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Unions work

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11–20 of 237 posts

Re: Unions work

#11
post #3

By AI guardrails they mean: AI cannot be used to write or rewrite scripts, and cannot be source material; but writers are free to use it if they wish. Reminds me of how elevators originally had operators, until everyone realized how wasteful and silly it is to have someone whose sole job is to press elevator buttons. As AI improves, we will come to feel the same about writers.

If that comes to fruition they'll just have one writer who is responsible for putting their name on a ton of AI-generated scripts.

But at this very moment, AI generating anything suitable for something other than SEO blogspam isn't possible anyway. It might be right around the corner, or it might be "right around the corner" like self-driving cars were in 2015.

Re: Unions work

#12
I have my doubts about unions in our particular industry sector, but out in the real world there are many, many jobs that you would have to be insane to take up without a union at your back.

Re: Unions work

#13
post #2

I'm conflicted about unions, but it would be truly amazing if they brought us the 4-day work-week the way they got the 8-hour workday and weekends.

Weekends and 8 hour work week is not necessarily a good thing. There could be benefits to switching to 996 work week to compete better with China.

Benefits to whom?

Re: Unions work

#14
post #2

I'm conflicted about unions, but it would be truly amazing if they brought us the 4-day work-week the way they got the 8-hour workday and weekends.

A good chunk of employers will let you work a 4 day workweek in return for a 20% pay cut.

For most people here on HN, you could probably survive on a 20% pay cut - you'd just have to have the kids share a bedroom rather than having one each and a guest room.

Downside: Those on a 4 day workweek really struggle to get promoted to senior positions.

Re: Unions work

#15
post #2

I'm conflicted about unions, but it would be truly amazing if they brought us the 4-day work-week the way they got the 8-hour workday and weekends.

Weekends and 8 hour work week is not necessarily a good thing. There could be benefits to switching to 996 work week to compete better with China.

Not for the workers, no.

Re: Unions work

#16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weekends and 8 hour work week is not necessarily a good thing. There could be benefits to switching to 996 work week to compete better with China.

Benefits to whom?

Benefits to the country tend to also be benefits to the people of the country - or perhaps their children.

Re: Unions work

#18
post #3

By AI guardrails they mean: AI cannot be used to write or rewrite scripts, and cannot be source material; but writers are free to use it if they wish. Reminds me of how elevators originally had operators, until everyone realized how wasteful and silly it is to have someone whose sole job is to press elevator buttons. As AI improves, we will come to feel the same about writers.

The source material ban seems like it is just closing a loophole. I have a vague idea about a time-traveling cowboy and robot, tell ChatGPT to write a script, script is terrible, so tell a writer to fix it up. Now that writer has different rights than if it were an original script, even though it is basically an original script.

Re: Unions work

#19
post #2

I'm conflicted about unions, but it would be truly amazing if they brought us the 4-day work-week the way they got the 8-hour workday and weekends.

Weekends and 8 hour work week is not necessarily a good thing. There could be benefits to switching to 996 work week to compete better with China.

Competing with China is easy when their working population is compressing and getting old rapidly due to structural demographics [1]. The competition is between the extremely wealthy and the people who perform the actual labor that generates the value being vacuumed up by the former. I am no fan of the CCP, but at least they gave Jack Ma (a big supporter of 996 [2]) the boot [3] and overall, are a lot more adversarial with their wealthy system participants.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-shrinking-populati...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/business/jack-ma-996-china/in...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma#Disappearance_from_the...

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