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WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

latimes.com

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Re: WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

#41

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

xnx wrote: post #3
slg wrote: post #2

Specifically for this community, it will be interesting to see what the agreements were regarding AI. That was a major issue in negotiations for both sides. I think the decisions here could go a long way in setting a precedent for how that technology will continue to be developed and how it will be used in the future. For example, if the writers get what they wanted, it means Hollywood has little motivation to put it…

I haven't followed this close enough to know, but I assume that writers will use AI heavily. It's a great tool for brainstorming and creating drafts.

You might want to talk to writers first before making this assumption. Of the writers I know, there are two varieties:

1) AI is used essentially to generate grift/chaff, like marketing material for your actual work, or self publish dumb get rich quick books

2) AI is utterly repulsive to the creative process as it cuts out the actual passion-building part, which is brainstorming and drafting— editing is usually the shittiest part of the job actually

Re: WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

#42

Post by CSMastermind »

drumhead wrote: post #20

The issue that held up the deal was the 20 person writers room minimum requirement. It's sounded like a negotiating position than a realistic demand, but other than that all the other demands they held were met. As for AI, it's not particularly useful yet so the studios were prepared to concede on that issue, but this deal expires in three years time and by then they may not be so willing to compromise on it.

Is there anywhere I can look to see the proposed deal?

Re: WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

#43

Post by Karellen »

Timon3 wrote: post #36
Karellen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An LLM's output is not random, it's based on previously look-at data Just because the set of tokens that are considered to be output next have weighted probabilities, does not mean the one selected isn't "random".

How is the selected token "random" if it's chosen based on weighted probabilities, especially if you use a temperature of 0?

Because even with weighted probabilities, they're still probabilities. If you have "the cat sat on the", and the next possible tokens are "mat" with a probability of 90%, "floor" with a probability of 9%, and "dog" at 1%, how are you going to pick "mat" 90% of the time without consulting a (P)RNG?

Re: WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

#44

Post by shrubhub »

krapp wrote: post #33
willcipriano wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way AI could write another remake of a movie from the 80's.

The list of things AI could never do, that it has already done, is getting rather long for a statement like that to read as anything but naive. Eventually, given enough investment, yes it could.

Woosh!

Re: WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

#45

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

chii wrote: post #9
slg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this is a comment written out of naivety of the profit focused nature of studios or ignorance of the writing process. Replacing writers and paying writers less is effectively the same thing. That "full credit" that you mention isn't just about what those writers got paid, it tells you what work they did. For example, a writer will often write a treatment of a movie which is effectively a short summary…

If the AI does a better job writing said treatments (aka, does the same or more for less cost), why shouldn't it take away the job?

> why shouldn't it take away the job?

Because in context of the current generation of "AI" , i.e the ChatGPT cohort, all that it's doing is "given a very large number of examples of this text, generate one more that fits the prompt". It's nothing without the training data. And the training data is the output of people's jobs.

If you called it "distributed plagiarism" would that make the problem with the idea that AI replaces the need for the writers more apparent? It can not, but it might replace the need to _pay them_ for the contribution, as it's further from the end product.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/chatgpt-stocastic-parrot/

https://apnews.com/article/openai-lawsuit-authors-grisham-ge...

The same applies to the DALL-E cohort of image generators:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/open-letter-urges-publishe...

Re: WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

#46

Post by saalweachter »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #39
drumhead wrote: post #20

The issue that held up the deal was the 20 person writers room minimum requirement. It's sounded like a negotiating position than a realistic demand, but other than that all the other demands they held were met. As for AI, it's not particularly useful yet so the studios were prepared to concede on that issue, but this deal expires in three years time and by then they may not be so willing to compromise on it.

The idea of trying to create anything of value with a room of 20 trying to stick their oars in baffles me. Not to mention being forced to add dead weight to a team to get the number up if you already have a core talented team delivering.

While every show may not need 20 writers on staff, it's not an unusual number: https://www.vulture.com/article/late-night-writers-guide.htm...

In practice they'll be breaking into smaller working groups to develop individual episodes or segments of a show, so it won't actually be 20 people sitting around a table constantly.

Re: WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

#47

Post by mips_r4300i »

corobo wrote: post #28
xnx wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't followed this close enough to know, but I assume that writers will use AI heavily. It's a great tool for brainstorming and creating drafts.

Does anyone have any input on a thought I've been kicking around? The Artist's Oath: AO0: I have used no AI AO1: I have used AI in a research or teacher role AO2: AI has been used for structural components, but not the art itself AO3: AI has directly assisted in the creation process AO4: AI generated this entirely from a prompt specifically engineered by a human AO5: AI generated this entirely from a basic prompt Sli…

One problem I see is that if compensation for the product depends on the level of AI users, then there will be an incentive to lie, making the self-rating pointless.

Also, it's doubtful the rating would carry through to the final product since it would be likely used for intermediate products used in the final movie/art creation, which is a different market than the end user viewer.

Re: WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

#48

Post by chii »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #45
chii wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the AI does a better job writing said treatments (aka, does the same or more for less cost), why shouldn't it take away the job?

> why shouldn't it take away the job? Because in context of the current generation of "AI" , i.e the ChatGPT cohort, all that it's doing is "given a very large number of examples of this text, generate one more that fits the prompt". It's nothing without the training data. And the training data is the output of people's jobs. If you called it "distributed plagiarism" would that make the problem with the idea that AI…

> It's nothing without the training data. And the training data is the output of people's jobs.

so do you not claim that a student learning off textbooks or teachers are also doing "distributed plagiarism"?

> but it might replace the need to _pay them_ for the contribution

assuming the training data is paid for via a one time fee, or was using material that was publicly available to be learnt off, the contribution is already paid for.

There's no possibility of a royalty payment with AI generated content.

Re: WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

#49

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

chii wrote: post #48
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why shouldn't it take away the job? Because in context of the current generation of "AI" , i.e the ChatGPT cohort, all that it's doing is "given a very large number of examples of this text, generate one more that fits the prompt". It's nothing without the training data. And the training data is the output of people's jobs. If you called it "distributed plagiarism" would that make the problem with the idea that AI…

> It's nothing without the training data. And the training data is the output of people's jobs. so do you not claim that a student learning off textbooks or teachers are also doing "distributed plagiarism"? > but it might replace the need to _pay them_ for the contribution assuming the training data is paid for via a one time fee, or was using material that was publicly available to be learnt off, the contribution is…

> so do you not claim that a student learning off textbook

No, these are not the same. A student has mental faculties that ChatGPT does not. The understanding-free predictive text processing of ChatGPT is the whole deal of that software. A student does not require 10 thousand textbooks as examples in order to understand a concept. Students do exhibit originality and reasoning that is not in the training data. You should not equate them.

> assuming the training data is paid for via a one time fee

Why would you assume that, when the links provided make it clear that this did not happen?

Re: WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike

#50

Post by Timon3 »

Karellen wrote: post #43
Timon3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the selected token "random" if it's chosen based on weighted probabilities, especially if you use a temperature of 0?

Because even with weighted probabilities, they're still probabilities . If you have "the cat sat on the", and the next possible tokens are "mat" with a probability of 90%, "floor" with a probability of 9%, and "dog" at 1%, how are you going to pick "mat" 90% of the time without consulting a (P)RNG?

They are only probabilities if you treat them as such. If you always just pick the highest probability option (temperature = 0), it's not random in any way - then it's just a confidence value.

You can use randomness, but it's in no way inherent to the process.

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