiastically pay only $200M for the same thing if only they could?

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

#123

Post by tw04 »

restion wrote: post #112
tw04 wrote: 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 gave lower prices on products for literally everyone

The average price of a home as a percentage of income has not lowered at all. Who cares if you can get a shitty Walmart branded TV that will last for 5 years before you have to throw it away, when you have no house to put it in?

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

#124

Post by OJFord »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #98
OJFord wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who has the budget for particularly recognisable extras anyway? It's not like famous enough to be mass-recognisable actors are getting paid to be extras anyway, and why would you bother to copy someone unknown's likeness when you can just have your AI generate something new anyway? And I'm not convinced you'd want recognisable extras, it'd be distracting wouldn't it? And detract from who your actual stars are whe…

"recognizability" has nothing to do with why actors are striking. If I'm a background actor, of course I want to get paid to be in multiple movies instead of just getting paid once to serve as AI training data. Plus, many famous actors started out in bit background parts, and there is a valid fear this is "pulling up the ladder". Brad Pitt's first movie role was as an uncredited waiter in the 1987 film No Man's Land,…

But my point is why is that the alternative? Why am I training my AI on anonymous jobbing actors whom I have to pay per use, instead of any old anonymous generative face? There are already film trailer-esque videos of 'people' generated by Midjourney or similar, and then some other image->video processor, on YouTube.

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

#125

Post by OO000oo »

CPLX wrote: post #13
OO000oo wrote: post #6

I don't see what the problem is. This is perfectly legal. Private companies can do whatever they want with their own money.

Striking is also legal. Now what?

Wrong. For one, solidarity strikes are extremely illegal in the US, which neuters the ability of working people to affect their own political circumstances. Also, the US congress is always prepared to wage violence to end a strike. However, in the case of an actor strike rather than a railroad strike, they should be expected to support the studios' ability to wait out the strike instead.

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

#126

Post by itsdrewmiller »

Netflix is technically complying with pay transparency laws by listing all of their jobs as going up to extremely high salary ranges. Here's another example: https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/279107631 but you can look at their jobs page to see basically all of them are like this. Odds are they are looking for a ~300k engineer here.

Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34268691

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

#127

Post by bamfly »

singleshot_ wrote: post #115
andsoitis wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 one where my life as a child was awesome, but now I live in a nightmare hellscape, I guess. N = 1, as they say.

My (Boomer) parents made a bunch of serious and expensive mistakes, and my dad didn't properly start a career until he was almost 30. He had a high school diploma. He was literally raised in a barn (the girls got to sleep in the very-small house). My mom had a junior college degree but never worked for pay again after they got married.

He was upper-middle-management at a huge company when he was forced into retirement by the "professional" managers who had come in and filled everyone's work-days with meetings and had no fucking clue how any of the actual work got done. Between pension and savings, they were millionaires by then, back when that still kinda halfway meant something, so it was fine. I grew up with everydamnthing I could want, really.

Follow the same life course—put in the same amount of effort, make the same sorts of mistakes—today and you'll work until you can't anymore, and be destitute when you do. And probably not have a family. Assuming you don't succumb to depression and OD on opioids in your 40s, or end up in prison.

I doubt my kids will own a home. Like, ever. And they're pretty damn bright. Unless they go full off-the-grid in the middle of nowhere or something.

The future looks pretty fucking feudal.

It's definitely worse now than it was decades back.

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

#128

Post by ahahahahah »

tw04 wrote: post #123
restion wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

automation and outsourcing gave lower prices on products for literally everyone

The average price of a home as a percentage of income has not lowered at all. Who cares if you can get a shitty Walmart branded TV that will last for 5 years before you have to throw it away, when you have no house to put it in?

Sure, but the size of that home has certainly increased significantly. The quality of that home has also increased. The quality of the neighborhood likely has as well.

Could the explanation possibly be that people generally settle on it being worth spending a certain percentage of their income on a home? If that were the case, no matter if people in general are becoming more or less well off or if homes are getting more or less expensive, the percentage of their income that people spend on them may hover around the same area.

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

#129

Post by OO000oo »

roflyear wrote: post #8
OO000oo wrote: post #6

I don't see what the problem is. This is perfectly legal. Private companies can do whatever they want with their own money.

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?

> Are you trying to push the window to make people feel like it is unacceptable to be critical of a company's actions?

I'm trying to encourage thinking a bit more about the circumstances at hand. Hot air criticism is useless an so is economistic (or, Luddite) bargaining. The issue is at the root of how our society is organized. In short, new technology should benefit all of society equally because all new technology stands on the shoulders of all working people and their ancestors.

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

#130

Post by tennisflyi »

Imnimo wrote: post #5

>So $900k/yr per soldier in their godless AI army when that amount of earnings could qualify thirty-five actors and their families for SAG-AFTRA health insurance is just ghoulish, How many actors could Adam Sandler's $250M Netflix deal pay for?

Lol You think people don’t look at y’all’s TC and ask the same? Or are y’all special?
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