If you have been reading these pages for any length of time you may have picked up on the fact that I write more than just here on this blog. I have over the years written quite a bit actually, but published very little of it. The process of publishing at first seemed too large a mystery to solve as I had a family to support, so none of my story ideas ever made it as far as the printed page. On top of that none of my employment positions have ever been in the academic world so the prospect of “self publishing” as it is known in academic circles, meaning I did not have the support and oversight of an academic institution (which is different to how it is defined in the actual publishing world where it means you cover the costs of publishing the first 1000 or so copies of a book yourself) also seemed too far a distance to bridge.

That all changed in late 2019 and early 2020 (just prior to the pandemic) when I made a plan and committed to writing about the things which had been rattling around in my head for as long as I can remember as well as some of the, I don’t know what to call it here, professional (?) ideas I had developed in the past ten years as a psychologist.

I, like many others, was derailed a bit by the pandemic but I managed to readdress my intentions and actually finish the first draft of my first book earlier this year. I put it aside as my mine was captivated with another idea which I felt compelled to complete prior to finishing the first few rounds of edits.

Well that’s only half true. I actually came up with an idea of how I could retie the chapters and materials discussed in the book with a fairy tale analysis I had quickly completed as an introduction but I wasn’t sure 1) It had a place in my lofty ideals for this book as I feared it may make the materials a bit too silly and 2) I wasn’t really sure how to actually do it, only that I really thought I should. I found my self tapped in the corner I had painted myself into.

I did eventually work out those details and have been feeling the pull back to the materials so that I can get back into it and hopefully discover that it is not actually the monumental task I imagine it to be. Of course I also felt, and still feel, compelled to complete the academic piece as I feel I am very near the end of the research part (which is not the fun part by a long stretch) and ready to begin the writing part.

Then I had the conference and ended up stopping all my writing (even for this blog) for more weeks than I had intended….I am beginning to think maybe this piece is about procrastination and not AI…but I did pull myself up off the couch and back to the writing desk.

and that is when it happened.

The writers strike which had been going on for some time expanded to the screen actors guild. While I openly admit this is not really happening to me but it is effecting me. In fact it is effecting all of us who dream of someday adding their name to the list of published authors.

For those of you who don’t already know the information publicized about the writer’s strike when it first began stated the purpose of the strike was to sort out getting paid for streaming services. This was inevitable in my opinion as I am old enough to recall when the same thing happened twice before as technology emerged.

The first writer’s strike I recall happened in the mid1980’s because of the videotape rental industry exploded in popularity and the second happened when videotapes were replaced by DVD’s in the rental market. The reason for this in part is the royalties due those who actually created the materials was not included in the contracts for the new technologies because they did not exist at the time. Of course the other part was because the studios who were signing the new contracts to allow the rental industry to exist were purposefully leaving all the creative talent out of the contract, which is exactly what they are being accused of by the sticking unions now.

We saw a brief introduction to this when, in the midst of the pandemic shutdown Disney decided to release the Scarlet Johansson move The Black Widow directly through its streaming service. It made a degree of sense to me at the time. Theaters were shut down and Disney had at least some money tied up in the movie through their purchase of Marvel Studios and they were not making any money through their other sources as well everything was shut down, but I do recall wondering at the time how Ms. Johansson felt about the move.

My question was answered when she filed a law suit which among other things accused Disney of breach of contract. You see the bulk of the income from staring I the movie was to come from box office revenue which if there is no box office release was to be nonexistent.

I’m not sure if Gal Gadot fought the streaming release of her sequel to Wonder Woman but as far as I know she did not sue. As you may recall Wonder Woman 1984 (or whatever it was called) was released simultaneously online and in theaters which I am sure cut down on the box office revenue which is probably a large part of Ms. Gadot’s paycheck as well.

And then there is one of my favorite video clips which regularly comes up in my instagram feed. You may have seen it where Snoop Dogg is being interviewed about something and the subject of music streaming comes up and he goes off on a five minute well worded rant about being confused about how one is to get paid for such a service existing. In true Snoop Dogg style he begins with, “Streamers got to get they shit together,” and goes into what I consider an very elegantly worded critique of the befuddlement he and other artist have when it comes to releasing their music to a streamer.

“In the old days,” he continues, “I sold a record for $9.99 and if I sold a million of them there was $9 million which then got chopped up. You get your piece and so on until everyone got paid and the rest went to the artist. Now for a million streams I get paid like 100 bucks and all I can think is where’d all that money go?”

I also recall a time when Peter Frampton testified before congress on the subject (where was Snoop that day?) and told the committee investigating the business practices of streaming services. He said, “For 500,000 downloads of my song Baby I Love Your Way, I was paid $1500.” I don’t recall much of what happened after he made that statement but I do recall the committee chair interrupting the congress person who was saying something to ask Mr. Frampton to repeat his statement.

I can hear you all now, and I agree, but I don’t make music or write movie scripts. While I sincerely doubt my book on identity formation would make a very compelling movie, that is not how this strike is effecting me, and you. Or at least how it could.

You see there is this new spiffy cool computer program out there called Artificial Intelligence and what it does is teach itself how to do things. AI can write poetry or stories or songs, and yes even movie scripts and it learned to do that by reading everything which is available within a given date set. Usually that data set is decided by the owners and creators of the AI program and is limited to a specific type and quantity, but that is changing.

With increasing regularity AI is being fed the internet as a learning tool. Maybe not all of the internet, but I do believe that day is coming.

And if your book or song or movie script happens to be part of that data set which the AI learns from you as the original author of that material do not get paid for providing that learning material. There are already law suits which are labeling this as copyright infringement.

but even that isn’t why I sat down to write this piece.

As a budding young author I have dreams of getting my current book and future ones as well, published by a major publishing house and I just now, well an hour ago now, saw a post where an author was complaining that the contract which a major publishing house sent him and which he must sign in order to get his book published has an AI Clause which stipulates that by agreeing to publish his book he is agreeing to allow the publishing house now or in the future to feed his book into an AI program so it can learn to write like him and when it does eventually learn to write like him, he agrees to let the publishing house publish books the AI program has written. All without any additional compensation.

so there you have it folks. The real problem with AI is that the industry which many of us dream of being a part of is right now conspiring to steal our work from us and completely cut us our of the money making aspect of our work.

Maybe AI won’t one day decide to kill us all. Maybe AI will just replace us so completely in the market place that evolution will deal us out of the game of life altogether…..