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I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

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Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#71

Post by randycupertino »

rsynnott wrote: post #63
rsynnott wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, presumably you didn't have a debilitating horse addiction.

(It is fascinating to me, though, how these "I'm broke due to [completely bonkers lifestyle expense]" things span almost all income levels. From "decent salary but has four cars for no obviously explicable reason" to crippling horse addictions, for some people there just seems to be no income level at which they will not screw up their finances.)

I read this book about Michael Jackson called "Untouchable" that detailed how he was $500 million in debt at the time of his death in 2009 due to crazy spending habits. He would walk into an antiques warehouse and buy the entire floor, then rent storage space to hold his new purchases because he had no room in his properties. He also had a 130 person personal staff.

His income was $25 million a year but his spending was at $50 million a year.

https://www.reddit.com/r/interesting/comments/1fc6wsc/michae...

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#72

Post by mvdtnz »

mmooss wrote: post #66
Aurornis wrote: post #27

I read the article. It was about 1 person trying to do AI training data set annotation and review gigs. The only supporting evidence for the title’s claim about “everyone” is that they found the gig work from a comment on a Facebook group for writers who were looking for side gigs. Other than that, this is entirely 1 person’s experience. I also started to lose sympathy for the writer when they bounced between claimin…

> $150 house cleaner To clarify, in the OP that's $150 flat rate per cleaning, not per hour. If you've tried to hire a housecleaner recently, that seems a bit below average (depending on the apartment). It's not an extravagance - you'd have to spend more time doing it yourself, which takes you away from buidling up your paying work and future. Prices are going up everywhere, and the contemporary business theory is to…

If you are paying a cleaner any amount of money to clean your personal space then you're not strapped for cash.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#73

Post by Ekaros »

senordevnyc wrote: post #60
terseus wrote: post #44

I understand that it is not easy to relate to the author who pays (or was paying) $150 for a house cleaner, I understand that this is a 1-person history and may be highly biased, I understand the author is motivated to create a story from it. However, if you think that any of the conditions described in the article are acceptable or that this is a fair price to pay for having AI, I think you are a horrible human bein…

We’re horrible humans who should be expelled from society if we think it’s fine for people to get paid $52/hr for a boring remote job at a shitty bureaucratic company? Ok.

Isn't that like almost 100k a year? Sounds like amount of money you should suffer a quite a bit for...

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#74

Post by mmooss »

pickleglitch wrote: post #69
mmooss wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $150 house cleaner To clarify, in the OP that's $150 flat rate per cleaning, not per hour. If you've tried to hire a housecleaner recently, that seems a bit below average (depending on the apartment). It's not an extravagance - you'd have to spend more time doing it yourself, which takes you away from buidling up your paying work and future. Prices are going up everywhere, and the contemporary business theory is to…

$150/cleaning is a perfectly reasonable rate for a housekeeper, but the fact remains, broke people can't afford that. Broke people can't afford servants. Broke people either do it themselves or live in a dirty house.

The OP also said they had $14 in their bank account. This whole thing seems like a not uncommon pattern in our society: shaming poor people for not living acetic lives, as if they should suffer to qualify as the 'good' kind of poor.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#75

Post by rsynnott »

randycupertino wrote: post #70
ForHackernews wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

I think a lot of it is comparison, too. He was jealous of the guy who made $20 million a year and took netjets everywhere. That guy was jealous of the guy who was a billionaire and had his own private jet. They all wanted to be the next rung up the ladder!

Kind of sad, really. They could probably save quite a lot of money in the long run by spending a few quid on a psychologist (assuming the horses could spare it).

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#76

Post by Aurornis »

mmooss wrote: post #66
Aurornis wrote: post #27

I read the article. It was about 1 person trying to do AI training data set annotation and review gigs. The only supporting evidence for the title’s claim about “everyone” is that they found the gig work from a comment on a Facebook group for writers who were looking for side gigs. Other than that, this is entirely 1 person’s experience. I also started to lose sympathy for the writer when they bounced between claimin…

> $150 house cleaner To clarify, in the OP that's $150 flat rate per cleaning, not per hour. If you've tried to hire a housecleaner recently, that seems a bit below average (depending on the apartment). It's not an extravagance - you'd have to spend more time doing it yourself, which takes you away from buidling up your paying work and future. Prices are going up everywhere, and the contemporary business theory is to…

> It's not an extravagance - you'd have to spend more time doing it yourself, which takes you away from buidling up your paying work and future.

In the context of someone complaining about their $14 bank account balance and their job paying $32 per hour that isn't giving them enough work, spending $600 per month on a housecleaner is an extravagance.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#77

Post by avidruntime »

Aurornis wrote: post #27

I read the article. It was about 1 person trying to do AI training data set annotation and review gigs. The only supporting evidence for the title’s claim about “everyone” is that they found the gig work from a comment on a Facebook group for writers who were looking for side gigs. Other than that, this is entirely 1 person’s experience. I also started to lose sympathy for the writer when they bounced between claimin…

I work in the television industry, so does my spouse. We both have gotten offers by recruiters from services like this. While this author's experience is hard to relate to in many ways, their description of the economic situation is not far off. There is enormous pain right now in the television industry, particularly for the below the line workers. This stems from a myriad of factors in confluence. A very incomplete list: (1) the ongoing mergers of media companies and the downstream effects this has on decision makers on the buyer/network side of things, (2) the destabilization of television economics due to the long term effects of internet video (streamers and independent content creators alike), (3) a cultural mood shift within the consumer consensus of quality and the downstream effects on a consumer's willingness to participate as a consumer at all. Thats a lot of huge pieces on the board moving in ways that were hard to imagine in the not so distant past.

My point in outlining this is to scratch the surface and paint a picture on the systemic damage to this ecosystem and as a result you have people who have been working in a collaborative video workforce who no longer are able to find work. I've seen probably 75% of my colleagues and peers move on to other pastures, parlaying their skills into other careers, often starting in fields where your entry level positions are typically held by people 10, maybe 20 years younger. And of course, some have it easier than others. The AI training gigs come at an extremely opportune time (for them) and typically offer very tantalizing wages (in the form of an AI generated message from a LinkedIn recruiter who only replies with a link to the company's registration page). And if you're months without work and you use some of that unwanted free time to think introspectively about the offer, its easy to walk away with a sense that, eventually, the right talent will meet the right training method and produce the software package that actually kills your employable skillset. Its a horrible feeling. Its a scary feeling. Its a feeling of being on the wrong side of a window that is in the process of closing.

So while you may find it easy to lose sympathy for this particular writer, I would implore you not to lose sympathy for the broader class within and to not lose sight of where this article sits in context to the bigger story. Without a shadow of a doubt, her experience is the norm within the industry right now. I think it is worthy of recognition because what is happening will come for many other fields/areas of expertise in the future. What you describe as one person's bumbling misadventure rhymes quite a bit with other people's struggle to make ends meet in a rapidly evolving/devolving market.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#78

Post by Aurornis »

mmooss wrote: post #74
pickleglitch wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$150/cleaning is a perfectly reasonable rate for a housekeeper, but the fact remains, broke people can't afford that. Broke people can't afford servants. Broke people either do it themselves or live in a dirty house.

The OP also said they had $14 in their bank account. This whole thing seems like a not uncommon pattern in our society: shaming poor people for not living acetic lives, as if they should suffer to qualify as the 'good' kind of poor.

> shaming poor people for not living acetic lives, as if they should suffer to qualify as the 'good' kind of poor.

You're missing the point that if she wasn't spending $600/month on house cleaning, she wouldn't have only $14 left in her bank account.

Going without a house cleaner is not an ascetic lifestyle. This is getting silly.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#79

Post by __d »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #67
gwbas1c wrote: post #47

> You can find my shows on Paramount and Hulu and the BBC. I would suggest you don’t. I see two problems here: 1: The streaming platforms are filling themselves with slop shows. Maybe not "AI slop," but slop in general. When I browse, I keep seeing lots of shows that I have no desire to watch, and wonder who actually watches them. Every time I open a streaming platform, they keep wanting me to watch a new series that…

I agree with you (mostly), but I suggest you should spend an hour a week watching something new - do it while folding laundry or working out. Something you might never have chosen. There are gems out there waiting for discovery. Now onto my response: TV has always been this way, the only difference is there aren't time slots now, so they can develop a bunch of crap shows (that used to just get left for dead after pil…

> let them run for a season/series and gauge popularity vs cost, and cut the under performers (why I don't watch a show until a couple seasons are live).

And so you don’t contribute to the selection of shows.

It’s a dilemma. I started streaming stuff I like the sound of despite the risk of being rug-pulled, because otherwise there’s no signal that they should fund series 2.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#80

Post by insane_dreamer »

Aurornis wrote: post #27

I read the article. It was about 1 person trying to do AI training data set annotation and review gigs. The only supporting evidence for the title’s claim about “everyone” is that they found the gig work from a comment on a Facebook group for writers who were looking for side gigs. Other than that, this is entirely 1 person’s experience. I also started to lose sympathy for the writer when they bounced between claimin…

seems you missed/misread this paragraph:

> AI training wasn’t on my radar until a comment in an unofficial Writers Guild of America Facebook group caught my attention. The page was filled with posts from unemployed writers struggling with debt and panicking about their income, begging for tips and ideas and survival strategies: “I am stressed and anxiety-ridden … simply trying to breathe” … “ISO food bank/pantry info” … “Hey, so what kind of part-time jobs are you all getting?” I’ve been working for this AI training company called Mercor, one woman typed in the comments. They’re paying 150 an hour for writers. It’s easy money.

See also a comment below from someone who, unlike you (or I), actually works in the Hollywood industry.

> bounced between claiming they were broke and talking about about their $150 house cleaner

this isn't what the article says at all -- she was not both broke and hiring a house cleaner

if you don't like the article, just say so, but don't skim read and then misrepresent what the author said

> one person’s bumbling misadventure

you missed a lot of what was written

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