...so we better get to work!
IBM officially hiring fewer humans, plus the future of your workplace...written in Hollywood?
This Week in Work: Screenwriters’ Last Stand
Joining the ripples of labor action in school districts across California (and finally catching up with what seems to be much of Europe), the Writers’ Guild of America officially hit the picket lines as of last week.
Now, for those who may have never pursued a career in the creative trades, the phrase “Hollywood writers” may conjure up images of overly comfortable art school kids and Familiar Last Names floating along on a colossal money laundering scheme with some of history’s most effective PR.
…and yeah, there is some of that.
Still, much more common in this business is decades of toil in relative obscurity with no guarantees of security.
Emblematic of the cold game that is being a professional creative in the corporate world of today is the “mini room,” where productions essentially rent a group of writers to churn out possible scripts over a period of a few weeks.
These inspired viewpoints and diverse personal perspectives, curated from some of the most imaginative and passionate human alive beings, are then Frankensteined together by producers, focus groups, and other artistic interlopers to create the beige, textureless filler content that dominates streaming services today.
The writers are then disposed of in an eco-friendly fashion.
Writing for a big time TV production in the 2020s is essentially like being an Uber driver, but you occasionally get your name in very small lights during an automatically skipped portion of a major media presentation.
We’re not going to get into a whole thing about how the strike will affect the quality of programming…like, I didn’t watch “Heroes,” a show which I was informed through cultural osmosis greatly suffered during the last major labor action in the industry, but I did see most episodes of “Game of Thrones” so I totally get being disappointed with the payoff for an investment of leisure time.
No, instead I’m going to center this presentation on the proper balance point: the prosperity of the worker.
From this angle, the significance of 2023’s labor action becomes very clear very quickly. You see, a good writer is a highly perceptive person…it’s why their strike signs are particularly good.
They see what I see, what you see, what the most clear-headed of us see…that thanks to AI their days in the profession of their choice are numbered. At best we’ll get some movement on copyright over generative art when someone’s AI-avatar starts looking a bit too much like Mickey.
Besides, the money isn’t the point…some people can afford the luxury of other disputes. With the production of late night shows already halted indefinitely, as well as a stop to production for marquee series such as “Stranger Things” and whatever “Game of Thrones” spinoff I’m ignoring this time, the investment class has to be losing millions daily in ad revenue; one can easily imagine a world where the writers’ asking price has already been pissed into the wind.
No, the intransigence of Hollywood’s production companies is a naked display of monopolistic force (a “flex,” the kids call it, PoliSci called it “soft power”). These peasants must learn their place. As far as the studios are concerned, it’s a staring contest. As far as I‘m concerned, we have a lot more to lose by blinking.
We can debate all day about how far along LLMs are in simulating original human ideas…in fact, they often write in to argue with me--but from where I’m sitting, the reality is that at bare minimum last year’s crop of Christmas movies were the last to be written by humans. Whether or not that’s a good thing is also debatable, but either way there’s the truth wrapped up in a bow.
Did we ever expect Hollywood writers to be the canary in the coal mine for the costless labor era? I have to say I didn’t. Then again, even those folks know real life writes the best twists.
The time is now for writers to stand strong…and, if at all possible, cash the fuck out.
Might not get another shot.
Maybe Update Your Resume: Paper Pushers
A recent interview with IBM bigwig Arvid Krishna made a shockingly small splash for my taste.
In it, Krishna announced that the company would “pause” hiring for jobs that AI could take on, specifically naming internal management and human resources (lol) among them.
Of course, the core theme of “This Was a Real Job” is that no one can stop the march of technological progress…only the forthcoming energy shortages can do that. The Luddites gave it a shot, and the Wright Brothers tried their absolute damndest…it ain’t happening.
Sure, some of them will adapt to this new reality and transition into another industry role…a few will even work with the machines that made their old role obsolete!
On the other hand, with every major name in the industry looking to offer thousands of their valued employees opportunities at other workplaces over the next year or so as well, It’s gonna get a bit crowded in that coding class.
I’m talking REAL crowded…if you’re betting on a recent prediction from eater of worlds Goldman Sachs (and Goldman Sachs sure as hell is), up to 300 million similar jobs will probably be up on the chopping block before the next Olympics.
In a way, these open-office veterans are fortunate to be among the first fired…most people will only find out they’re next when their governments begin tracking percentage of jobs taken by AI (they won’t).
…and that’s if development in the field only maintains its current pace.
This latest blow to the idea of the “middle class” is another indication that the world my parents prepared me for just a few short decades ago is but a vague memory from an unreliable narrator. The script went “get good grades, go to college, and get yourself a good job,” and nearly 8,000 IBM employees who did just that will now just have to get different advice, now won’t they?
Maybe IBM isn’t the all-consuming industry titan it was a couple of decades back, but you have to believe the entire North American information cartel of today is keeping a very close eye on just how little human labor they can get away with.
Cannot Be Unseen: Methodical Mismanagement
Any responsible citizen will find themselves concerned with crime rates in the society around them…which, sadly, have skyrocketed since the pandemic.
Naturally, I’m not talking about anything as banal as burglary or vandalism…I’m talking here about the undisputed champion of misappropriation, wage theft.
More money is pilfered from the pockets of hourly workers by their employers than is stolen in any other forms, chiefly because stealing from employees is not really viewed as a crime…otherwise the guy at your first job who undercounted your overtime hours would have been taken into custody at gunpoint until trial upon the discovery of his crimes instead of fined some pissy pittance.
It’s that basic social inequity that I hope I was able to explain to that robotic dog who emailed me last week wondering if it should consider a career as a cop.
In any event, wage theft takes many forms, but by far the most insidious is the “false promotion.”
This swindle is performed by taking your typical hourly-waged employee who is eligible for overtime, “promoting” them to “manager” at virtually no pay increase, then greatly increasing their workload because hey you’re a manager now that’s your job okay?
This is something I can personally attest to during my time bouncing around the workaday world, back at the package plantation I was offered a trial “promotion” which involved more responsibility and not more money…I got my exploited ass right up out of there.
Still, the fact remains that it should have never been up to me to do…should you need a degree in Psychology to pursue fair wages for manual labor?
There should be strong legal protections to ensure that every worker is fairly compensated for their output. It can be hard for most people to see that there are none…but it’s way harder to un-see.
Hope Spot: Free Trains in Spain Plainly to Remain
Finally, for a bit of good news this week we turn to Spain, where the country’s initiative to provide free rail travel across virtually its entire network has been extended to its intercity bus services. Riders must commit to taking at least 16 trips in the country this year in order to have the nominal required deposit refunded, indicating the program’s focus on commuters.
The benefits to the environment in an age of expanded awareness of climate breakdown are tangible, but what is even more tangible is the everyday impact on everyday people. While the strongest proof of a society made perfect is near-universal use of public transportation, at this time these services are primarily used by a country’s working class.
This means that decrease in the out-of-pocket cost of basic public services is an effective pay raise for the labor class…more money in paychecks, less on getting to work to earn a paycheck. These are the things we the public vote and organize for (when we’re being polite about it).
I’ve long believed that public transportation should cost the same as a public library, and so the good news out of Spain represents the kind of concrete concession that shows these “radical beliefs” of mine ain’t so far out of reach after all. Always feels good.