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Following Rebecca Giblin's interview last week and the subsequent re-striking Hollywood writers,  I thought to pull this article in from co-auther Cory Doctorow - full article here:

 

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/

 

What can we do?

The entire Hollywood workforce, from grips to carpenters, costumers to plumbers, teamsters to medics, is unionized. That includes writers and actors (I'm a member of IATSE Local 839, AKA The Animation Guild). I live in Burbank, the entertainment industry's company town (fun fact! The "Hollywood" studios are largely over the city line, in Burbank). Walk down Burbank Boulevard, Magnolia Boulevard, or any of the other major roads, and you'll pass many union halls.

With an ending reference to AI that may speak to some of the class conversations..

 

There's a lot of concern about AI displacing creative labor, but the only entity that can take away a writer's wage is a human being, an executive at a studio. As has been the case since the time of the Luddites, the issue isn't what the machine does, it's who it does it for and who it does it to.

 

After all, as Charlie Stross points out, a corporation is just a "Slow AI," remorselessly paperclip-maximizing its way through the lives and joy of the flesh-and-blood people who constitute its inconvenient gut-flora:

 

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/