We Need professional writers

This friend of mine, who practices in the area of technology law, said something to me this summer that has stuck in my head. He said, “AI is not going to take your job, but a person that knows how to use AI will take your job.”.

I am a screenwriter. Since May 2nd, I’ve been on strike. We’re striking over a range of issues, but the overwhelming thrust has to do with the erosion of pay and workplace conditions brought on by the streaming era. While we are mostly looking to fix what tech has “moved fast and broke”, one issue on the table faces forward: the use of AI.

What surfaced finally, from the Writers Guild in terms of some proposed “final offer,” included: a complete ban on scripts, outlines, and source materials created by AI; also, a ban on use of the members’ material for the purpose of training large-language models. Studios, through their trade association-the AMPTP-offered concessions on credit protection, but with loopholes you could drive a truck through.

If their intransigence is anything to go by, studios simply mean to use AI for writing scripts henceforth. That will not only break the Writers Guild in a couple of years’ time-fewer jobs mean fewer members, fewer contributions into health and pension, and the eventual collapse of the union-but it will do away with writing as a profession altogether. Without wage protections, health coverage, and retirement plans, writing will no longer be a viable career but a proofreading gig that only film school graduates living off their parents’ largesse can afford to do.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but here we are, I guess: We need professional writers. Professional actors. Professional educators, coders, drivers, autoworkers, pilots, flight attendants, and conductors-on the whole, quite literally every career that someone’s got in their crosshairs for corporate profit.

Let me turn to sports for one second-the only profession that nobody’s blasé about, that anyone would suggest we could get by just fine without. But let’s get real, fan or not: professional athletes sure are something. Their feats of strength and agility are a wonder to behold. I mean, I’m watching Steph Curry arc one from half court-my heart leaps from my chest every freaking time. I’m just happy Steph doesn’t have to drive for DoorDash just to make ends meet. I want him to make his living playing the game so that he can continue to practice, refine his skills, and push the boundaries of what we understand a human being to be capable of. Not coincidentally, it is he and other professional athletes who are able to devote their lives to their sport because their unions bargain collectively against small groups of wealthy owners who can afford to pay players what they’re worth.

Why do the owners put up with this? Why don’t they just fill out their squads with amateurs willing to play for gas money? Because they know pro athletes are a thrill to watch. They do things we poor mortals cannot. We buy tickets, tune in, marvel. We get entertained.

This is the same regarding all other forms of entertainment. The actors will be pros because they harness and express emotions we’re either unable or unwilling to. I know it does appear pretty darn effortless. They make it that way. So does Curry. But pull out your phone and video yourself acting a scene from The Bear to see what actually happens. If it resembles at all my sad attempts at dunking a basketball, you agree that professional actors possess talents we do not have. And although those skills are likely nurtured from some innate talent they are developed over years of hard work and practice — like professionals. Nobody thinks top-flight attorneys are “born” in some stroke of luck. They go to school, endure it practice.and collect a paycheck thanks to their work. The artists and entertainers deserve nothing less.

I’m a writer. I have been writing scripts since I was a kid. First got paid for it when I was twenty ($250 to adapt A Christmas Carol for a children’s theatre company -I was over the moon). I got my degree in playwriting from UCLA and I’ve been writing for film and television for over 20 years. I can dunk. People pay me to dunk. I love dunking.

The movie business has long been hostile to writers, who on good days are regarded as annoying but necessary speed bumps on the long march to creating a movie. I have my own pet theory about why this is: people assume that because they can type, they can write. It’s a tick that seems particular to my craft. No one watches a concert pianist and thinks, I could do that. No one watches a neurosurgeon slice into a brain and snorts, who’s that guy think he is? But those same people, reminded of some faint praise, scribbled in the margin of a college essay, read a script and think, writing’s not so hard.