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writers' strike and Trek

Also, again, please remember that every single text produced by these programs is a work of plagiarism. That alone outweighs any opinions about the quality of the work. Stealing should be off the table, full stop. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opi...gpt-are-built-on-mass-copyright-infringement/

Copyright infringement and plagiarism are two different things. Plagiarism is pretty specific. You can commit one without the other.

Most importantly, in the U.S. plagiarism almost never involves a legal violation while copyright theft does. If there's any way in which the use of this technology might be limited to protect creators of commercial art, it's going to be by enforcing copyright or some adjacent area of law.

These large language models are a great deal more than "predictive text programs." That's a fundamental lack of understanding almost worthy of ChatGPT itself. :lol:
 
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I'm cheering for these strikes to go on for a long while.

It may mean interesting things for what is in development for Trek.

Hopefully Directors and Actors are next.
Exactly how does it mean "interesting things for what is in development for Trek?" If the writer's strike goes on long enough, there won't be any onscreen Trek content for a while except for Lower Decks. And we won't even get that if the actors and directors go on strike.
 
I'm cheering for these strikes to go on for a long while.

It may mean interesting things for what is in development for Trek.

Hopefully Directors and Actors are next.
Yes.. I'm sure they'll cancel everything, fire Kurtzman and turn everything over to Terry Matalas...







(:rofl: Yeah right :guffaw:) If anyone[ believes that, I want a dose of the drug you're obviously on as I could use a good break from reality./SPOILER]
 
Yes.. I'm sure they'll cancel everything, fire Kurtzman and turn everything over to Terry Matalas...







(:rofl: Yeah right :guffaw:) If anyone[ believes that, I want a dose of the drug you're obviously on as I could use a good break from reality./SPOILER]
I believe this is wishful thinking at its finest, trying to will it in to existence.
 
This has me curious about the 80's strike. We know they dug out old Phase II scripts, but who rewrote them to be about the Next Gen casts? And if it was acceptable to do that then, what's stopping them digging out one of their dozens of unmade Trek movie scripts and adapting that?
 
This has me curious about the 80's strike. We know they dug out old Phase II scripts, but who rewrote them to be about the Next Gen casts?

The strike ended early enough that they had time to rewrite the script to "The Child" before going into production (since the start of season 2 was delayed by a month). If that hadn't happened, they probably would've just "improvised" the name changes on set.

The same thing happened with the 1988 Mission: Impossible revival. The original intention was to remake original M:I episodes verbatim, with new actors playing the same characters. But the strike ended soon enough that they were able to take the remake scripts already in preproduction and rewrite them for new characters, add more modern technology, etc., and ultimately they ended up only doing four direct remakes (some rewritten more than others) and a couple of very loose semi-remakes.


And if it was acceptable to do that then, what's stopping them digging out one of their dozens of unmade Trek movie scripts and adapting that?

Well, for one thing, the actors' and directors' contracts expire in a month and one or both guilds are likely to join the writers in striking, which would make any TV/film production impossible.

But you're asking the wrong question. The question shouldn't be "What's stopping the studios from continuing to cheat the writers out of a living wage?" It should be "What's stopping the studios from returning to the negotiating table in good faith and making a reasonable deal with the writers?" Remember, this is not just an inconvenience for viewers. This is an existential fight for the survival of the industry as we know it. If the execs like Zaslav get their way, things will never go back to normal. We'll end up with terrible, cheap TV and movies churned out by mindless text algorithms.
 
Here's an article that nicely (if snidely at points) explains the foolishness of believing that AI could ever actually do the work of creative people, and how the studio execs investing in it are setting themselves up for a fall:

https://defector.com/the-computers-are-coming-for-the-wrong-jobs

One reason it’s funny is that AI as it currently exists—that is, “large language model” programs like ChatGPT—only appears “free” or even “cheap” because it is being heavily subsidized by investors and tech companies that hope to eventually pass along the costs of training and operating these programs to clients like, say, large film and television studios. LLMs require millions of dollars to develop and train, and they operate on incredibly expensive, power-hungry hardware. Replacing a screenwriter with AI to “save money” is like cutting out your daily Starbucks but buying a $25,000 La Marzocco espresso machine, if the La Marzocco was also bad at making espresso, but could, with careful human assistance, produce beverages that resemble espresso.

Because that is the other funny thing about the notion of replacing writers with AI: The kind of software we are using that label on is incredibly ill-suited to the task of producing creative work. Large language models (as I learned when we did an episode on them for the podcast I co-host for The New Republic) are essentially paraphrasing machines mixed with predictive text. Because they are designed to produce strings of words based on strings of words they have been trained on, but without overtly plagiarizing, they are quite good at lying, but terrible at surprising. They are designed to produce book reports, not books.
...
But for the most part, professional writing is just not what AI is good at, and, hype aside, there’s little reason to be hopeful it’ll get much better very quickly. For some reason, when the C-suite class imagines what professions will be automated by LLM AI, they keep naming ones (teacher, therapist) that do actually require the use of language as a tool of understanding and communication, rather than a space-filler.
 
Mark Cuban confidently predicted that YouTube would never find a buyer because it was an IP lawsuit waiting to happen - any deep-pockets owner would find themselves mired in legal problems.

Google bought it.

Even business people get this kind of thing wrong, and journalists are less well situated to appreciate it.
They see problems and simply don't have the frame of mind or reference to see the ways in which this kind of innovation opens up opportunities for organizations to exploit. They are skeptical of the unfamiliar.

Generative AI has the potential to save studios a tremendous amount of time and money. In a short time it may reduce the demand for writers by more than half, eventually much more than that. The writers intuit this; that's what's motivating the urgency of this strike.

The question at issue in commercial art careers is always "what is the dollar value of my creative contribution to the people buying the kind of work I do, and what is the dollar value of the specific skills I've mastered?" Up until now, those two things have gone together. AI is beginning to separate them.
 
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Exactly how does it mean "interesting things for what is in development for Trek?" If the writer's strike goes on long enough, there won't be any onscreen Trek content for a while except for Lower Decks. And we won't even get that if the actors and directors go on strike.
Lower Decks, and Prodigy. Plus season 2 of SNW.
 
This is an existential fight for the survival of the industry as we know it. If the execs like Zaslav get their way, things will never go back to normal. We'll end up with terrible, cheap TV and movies churned out by mindless text algorithms.

The dumber corporates like Zaslav and Chapek threatening to bring down the US entertainment industry as we know it out of petty spite will just create a vacuum for India, Britain, and South Korean entertainment industries to fill.

Corporate America is regressing.
 
The dumber corporates like Zaslav and Chapek threatening to bring down the US entertainment industry as we know it out of petty spite will just create a vacuum for India, Britain, and South Korean entertainment industries to fill.

Corporate America is regressing.
Cool.
 
Not for the many people who are in danger of losing their careers.
Oh no, it's a complete travesty of greed. But the summary by the other poster makes it sound like just another day at the beach. It states things with little sympathy. I responded in kind.
 
But the summary by the other poster makes it sound like just another day at the beach. It states things with little sympathy.

That wasn't how it seemed to me. I took TedShatner10's comments as an expression of agreement with my cautionary statement, and of anger toward the self-destructive stupidity of the executives.
 
That wasn't how it seemed to me. I took TedShatner10's comments as an expression of agreement with my cautionary statement, and of anger toward the self-destructive stupidity of the executives.
Fair enough. I don't see the anger. Just statements of fact.

No doubt @TedShatner10 can clarify and I might be misreading it.
 
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