What Hollywood thinks about existential AI warnings
What Hollywood thinks about existential AI warnings
好莱坞如何看待关于人工智能的生存威胁警告
The studios have been silent, but Hollywood’s biggest labor unions aren’t buying the AI apocalypse narrative. 各大制片厂对此保持沉默，但好莱坞最大的工会并不买账所谓的“人工智能末日论”。
As the tech sector sounds alarms about AI’s potential to destroy humanity, entertainment labor groups are urging the public to stay focused on what’s already happening. The Verge reached out to Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Lionsgate, and other studios who have started using AI, as well film startups focused on bringing generative AI into the mainstream to ask for their reaction to the recent warnings surrounding the technology. None have responded to our request for comment. The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) did, however. 正当科技界对人工智能可能毁灭人类发出警报时，娱乐业的劳工组织正敦促公众关注当下正在发生的问题。The Verge 联系了迪士尼、Netflix、亚马逊、狮门影业等已经开始使用人工智能的制片厂，以及致力于将生成式人工智能引入主流市场的电影初创公司，询问他们对近期围绕该技术的警告有何看法。但没有一家公司回应我们的置评请求。不过，美国演员工会-美国电视和广播艺术家联合会（SAG-AFTRA）和美国编剧工会东部分会（WGAE）对此做出了回应。
The AI tools used in entertainment production differ from the AI systems that have sparked a recent round of whistleblowing and apocalyptic declarations. They do not seem to be as existentially dangerous as the AI systems that drove former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon to quit his job and prompted Anthropic alignment lead Evan Hubinger to insist that the technology could “kill all humans” at some point “within the next decade.” 娱乐制作中使用的人工智能工具，与近期引发一系列内部举报和末日预言的人工智能系统有所不同。它们似乎并不像那些导致前 Anthropic 研究员 Jacob Coxon 辞职，并促使 Anthropic 对齐负责人 Evan Hubinger 断言该技术可能在“未来十年内”某个时刻“杀死全人类”的系统那样，具有生存层面的危险性。
But despite the differences between entertainment-focused AI and the models developed by Anthropic and OpenAI, AI models that generate digital facsimiles of actors and attempt to replicate traditional filmmaking tools pose a threat to some human jobs. Similar to the way that the Hollywood unions advocated for protections and increased oversight around AI’s use during the 2023 strikes, Coxon’s Anthropic exit has inspired a wave of AI researchers to speak out in favor of stronger safety protocols. The heads of major AI companies including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and X have also called for an industry-wide slowdown on the technology’s development. While president Donald Trump has dismissed these concerns as overreactions, some other US politicians have felt pressured to take legislative action. Hollywood unions’ fight for strict rules around gen AI’s use did not stop the entertainment industry from embracing AI, but they have given Hollywood’s laborers a way to fight back in instances when they feel that AI tools are being used to harm them. 尽管娱乐业的人工智能与 Anthropic 和 OpenAI 开发的模型存在差异，但那些生成演员数字替身并试图复制传统电影制作工具的人工智能模型，确实对部分人类工作岗位构成了威胁。正如好莱坞工会在 2023 年罢工期间倡导加强对人工智能使用的保护和监管一样，Coxon 从 Anthropic 的离职也激励了一批人工智能研究人员站出来，呼吁建立更严格的安全协议。包括 Anthropic、OpenAI、Google DeepMind 和 X 在内的主要人工智能公司负责人也呼吁全行业放缓该技术的开发。虽然唐纳德·特朗普总统将这些担忧斥为反应过度，但其他一些美国政客已感到压力，开始采取立法行动。好莱坞工会为争取生成式人工智能使用准则所做的斗争，并没有阻止娱乐业拥抱人工智能，但当好莱坞从业者感到人工智能工具被用于伤害他们时，这些准则为他们提供了反击的手段。
When I recently spoke with the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ (SAG-AFTRA) chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, he told me that the union recognized early on how AI could impact its members’ livelihoods. Most people might not have been familiar with the idea of studios completely replacing human actors with digital replicas, but SAG-AFTRA understood that it had an opportunity to shape public opinion about AI in Hollywood by “speaking out about it at the earliest possible point we could.” 最近，当我与美国演员工会-美国电视和广播艺术家联合会（SAG-AFTRA）的首席谈判代表邓肯·克拉布特里-爱尔兰（Duncan Crabtree-Ireland）交谈时，他告诉我，工会很早就意识到人工智能可能会如何影响其成员的生计。大多数人可能还不熟悉制片厂用数字复制品完全取代人类演员的想法，但 SAG-AFTRA 明白，通过“尽早公开谈论此事”，他们有机会塑造公众对好莱坞人工智能的看法。
“We bargained for and achieved enforceable, meaningful guardrails around how this technology can be implemented by the major employers in our industry,” Crabtree-Ireland explained. “That doesn’t include companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google directly, but it does encompass all of the companies who have built up businesses around the creation of professional level entertainment content in the United States.” “我们通过谈判，为行业内主要雇主如何实施这项技术争取到了可执行的、有意义的护栏，”克拉布特里-爱尔兰解释道。“这并不直接包括 OpenAI、Anthropic 或谷歌等公司，但它涵盖了所有在美国围绕专业级娱乐内容创作建立业务的公司。”
Though Crabtree-Ireland believes we “should be concerned about the broader societal and social implications of AI,” he also thinks that some of the warnings about the technology being an extinction-level threat could potentially be hyperbole and overblown. Doomerism has become one of the more common ways that AI companies generate buzz around their products, but the fact that Coxon left Anthropic to sound the alarm has given Crabtree-Ireland pause. Hearing the message from “the CEOs of these companies or the billionaires who’ve made their billions off of doing the exact thing that they’re now warning us might not be good,” has left him unsure “what to trust or what to believe.” But he acknowledged that Coxon was able to achieve “traction with the public.” 尽管克拉布特里-爱尔兰认为我们“应该关注人工智能更广泛的社会和群体影响”，但他同时也认为，一些关于该技术构成灭绝级威胁的警告可能存在夸大其词的成分。“末日论”已成为人工智能公司为其产品制造热度的一种常见方式，但 Coxon 离开 Anthropic 发出警报的事实，确实让克拉布特里-爱尔兰感到迟疑。听到“这些公司的首席执行官或亿万富翁们，在靠着他们现在警告我们可能有害的事情赚取数十亿财富后，又发出这样的信息”，让他感到“不知道该信任什么或相信什么”。但他承认，Coxon 的言论确实在“公众中引起了反响”。
“The recklessness of the tech oligarchs pushing AI on our society has been matched only by their rampant dishonesty.” “那些将人工智能强加于我们社会的科技寡头，他们的鲁莽程度与其猖獗的虚伪程度不相上下。”
Getting people to believe that SAG-AFTRA’s fears about AI should be taken seriously was one of the union’s major goals when its members voted to strike. The key to doing that, Crabtree-Ireland told me, was leading the strike with a focused message that clearly laid out to the public what was at stake and steps that could be taken to prevent worst case scenarios. If not for that, Crabtree-Ireland thinks that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) might not have agreed to some of the union’s demands like requiring that studios gain permission and compensate actors for the use of their AI-generated replicas. “If that principle hadn’t been established, I think the economic incentive to use replication and to replace human performances would have been much stronger” and “would have resulted in a much greater and faster adoption of digital replication.” Had the protections not been codified, Crabtree-Ireland is confident that entertainment workers would be in a much more dire position now. 在成员投票罢工时，让人们相信 SAG-AFTRA 对人工智能的担忧应被认真对待，是工会的主要目标之一。克拉布特里-爱尔兰告诉我，实现这一目标的关键在于，在罢工中传达一个明确的信息，向公众清晰地阐明利害关系，以及可以采取哪些步骤来防止最坏的情况发生。如果不是这样，克拉布特里-爱尔兰认为，电影和电视制片人联盟（AMPTP）可能不会同意工会的一些要求，例如要求制片厂在使用演员的 AI 生成复制品时必须获得许可并支付报酬。“如果这一原则没有确立，我认为使用复制技术来取代人类表演的经济动机将会强得多，”并且“会导致数字复制技术被更大规模、更快速地采用。”如果这些保护措施没有被写入合同，克拉布特里-爱尔兰确信，娱乐业从业者现在的处境将会更加严峻。