My colleague Jonathan Nicastro wrote recently on the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and Screenwriters Guild strikes upending Hollywood. Jonathan stakes his position in a single candid line:
If AI can produce series, movies, or political-economy-related op-eds more cheaply and quickly — and make them more entertaining — than human writers can, it should substitute us.
His position is nothing outrageous. Faith in the innovative powers of the free market is a cornerstone of American conservatism, as it should be. In most places in most times with most technologies these kinds of disruptions should be viewed with long-term optimism.
Artificial intelligence in Hollywood is something substantively different, however. Jonathan’s cavalier position that the fears in Hollywood about lines of code replacing real human beings are unfounded fails to recognize that there is more at stake with this strike than a simple economic transaction. He ignores the moral implications involved in this example, ones which need to be taken seriously as AI continues its march across American industries.
Jonathan, to his credit, notes that this technological revolution is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison to those in the past. He makes note that, “there’s a legal and economic argument to be made that an actor should have the ability to copyright his likeness and receive royalties for its use.” It is not simply an economic argument; there are serious moral concerns regarding a production company buying a person’s likeness and digitally replicating it for its own use. I have written in the past that art is intimately connected to the human soul. It expresses something transcendent about the human soul. The legal and economic arguments for trademarking AI-generated likenesses are secondary to the moral argument. Should a company be allowed to take an actor’s image and recreate it — recreate him — in perpetuity? They should not. Nor should we, as Jonathan does, handwave away the possibility that AI is taught to replicate and replace certain writers. A chatbot imitating a real human being is not the same as another human learning by, “integrating information from others to iterate, innovate, and produce new things.”
Jonathan argues that the economic inefficiencies generated by not using artificial intelligence are an injustice to some people done by others. If man were simply, as is implied through Jonathan’s piece, an economic animal, this would be correct. But man is not simply a cog in the economic machine. He is more, and so there are more factors to be considered. When the Chicago Tribune asks whether artificial intelligence should write their editorials just because it can, it reminds us that the human being is more than just another piece of technology — a sentiment that all conservatives champion. I am inclined to agree with the Tribune, because economic efficiency is not the only principle that this world should be measured against.
Jonathan conflates the negotiations of two private actors with legislation passed by the state because the possible outcomes are the same — less-efficient studio productions due to little use of artificial intelligence. To Jonathan’s credit he notes that the guild is entitled to make these demands. But here again he places efficiency and productivity as the mark to which Hollywood must be held. I agree with him that the state should tread lightly when it comes to regulating artificial intelligence, because the state is a terrible judge of man’s immaterial needs. But that is not the same as ignoring man’s immaterial needs entirely. Private associations like the actor’s guild serve this purpose so that the state doesn’t have to. We should celebrate them when they do. The guild is not forcing moviegoers to “subsidize a less efficient form of production” when they demand that art remain human; they are reminding everyone that the human soul requires a place in these discussions.
Not since Reagan was outing the communists have conservatives had this much reason to like the actor’s guild. But the AI moment calls for new discussions, however, and so I stand with the guild. Even Hollywood shouldn’t be forced to sell its soul.