Rescuing the Future | AI and the Actors/Writers strike | The Congress – the movie that warned us 10 years ago about what is coming now.

This morning, with 77 years completed today on this planet, I received an unusual birthday present.

For some reason, I was exploring the BBC’s cultural section instead of the usual, mostly depressing, ‘news’ (I go to the BBC because they do their best to offer world news), when I discovered the July 17, 2023 article by Caryn James, with the headline:

How 2013 film The Congress predicted Hollywood’s current AI crisis

This is followed by a sub-heading,

With US actors striking in part because of the threat of AI to their livelihoods, a 10-year-old, little-seen movie starring Robin Wright now seems eerily prescient.

For those who aren’t up to date on it, there is an ongoing strike in the USA, begun by screenwriters (WGA or Writer’s Guild of America) on May 2, then joined at the beginning of the summer by actors (SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild who merged with American Federation of  Television and Radio Artists). At issue is income from “residuals from streaming media” and the use of AI in several forms. Opposed to the writers/actors is AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers

Meanwhile, studies in the USA and Canada have shown that the income of writers has been declining for at least a decade. And that doesn’t include “indie” writers like me, most of whom write for nothing. We aren’t even in the equation.

With respect to actors in the USA, the majority of them work part-time, forced to do other jobs as well. Apparently many of them are unable to show income of $26,000 year,  the threshold for them to purchase healthcare.

The use of AI is one of the most contentious issues. The writers say ChatGTB, etc should be used as a tool by writers, not used to replace writers. The problem of the actors we’re going to look at now through this film, The Congress.

Though I’m always alert for new SciFi films, I missed The Congress altogether. It has this fascinating plot idea – actress Robin Wright, age 44, plays herself (has that ever been done before?). She is presented by her studio with a demand to sell them the rights to her “images,” which they can then use as they please in future films. I have to quote Ms James’ description of the key scene where Robin is confronted with this:

She has been labelled unreliable and difficult, and at 44 has aged out of the kind of roles that made her famous. Blurring fiction with Wright’s actual career, and speaking to a fear that many actresses have of turning 40,  (studio head) Green tells Robin, “I want Buttercup from The Princess Bride, Jenny from Forrest Gump” – younger versions of the actress, looking like she did playing those famous roles in her 20s.

Her lawyer successfully negotiates her a no-porn clause, but is forced to give in on SciFi. The result is that Robin eventually has to watch herself in a tacky Sci-Fi movie, that she has received no direct payment for, playing ‘Rebel Robot Robin’ riding on a bomb which is on its way to someone’s destruction.

Caryn James says The Congress is partially based on Stanislaw Lem’s 1971 SciFi novel, The Futurological Congress.

Well, well, I thought, I might have known he was involved here somewhere. Stanislaw Lem, born September 12 (today, like me) 1921, died 2006, age 84), was a Polish Jewish science fiction writer who lived, wrote and died in Poland, working as a car mechanic and welder along the way. He had a gift of matching a keen vision of the future with humor and dark satire. The only western writer I can imagine capable of writing that story would be Philip K Dick,, author of Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?, the story which he sold the screen rights for next to nothing, so he could pay his rent, and which eventually became Bladerunner.

But Ms James says the greater part of The Congress was written by screenwriter Ari Folman. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I suspect we owe a lot to Ari Folman.

How relevant is The Congress to what is happening now? Well, in the current dispute, the chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA,  Douglas Crabtree-Ireland, said of one of the AMPTP proposals:

“They proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation.”

This sounds like Congress coming true. Ms James says at the end of her article that the movie “tells us that it was entirely possible to have seen the crisis coming.”

Well yes, but this can also be said of the whole AI safety issue and existential threat facing us now. There have been warnings about it for a long time.

But now, in this writer/actor strike in the USA, we are seeing the first major battle in an existential war we may all have to fight in. The two unions and all their members are on the front line right now, fighting not just for themselves, but for all of us.

PS – I intended to add a link to the full BBC article, but WordPress is currently blocking every try.