2y ago

Netflix lists $900,000 AI job as actors and writers continue to strike

www.engadget.com

Netflix lists $900,000 AI job as actors and writers continue to strike | Engadget

Netflix lists $900,000 AI job as actors and writers continue to strike::Will this pair of Hollywood strikes ever end? It looks like the big corporations are digging in for a long battle, illustrated by Netflix’s recent job posting for a machine learning platform product manager.

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This all comes after striking actors rejected a proposal from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that generously offered workers a one-time $200 day rate for performers to get scanned for future use as AI-enhanced CGI simulacrums forever, until the end of time. SAG-AFTRA says the company would “own that scan, their image, their likeness, and be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation.”
I commend those people, if I can't even say what I'd like to do if I was the one receiving such an insulting proposition
lol, imaging wanting to spending that much money to get a really shitty output. Just pay the writers and actors you cheapskates
- I think it’s about money and control. Slavery is a far more lucrative framework to a shortsighted business model that doesn’t value human life or input in the least beyond what it can earn. Think about exploiting a machine for unlimited gains vs waiting for people to work through a creative process, or rewrites. No breaks for hundreds or thousands. No day limits.
  Then think about the people in power being able to implement their own (stupid) visions without any pushback or challenge. Want to incorporate your advertisers, backers or political agendas? Want to change your mind after you release? Responding instantly to testing? Boom. No creative pushback. No talent pushback or wrangling.
  And they own it all outright if it came from their platform. Near total “self sufficiency”. There are so many stories about great movies or films that almost didn’t happen because one or several out of touch producers, or bean counters from accounting, almost ruined everything. (Thinking about “The Offer”, or more recently The Algorithm on “Barry”)
  Eventually, maybe it could mean fewer unions to negotiate with if studios own both likenesses and writing process, or less bargaining power for the existing unions. They already own your face, or can compose “original” amalgams.
  Much can be accomplished on a set / lot with computers as it is. Factor in non union performance, or weaker unions, and I bet they think they’ll print money. I am thinking like late career-Bruce Willis where it’s quantity over quality (before he announced his illness, he squeezed a few more millions out of his name and face doing a scene or two in a series of very low budget films). This would matter to many who care about quality, and ethics, however, look at network drama or procedurals like L&O. People in general can be far less discerning as long as it’s not too bad. In fact, they often prefer formula and tropes are tropes for a reason. Sometimes formulae are overt and sometimes it’s more subtle.
  Is that all possible under current law? Do antitrust or monopoly laws cover this? I don’t know. I think pressure could shape laws as usual.
  Just a thought experiment from a former entertainment professional. I side with unions of course against the executives and shadowy funders that make the millions behind the scenes. But take all with a grain of salt.
  Edit: now I’m thinking about how cost and investment there is over a life to train people to achieve the necessary competence and ability (like any job, or any soldier), and how they could bypass some, or eventually all of that, knee capping human arts and culture. And to some degree literacy. We don’t belong in museums yet… Dang it >:(
All the articles about this I've seen are missing something. Netflix has been using machine learning in a bunch of ways for quite a few years. I bet this position they're hiring for has been around for most of that time and isn't some new "replace all actors and writers with AI" thing. Here's an article from 2019 talking about how they use AI. That was the oldest I could find but someone I know was working on ML at Netflix over a decade ago.
Folks, don't worry, just sharpen up your pitchforks.
Here's the bit that doesn't get talked about much: For thirty years, money has been effectively free for these people, and they've been spending it all to build up this big Orwellian house of cards on the idea that people would never be able to do this without big corporate money. This was a deliberate action on the part of government and capital to "make the internet happen".
Now the thing is, the internet was already happening. It just didn't have video. In 1995, you still mostly got video on physical media or via cable/sat. MP3s weren't there yet, so there also wasn't really audio, to speak of, just little .wav clips that we swapped on irc for amusement.
But there were vibrant communities on usenet talking about every type of interest (EVERY type), there was trolling and DOS attacks on irc and even a bit of friendly chatting, and the good thing that we get from all this - more easily connecting to people we can relate to - was 100% already present for anyone who bothered to get a PC and modem. Believe me because I was there, we already had The Internet in full swing, while we played our CDs and VHS (DVDs if you were affluent).
Got that whetstone wet?
So what did they bring to the internet? Well, not music - MP3s showed up around 1998, and the music industry was taken entirely by surprise. It took them three years to figure out what was going on, by which time Napster had introduced the world to peer-to-peer file trading.
Back in the 8-bit days, we had to have swap meets, people would gather in large rooms, bring their 64s and 1541 drives and a box or two of fresh (or culled from your existing collection and freshly-formatted) 5.25" floppy disks which we had cut a notch out of so we could use both sides, and get a fresh supply of games, demos, sid files, useful software, etc, to mess around with for the next month or so. Napster and Bittorrent, however, represented a far more easy and accessible version of piracy: no need to carry 10-40lbs (cause CRT monitors, remember) of gear to a different place, just load up the program, choose your own adventure.
There was a lost opportunity to humanity around this time, because at some point around 1998, each entertainment industry conglomerate's board of directors, either in groups or individually, had someone (probably from IT, but possibly a child in their family) sit them down and demonstrate downloading and listening to music on Napster.
If only, each time that happened, they had thought to point a video camera at the face of the executive or shareholder or CEO.
These would have been, these SHOULD have been, the world's introduction to reaction videos.
Instead we have a bunch of video of people watching women eat poo.
Anyways the thing is they saw this happen and they found their most badass but cooperative front men to sit on their horses while they sicced the hounds on the uppity peasantry who think they are entitled to have joy in their lives without paying.
They ended up making Metallica look like landed gentry, basically, and nothing stopped, and that's been the dynamic ever since: They have been focusing all this money, which the Federal Reserve was good enough to make available at zero interest (ie. free) on creating the infrastructure for a paid version of the internet where they control it entirely, just like they used to control access to music and movies by doling it out one disc/tape/record/cylinder/music sheet at a time, and just trusting (i'm loling as i type) that people really do want to pay what they used to charge for a single record, and we are all just waiting patiently for them to decide how much our lives they need to cut away from us, and we'll be happy with whatever dregs they leave us, just like that vauntedly docile peasantry of old.
I hope the tines of your pitchforks are shiny like chrome now.
Cause again, we already had the internet working before they got here, 100% functional in all the ways it needed to be, before they got here. We don't actually need them at all. I mean sure, some people can't even pump their own gas, let alone change their own oil, so yes, some people will just need crayon-level functionality delivered with big bright icons, but most of us can figure out how to launch a desktop application and browse a discussion board, we're all doing it right now on Lemmy.
The bottom line is that we don't need them to manage distribution anymore - we actually never did, all we need is bandwidth for all. They are desperately trying to make us not see that.
And meanwhile, since covid, the Federal Reserve has been calling in the bill, and everyone who has a mortgage knows it's gonna cost you more for the next few years at least, if you weren't lucky enough to renew right before covid. But we were already paying interest and used to the idea; we are honest people trying to have a nice place to live. Those without mortgages, please, laugh at us right now because our problems don't even approach the magnitude of the problems faced by rent-payers right now. You have a scumbag trying to skim their life off the top of yours.
I KNOW your pitchforks are ready, and you might even have a few torches in the shed out back.
But, imagine how it must feel for someone who has been pulling free money out of a bag for thirty years, and has now been told that not only is there no more money in the bag, that in fact, they must start putting money back IN the bag now?
That's Netflix, That's Google, That's Elon Musk, That is Zuckerberg and the Metaverse [edit: and let's not forget our very favorite here on Lemmy, u/Spez...].
I'm a little old for pitchfork crew, but I'll be sitting here with my popcorn watching these bastards burn, very soon.
- Honestly its quute nice seeing old bastards like you giving us the summary of shit their in, im personally hoping this shit show will spell the end of "web 3" not with a bang but with the feds calling their dues.
  Either that or the whole shitshow is atleast funny, I thrive on hate and there is nothing better for a hate filled asshole like me than watching rich fucks get bent over the table by the feds.
  
  Lol don't get me started on crypto, I need to work :>
I do hope that the strikers get what they are asking for however this AI stuff is inevitable. AI written scripts performed by AI Characters in full virtual space is going to happen. Oh sure it will suck Donkey Ballz for the first 3-4 years while studios get a handle on the tech but it will improve rapidly.
The porn studios are already playing with this this and I predict that in less than 10 years the people over at !aigen@lemmynsfw.com will be cranking out full length pr0n movies using OSS tools.
Unless computers go away this trend is unstoppable.
- AI written scripts will just repackage old ideas. Nothing new or innovative.
  
  So just like 95%+ of Hollywood?
  
  We've done nothing and we're all out of ideas!
The TV show Corporate did such a good job depicting AI-written kids show materials. Finding videos of that show to share is really hard though for some reason.
But I did find this article about automated kids YouTube channels. The tropes interact with automated processes which interact with the worst of the internet, all resulting in super weird, creepy, and sometimes violent shit : https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2
- All of the episodes are on Flixtor.to
I know we have our pitchforks out, but wanted to point out one subtle, but big difference from the article vs the job posting.
The article quotes a base salary of $900,000, however that is incorrect as the number is the Total Compensation, NOT just the base salary. The job posting specifically calls this out.
Regardless, these are very large numbers however the pay mixture could be (and likely is) loaded up with RSU grants, which isn't "cash" perse.
A base salary of $900K vs total comp of $900K are two vastly different things. Again, acknowledging that either way, these numbers are astronomical.
- 900k total comp is huge, but not astronomical in my opinion.
  If you look at levels.fyi, it seems to match up with very high level engineers at most FAANG companies.
  If you were to bring in someone to head up all of your AI for writing, you'd want to bring someone really good in.
  These people are few and far between and money is a strong lure.
  While this total comp is probably beyond you or I, there are definitely a lot of people in that ballpark.
  900k base salary would be nuts
  
  Yeah, fair point. Perhaps "astronomical" was a bit exaggerated. Well....from my perspective anyway!
Geez, so a machine learning platform can now get a job as a product manager?
If they hired a human product manager, would the salary be the same?
What is it going to do with the money?
- Pay for its hosting costs.

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