I’ll be in Boise on October 2 to host an event with VE Schwab. I’ll be giving the keynote address at Wired Nextfest from October 7–8, in Milan.
The Writers Guild of America dominated after a grueling 148-day strike, giving up almost little and winning almost everything.
Data on streaming viewership will be the most important result. These figures are state secrets for the studios and are only disclosed to those who need to know and on a burn-before-reading basis, even within the studios themselves.
There are two clear advantages for the studios in hiding streaming data. First off, it enables the studios to keep the creative staff in the dark regarding the ratings success of the shows they produce, preventing their agents and unions from negotiating for greater pay based on the previous season’s performance.
Second, it enables executives to keep the number of dreadful failures they approved from stock analysts and investors, whose outrage and disbelief would cause the share prices to plummet and prompt calls for the board to fire top management.
Therefore, it is a Big Hairy Deal that these figures will ultimately be made public, although not everyone’s attention was focused on that during this strike.
The most obvious sticking point for writers and their supporters was AI rather than streaming data.
A 148-day news cycle on how AI was threatening authors’ jobs was a gift from the gods for the AI industry.
Not only is it untrue that there can be such a thing as poor press, but this negative exposure served AI’s narrative of being the most potent, astounding, and revolutionary technology since fire or perhaps language.
The way that works is as follows: “If the writers are convinced that AI can write scripts so well that they will all be out of a job in five years, then you should absolutely invest in AI technology because it is obviously incredibly powerful.”
And here is how it works: “If the authors are sure that AI can create scripts so effectively that they will all lose their jobs in five years, then you should without a doubt purchase an enterprise site license so that you, too, can…
