Black Mirror’s ‘Joan is Awful’ shits all over the future of streaming | Hacker News Reader

Black Mirror’s ‘Joan is Awful’ shits all over the future of streaming

theverge.com

23 pointsthehoff21 comments

>Right now in Hollywood, the screenwriters of the Writers Guild of America are on strike. And one reason they’re on strike is the fear that AI will take their jobs, churning out mediocre content

Are they afraid of the competition?

If it were completely merit-based, then sure, then let AI disrupt the industry.

But it's not just merit, it's bang-for-buck. Companies will be happy to generate 2-3 star shows for free instead of paying writers to produce 3-4 star shows.

If a company creates a 2-star show with GPT and another one creates a 4-star show with real writers, which one will earn the creator more money?

Also the cat is out of the bag - it's likely that writers will use GPT to help themselves write at this point.

> which one will earn the creator more money?

The cheap ones. My memory of tv as a kid was "why is everything sports and news?" and, as a teenager "why is everything roommate simulators" and then later "why is everything cooking, dancing or singing competitions?"

Product placement used to just be part of ads until they brought it into the programs themselves.

I have no doubt the industry will chase their margins at every possible chance.

(I don't really mind the idea of paid writers using chat gpt, though. Maybe it's naive but I think they could offload some of their work and spend the saved time producing higher quality work - until a bunch of them get fired I guess)

The creator is almost always separate from the broadcaster (or streaming company). The latter just funds programming lineups and sells ads or rights to people who sell ads. They couldn’t care less about quality as long as quarterly earnings trend upwards. To them, it’s just blind function maximization.

You know, going on strike because of the threat of automation always struck me as a rather flawed tactic. It not only acknowledges the alternative as equal-to-superior but shoves them into their arms of their rivals. Before it might have been a risk that they would have been reluctant to take and would back out of after the first box office bomb. Now they are getting forced into considering the automated approach.

It is ironically pretty unemphatic on the part of the workers. The empathic question is "What did you think they would do in response to their actions?".

The situation reminds me of the time taxi workers went on strike to protest uber. When union leaders dont understand the product their trade actually sells, the results of a strike can be disastrous.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the 'striking because of AI' is a coopted narrative and not the actual cause of the strike. Strikes tend to occur because of infringement on worker's rights. Framing it as resistance to automation seems, to me at least, that it's to undermine the intent and confuse the goals and desired outcome.

This is just speculation and I could be wrong, I'm just going off of american cultures disdain for the working class and how private organizations endeavor to jeopardize parity for it.

AI is a real consideration, but it attracts disproportionate attention.

The real issue is, as always, money. Studios used to get away with paying less for streaming content in its early days. Now that it's very successful it's time to establish real rates.

There's also an argument about "mini rooms", where they hire fewer writers to work on a project. That's also partly an AI thing: they're afraid of the studios getting AI to do the first draft, and then hire (fewer) writers to make it not suck.

A lot of this ultimately cuts to the concept of unions in general. Studios can always get somebody to do mediocre work for cheap. That threat cuts into the earning power of those who can do better work. There is a strike because studios think they can hold out longer than the writers can.

I mean, they're already in the business of generating mediocre rehashes of previously used tropes..

Categorically speaking, all tropes are previously used. There are no original ideas, just ones you haven't been exposed to yet or otherwise identified.

Haven't you heard it said: 'there's nothing new under the sun'?

They're afraid of the enshittification of content.

Which they started themselves.

Shallow, specious take. Enshittification is its own phenomenon qualitatively different than the "bad" you're invoking for vague side-taking. A world drowned in AI content will be lame in a different way than being surrounded by Marvel content.

Then that would put their skills more in demand

> (Disclosure: The Verge’s editorial staff is represented by the Writers Guild of America East.)

Wait, why is it just their editorial staff?

I guess they didn’t want the same privilege for the people actually writing the content. Can’t have content farms unionize but the taskmasters sure are!

What? Who is in control of unionization in your opinion?

I don't think that term is meant to be interpreted so literally as to mean only editors.

What does any of this have to do with "streaming"? Aren't they just talking about the entertainment industry in general?

This show put me in an uncomfortable position - I really like the episode's message for many reasons. But the acting was bad, the premise ridiculous, and the jokes eye-rollingly lame. I thought they were going to do something interesting at the ending (trying not to spoil) but then it fizzled out.

What am I supposed to do, recommend someone bad TV just because I think they should probably watch it?!

Loch Henry does this too though more on a current format that's popular but pretty lowbrow

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