America has lost 200k of jobs in media, film and the arts. How much is AI?

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Title: America has lost 200k of jobs in media, film and the arts. How much is AI?

America has lost more than 200k jobs in “creative” industries over the last four years, with roughly 50k lost within the last year alone. That makes for one of the worst stretches for media employment in modern US history, with similar job loss intensity and duration occurring only during the major economic recessions of 2001 and 2008. Yet there’s no generalized recession today—instead, this period of job loss coincides with the rise of AI systems that can compose wholesale novels, photorealistic images, soundalike music, and practically every other form of digital art, en masse and at extremely low costs. Is this the fall of the Creative Class?

在过去四年中，美国“创意”产业流失了超过 20 万个工作岗位，仅去年一年就流失了约 5 万个。这是美国现代史上媒体就业最糟糕的时期之一，其失业的强度和持续时间仅在 2001 年和 2008 年的重大经济衰退期间出现过。然而，今天并没有出现普遍的经济衰退，相反，这一失业期恰逢人工智能系统的兴起，这些系统能够大规模且以极低的成本创作整部小说、照片级逼真的图像、模仿风格的音乐以及几乎所有其他形式的数字艺术。这难道是创意阶层的陨落吗？

Proving the exact amount of AI-driven job loss in the arts is extremely difficult. Media firms are decidedly coy about their AI use, both to protect against public backlash and, more financially important, to preserve the legal basis for their copyrights. The effects of AI are also hard to disentangle from other factors currently affecting arts businesses, like consolidation in Hollywood, offshoring of content production, or the continued displacement of traditional media providers in favor of social media creators. Yet perhaps the clearest evidence of AI’s influence is just that all subsectors of the digital arts industry are losing jobs, while in-person entertainment is still growing at a healthy pace.

要证明艺术领域中由人工智能驱动的失业具体数量极其困难。媒体公司对使用人工智能的态度非常谨慎，既是为了防止公众的强烈抵制，更重要的是为了维护其版权的法律基础。人工智能的影响也很难与目前影响艺术行业的其他因素区分开来，例如好莱坞的整合、内容生产的离岸外包，或者传统媒体提供商因社交媒体创作者的崛起而持续被取代。然而，人工智能影响最明显的证据或许在于，数字艺术行业的所有细分领域都在流失工作岗位，而现场娱乐产业仍在以健康的速度增长。

Some of those digital job losses are just a continuation of prior trends, like in the publishing industry where technological change has been continually grinding away newspaper and magazine jobs for decades. Yet for sectors like live broadcasting, streaming, or graphic design, recent experience is an unusual downturn compared to the tranquility of years prior. Then there’s the worst-hit sector, movie & sound recording, which has been bleeding jobs at a nearly unprecedented pace over the last three years.

其中一些数字领域的失业只是先前趋势的延续，例如在出版业，技术变革几十年来一直在不断蚕食报纸和杂志的工作岗位。然而，对于直播、流媒体或平面设计等行业来说，与往年的平静相比，近期的经历是一次不同寻常的低迷。此外，受灾最严重的行业是电影和录音业，过去三年里，该行业的工作岗位流失速度几乎是前所未有的。

Hollywood has never seen a stretch as bad as the last four years, with the movie & TV industry losing more than 100k jobs, nearly one-third of the sector’s total. At the depths touched this summer, total employment was lower than at any point since the 2008 recession and approaching the lowest point in 30 years. The streaming era has proven an extremely difficult transition, with traditional films and TV shows losing watch time to user-generated and increasingly AI-assisted or AI-generated content flows.

好莱坞从未经历过像过去四年这样糟糕的时期，电影和电视行业流失了超过 10 万个工作岗位，几乎占该行业总数的三分之一。今年夏天触及低谷时，总就业人数低于 2008 年经济衰退以来的任何时期，并接近 30 年来的最低点。流媒体时代已被证明是一个极其艰难的转型期，传统电影和电视节目的观看时间正在流失给用户生成的内容，以及日益增多的由人工智能辅助或生成的内容流。

Overall, nearly half the media job losses of the last four years have been concentrated in the movie & sound recording sector that includes Hollywood. Written publishing has been the next-largest source of job loss, with employment down by more than 70k over the same time frame. Yet the job losses have by no means been contained to any particular part of media; instead they’ve hit nearly every subsector at some point. Nor do they show any sign of abating, with losses consistently hovering at around 50k per year and even accelerating in recent months. Will further AI development continue displacing workers in creative industries?

总体而言，过去四年中近一半的媒体失业集中在包括好莱坞在内的电影和录音行业。书面出版业是第二大失业来源，同期就业人数减少了超过 7 万人。然而，失业绝非仅限于媒体的某个特定部分；相反，它们在不同时期打击了几乎每一个细分领域。这些失业也没有任何减弱的迹象，每年流失人数持续徘徊在 5 万左右，近几个月甚至还在加速。人工智能的进一步发展会继续取代创意产业的从业者吗？

To understand what could happen to the business of art amidst the rise of AI, it’s important to understand what did happen to it during the first digital transition, the rise of the internet.

要了解在人工智能兴起之际艺术行业可能会发生什么，了解在第一次数字转型（即互联网兴起）期间艺术行业发生了什么至关重要。

It was the turn of the millennium, and Metallica had a problem. Demos of their upcoming, unreleased tracks were bouncing around radio and the internet, originally leaked onto a new internet file-sharing website called Napster. There they found thousands of files shared amongst hundreds of thousands of users, many of which were direct rips of albums that sold for $15 being offered for free. The most anticipated albums were often leaked online even before they were on store shelves. Metallica sued Napster for copyright infringement, and they were soon joined by separate suits from other prominent artists and eventually the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

那是千禧年之交，Metallica 乐队遇到了一个问题。他们即将发行但尚未发布的曲目小样在广播和互联网上传播，最初泄露到一个名为 Napster 的新型互联网文件共享网站上。在那里，他们发现成千上万的文件在数十万用户之间共享，其中许多是售价 15 美元的专辑被直接翻录并免费提供。最受期待的专辑往往在还没上架之前就已经在网上泄露了。Metallica 起诉 Napster 侵犯版权，随后其他知名艺术家也纷纷提起诉讼，最终美国唱片业协会 (RIAA) 也加入了诉讼行列。

Much of the general public was understandably unsympathetic to Metallica, perceived as a bunch of already-successful millionaires trying to bilk even more money from listeners, and were even less sympathetic towards the RIAA, perceived as scurrilous middlemen who take from artists and fans alike. But the two of them easily won their lawsuit, forcing Napster into bankruptcy. Yet Metallica may have been right on the law but were on the wrong side of technology; the RIAA had won the battle but was losing the war.

广大公众对 Metallica 的遭遇表示不同情是可以理解的，因为他们被视为一群已经成功的百万富翁，试图从听众身上榨取更多的钱；而对于 RIAA，公众则更不同情，因为他们被视为从艺术家和粉丝身上牟利的卑劣中间商。但这两方轻松赢得了诉讼，迫使 Napster 破产。然而，Metallica 在法律上可能是对的，但在技术上却站错了队；RIAA 虽然赢得了战役，却输掉了战争。

The modern internet made file-sharing extremely easy, and no matter how much whac-a-mole companies played, they could not possibly catch every illegal upload. The perennial threat of piracy undermined their copyright and limited their ability to charge for music. Eventually, the value of individual songs fell to the point that companies like Spotify and Apple Music could swoop in to acquire massive catalogues, consolidate them, and charge a comparatively trivial fee for access. For what a single Metallica album would have cost in 2000, you can now get a month’s worth of unlimited access to nearly all human-made music.

现代互联网使文件共享变得极其容易，无论公司如何进行“打地鼠”式的打击，他们都不可能抓住每一次非法上传。盗版带来的长期威胁削弱了他们的版权，并限制了他们对音乐收费的能力。最终，单曲的价值跌落到 Spotify 和 Apple Music 等公司可以介入，收购海量曲库，进行整合，并收取相对微不足道的费用即可访问的程度。在 2000 年购买一张 Metallica 专辑的钱，现在可以让你获得一个月几乎所有人类创作音乐的无限访问权。

The music industry has never returned to the heyday paydays of the peak CD era—even without adjusting for inflation, streaming revenue pales in comparison to ‘90s physical media sales. This was a massive boon to consumers, but it was also a squeeze on musicians that forced them to fundamentally change their business model over time. Instead of just selling records to earn money directly, music itself increasingly became a loss-leading advertisement for the live concerts (and merch) that provided a growing share of artists’ income. Tours got longer, venues got bigger, ticket prices skyrocketed, and musicians frequently took on roles closer to public influencers than isolated artistes. Were it not for rising concert sales, the business model of music would have completely collapsed, and the incom

音乐产业再也没有回到 CD 鼎盛时期的辉煌收入——即使不考虑通货膨胀，流媒体收入与 90 年代的实体媒体销售额相比也相形见绌。这对消费者来说是一个巨大的福音，但对音乐家来说却是一种挤压，迫使他们随着时间的推移从根本上改变了商业模式。音乐本身不再仅仅是通过卖唱片直接赚钱，而是日益成为现场演唱会（和周边商品）的亏本促销广告，而这些演唱会提供了艺术家收入中越来越大的份额。巡演时间变长了，场地变大了，票价飙升，音乐家们经常扮演的角色更接近于公众影响者，而不是孤立的艺术家。如果不是演唱会销售额的增长，音乐的商业模式本已彻底崩溃，而收入……