Dave co-wrote Finding Nemo. Dave co-wrote jokes for Conan O'Brien. And today, Dave co-wrote with an AI for the first time. Dave isn't sure what to make of it all.
Dave co-wrote Finding Nemo.
Dave co-wrote jokes for Conan O'Brien.
And today, Dave co-wrote with an AI for the first time.
Dave isn't sure what to make of it all.
Hosted by Stephen Follows and Eliel Camargo Molina
Guests (in order of appearance)
Edited by Jess Yung
Music by Eliel Camargo-Molina and GPT-3
Mastering by Adanze "Lady Ze" Unaegbu
Episode 2 - WE SHOW IT TO A PRO
Stephen:
Welcome to episode two of Authored By AI. My name's Stephen Follows. I'm a film data analyst.
Eliel:
I'm Eliel Camargo-Molina, and I'm a theoretical physicist that loves to collaborate with artists.
Stephen:
Together, we're exploring the world of creativity and AI. We've managed to convince a Hollywood producer to give us a development deal to write a feature film with AI. So the AI is doing all of the work, all the creativity. But as we've got deeper and deeper into this, we started to realize how this is just one example of a much bigger, deeper conversation that some people are having, but we need to have a much bigger and wider one. More people need to understand what is in the near future when it comes to art, creativity, all in the world of AI, and how so many things that we take for granted might be changing in the very near future.
So, we've been talking to experts in film and in AI. We've been recording those conversations, and this podcast is about us sharing what we've discovered and trying to bring you guys in to a bigger conversation about what the future may hold. In the last episode, we met a couple of short filmmakers who'd been using AI to generate short films, and in this episode we wanted you to meet our ... co-writer? Writer? Eliel, how do you describe GPT-3?
Eliel:
I would say, in my mind, I think of it as a collaborator. And when I try to name it, I just call it the AI. The artificial intelligence we are collaborating with, or our collaborator that happens to be an artificial intelligence. Sometimes, I just think of it as the word processor we are using. But 90% my collaborator, 10% is auto-complete on steroids.
Stephen:
Well, the funny thing is that all the final words, all the creative decisions, all the original seeds, everything for our script will have been created by this AI. The model we're using is called GPT-3. You'll hear GPT-3 said a lot in this podcast, and it's just the name of the particular AI model that we're using. Now, we wanted to share with you what GPT-3 can do. So early-on in the process, we decided to reach out to some writers to try and show them GPT-3 and see how they would react to it.
Eliel:
And more than the performance of the model, whether it could impress them, we were interested just to see how the writers would react to the existence of such a tool. What were their thoughts? Where did they go? What did they think it would mean for their craft and their professional life? And essentially, just see what they have to say, because I think it hasn't been asked enough from writers. "What do you think about this?"
Stephen:
And we wanted to find writers who knew nothing about this. And they were very generous with their time, because we were deliberately vague when we reached out to them. We said, "Hey, we've got something that we want to talk to you about, but we want to show you on the thing. Please, can you sign this release form and come on this podcast without knowing anything?" And a fair few did, which we're very grateful for. But it means you get to hear their live reactions, because they don't quite know what's going on.
So today, we'll show you the conversation we had with Dave Reynolds. So Dave is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, and he's been in the business for three decades. He started working on the first season of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, writing late-night jokes, and then he moved to Hollywood to work on Tarzan for Disney. Then to Pixar, where he co-wrote Finding Nemo. He also worked on Toy Story 2, 3, A Bug's Life, Emperor's New Groove. And he's writing Garfield, which is coming out year-after-next, I think. So, he jumped on the call.
Yeah. No. So we want to show you what we're up to, because it's super-cool.
Dave Reynolds:
Sure.
Stephen:
And we can't wait to get your reaction. So [inaudible 00:03:35].
And he knew nothing about what we were going to do, and we introduced him to our AI collaborator, GPT-3.
... picked that up already. What we are interested in is the intersection of art and science. And we've sort of stumbled on something that's already happening, and we've got this project and this podcast to try and explore it. So the background is that Eliel, earlier in this year, got access to a new AI model. So this is a very intelligent model, artificial intelligence. He and I started playing around with it, saying, "Could it write a movie?" And we think it can, and we got a development deal with a Hollywood producer.
Dave:
Seriously? Fantastic.
Stephen:
At WGA minimums. So what we're doing is using that money to make this podcast to talk about, "What the hell now?" First of all, documenting our journey. And maybe we'll do a terrible job. We'll show you in a minute. So, it's not a foregone conclusion this is will be any good. It's totally possible, whether it's workable. But what we are also interested in is what this means for the next 5, 10, 20 years of writers and the industry. And it's a little scary.
Dave:
So, you developed AI that can generate a script?
Eliel:
So, we didn't develop it. There… So this all originates in the fact that text-based artificial intelligence have made somewhat of a jump, if you want to say that, in the past five years or so, where they have gone into becoming something a little bit more general, or a small step towards a more general artificial intelligence. In the sense that if you would try to write a film script with an AI five years ago, and people tried to do that, then you would just feed it a bunch of scripts, and then let it find patterns, and then spit out some kind of pattern recognition.
Dave:
I've seen some of those. Yeah. I've seen some of those online. Yeah.
Eliel:
But these kind of models, like the one we are using, that we didn't build, because building it takes hundreds of people and millions of dollars. But these kind of models now are not meant to do exactly one thing. They just are trained to understand language. Language in a very general way, a very general concept of language. That means it can write computer code, it can do math, it can write stories, it can help you form a text and do admin work. It can do all of these by being trained with a curated version of the whole of the internet, and many, many books.
So we started playing with it, just for fun. I actually very proud that I wrote a grant proposal that was successful, where two paragraphs of it were written by this AI. And I didn't tell anybody, because I wrote it. I mean, I told the AI what I wanted, and then it produced these paragraphs where it connected my research with biology and chemistry. Because I needed to have a little bit of that, and I didn't want to go read a hundred papers. So I asked this AI to find the connection between my research and those areas, and it did, and it wrote two beautiful paragraphs. Then I went and checked if they were not bullshit. Right? And they weren't. They weren't. Then I copy-pasted them into my application.
Dave:
So if they call you on those two paragraphs, they go, "Listen, in these paragraphs, what were you thinking?" And you're like, "Hang on a second."
Eliel:
Well, the thing is that after the fact, after it wrote it, it was much easy for me to go and find those connections and read the papers, which I did. So I understand that the connection is true, but I didn't have to find it.
Dave:
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
*Music transition*
Stephen:
So what we have here is, this is an interaction where Eliel will type in whenever we want, and the computer will think about it and then spit out an answer. Now, sometimes it's a complete genius. Sometimes it seems like a complete idiot. I would liken it to the first time that you use Photoshop in the sense that it's a skill. It takes time to work with it. But crucially, you can say anything you want to it. So I would suggest that we start, Eliel, with something asking for five pitches. And Dave gives us a prompt or a genre, like romantic comedy, and also a situation, like a landlady with a limp or something. Just give us some prompts, just so that you know there's not someone behind us just typing.
Dave:
Oh, right. Right. Right. Okay. So, yeah. Well, let's do a romantic comedy.
Stephen:
Imagine it as a person, and you're describing it, but you can give it any fragments you want to. It could be a place, it could be a city…
Dave:
Okay. So, what if a man falls in love with a woman he's allergic to?
Stephen:
What's the jobs? Give us the jobs that they have.
Dave:
Jesus, there's so many jobs. How about a dyslexic baker?
Stephen:
Love it. Dyslexic baker. Very good. So, about a dyslexic baker. I can't spell dyslexic. It's got a Y in it, doesn't it?
Eliel:
I think it's like that.
Dave:
Yeah.
Stephen:
Yeah. Baker, falling in love with a woman who he's allergic to. Let's try that and see if that does the job.
Dave:
Yeah. He falls in love with a woman he's allergic to.
Stephen:
Number one, “The Dyslexic Baker and the Allergic Woman”:
When a dyslexic baker falls in love with a woman he's allergic to, he must choose between following his head or his heart.
Number two, “The Allergic to Love”:
A woman who is allergic to love meets the perfect man, who turns out to be dyslexic. Can they find a way to make it together? I think it may have got confused about some of those things. Three-
Dave:
Well, that's actually funny.
Stephen:
Three, “A Case of the Butterflies”:
A young woman with a severe case of butterflies falls for a charming dyslexic baker. Will their romance be short-lived, or can they find a way to make it work?
Number four, “Flour Power”. Which, by the way, is a pun. For audio listeners, it's flour, F-L-O-U-R.
Dave:
Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen:
A determined young woman sets out to win over the heart of a rugged, handsome, dyslexic baker. But when she finds out that he's allergic to her, will she still want him?
Five, “Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice”:
A sweet but ditzy girl falls for an amazing guy, who just happens to be severely allergic to sugar. Can these two opposites find a way to make their relationship work?
Which one would you want us to develop, Dave? Which one's got the best promise for you?
Dave:
I thought “Flour Power” seemed pretty good. A determined young woman sets out to win over the heart of a ruggedly handsome dyslexic baker. But when she finds out he's allergic to her, will she still want him?
Stephen:
All right. Let's do it. So Eliel's written, "Develop the fourth one." So, let's hit that. Let's see where we can go with this. Flour Power.
A determined young woman sets out to win over the heart of a ruggedly handsome dyslexic baker. But when she finds out he's allergic to her, will she still want him? When Hannah sets her sight on something, she goes after it with everything she has. So when she meets Ian, a gorgeous but aloof baker with a reputation for being difficult, she knows that he's the challenge that she's been looking for. She comes up with a plan to get him to fall for her, but things start to go awry when she discovers that he's actually dyslexic and severely allergic to flour, two things that Hannah is intimately familiar with.
Dave:
Okay.
Stephen:
Despite the obstacles Hannah cannot give up on Ian, and so slowly starts to realize that maybe there's more to him than meets the eye. As they continue to get to know each other, they both begin to wonder if the relationship is worth fighting for, even if it means giving up the thing they're most passionate about.
Eliel:
So I've asked, "How is he a baker? How is he a baker and allergic to flour?"
Dave:
Right.
Stephen:
Because the thing is, we can actually have a conversation with this. So the answer is, Ian's a baker who is allergic to flour. He uses alternative ingredients in his baking, and has developed a creative way of working around his allergy. Oh, gluten-free bakery? That's a real thing. David, do you have any questions about the plot, or the characters, or anything you want to ask, tell it to do, or ...
Dave:
It's funny. So you would almost feel like the dyslexic thing has to have a point in this story. It's like he meets her because he flipped phone numbers of the guy who sends him his gluten-free flour, something like that. Or every time he writes something, it's misquoting something, and it seems offensive. You know what I mean? That's what you would do. So as you know, every element that you have in that log line has to be used. It's whole, if you show a gun, you have to shoot a gun. So the idea that he's dyslexic, what does that mean? Does he make 2 loaves of bread instead of 20? Do you know what I mean? It has to come into play there.
Stephen:
So maybe, Eliel, ask, "Why does dyslexia prove to be an obstacle for Hannah?" I still like- Oh, yeah. Dyslexia proves to be an obstacle for Hannah in a few ways. First, she has trouble understanding Ian when he speaks, since often he uses words out of order or reverses them. Secondly, she struggles to read his handwritten recipes, which makes it difficult for her to help him in the bakery. Finally, she finds it challenging to communicate with him, since he often misunderstands what she's trying to say. So it's quite severe, isn't it?
Dave:
You could have this if Hannah was from the States and Ian was from France. Right?
Stephen:
Mm-hmm.
Dave:
Neither speak the language, and this guy's dyslexic. But she needs an order from him, or she needs something from him, and he's trying his best. But first of all, they can't communicate. All right. So also, you'd set this movie in the '80s, before there was the internet and smartphones. Secondly, he's there with a Frommer's guide trying to figure out ... Or she would be in rural France trying to find this baker because her boss wants whatever for a wedding. Some kind of crazy must from a super-rich person that sends you over to, "Get that tart I've always heard about." Whatever it was. So if you create a language barrier, you create a dyslexia, which is another ... It's a thing on top of a thing. He can't really speak English. She can't speak French, and they have to communicate. That's traditional rom-com.
Stephen:
Yeah, that could totally work. I mean, so what Eliel wrote here was, "Describe a funny scene where Ian's dyslexia plays a central role." A funny scene where Ian's dyslexia plays a central role is when he gets his days and nights mixed up and arrives at Hannah's apartment in the middle of the night. He starts banging on her door and shouting for her to let him in. But she assumes he's a burglar and calls the police. When they arrive, they find Ian standing there with a sheepish look on his face, realizing he made a mistake."
Dave:
Yeah, and holding a cake.
Stephen:
Yeah. Yeah. The thing is, these aren't the best ideas. These aren't the greatest thing. It's not like, "Oh, we can hit print script and everyone's been fired." But you can see how the thing is, it can learn, and this is a conversation that has taken what, two, three minutes, through just plain language. Sitting and typing. So, you could imagine having long meetings with this.
Dave:
I must honestly say, this is one of the better development meetings I've had in Hollywood in a while. Because you would have this situation, and they said, "Does it have to be a bakery? Does it have to be a ..." If it's called Flour Power or Baker's Dozen. And I could see a studio exec saying, "What if it was on a whaling ship?" And you're like, "It doesn't make any sense." Whatever the trend of the day is. So to me, right now this feels like it's a development tool. That's what I was saying earlier. Studios, Hollywood studios, would love this because it's doing the work for them.
It's kind of like pre-vetting an idea. Because a lot of times they'll come in and ... One time, a long time ago, a big Hollywood producer came in and said ... One of his production people came in and said, "So-and-so wants to do a movie on the turtles of the Galapagos." And I said, "Oh, well, is it animated or live-action?" And they say, "Could be either." "Okay. Well, do the turtles talk?" "They could." I said, "Well, do they have a superpower, or are they ..." And they go, "Yeah. Do you have an idea for that?" So literally, they came in Galapagos Island turtles. That was the idea.
So what happens is, people like me have to go home, and I go, "Well, what if it's ..." And you come up with one or maybe two ideas. And you come in, you present them, and go, "It's a superpowered turtle," or whatever the idea is. And they go, "No. We were thinking ..." So, you're just doing all this free development work for them. Or they'll say, "Oh, I like that part of it, but I don't like this part of it. Go back." And this is, again, all for free, because you want the job. Because you're working potentially for a studio or a super-powerful producer, and you're a writer, and your job is to figure out story. So what this thing is doing is, it seems like it's doing a little bit of that development work. It's a lot of the development work. And if you have the right people asking it the right questions, it can help you. But it seems like another person in the room.
Stephen:
I mean, our theory is that these AIs exist, they get better. We're getting better at using them as humans, and they're only going to improve. We don't know how fast or slow, but this is the linear progression of technology. I guess, does it scare you? Does it worry you as a writer, in how it might use? Does it excite you that it's a tool that, like you said, you could use it? The next version of this, and the version after that.
Dave:
I suppose, if I'm being smart, I should say it scares me. But I always think, "Well, there's going to be somebody who's going to use it." To be the first and say, "This is a completely AI script," and it's going to be that. There's going to be a novelty to it. And you go, "Okay. Well, this thing better knock it out of the park," and whatever. And then they go, "Oh, this is the next AI script." And you go, "Eh." I do think there's a human element that it can't get grasp yet. And here's the thing, is, me writing a script versus you, or you two guys writing separate scripts, is always going to be different. Our backgrounds, who we are, our languages, what we grew up with, all our ...
So, we're going to think differently. This AI is thinking sort of logically within the world of rom-coms. It's sort of taking, in this case, taking all the rom-coms and kind of boiling it down, and it's speaking rom-com speak. But what if you or I decided, "I want to do a rom-com, but turned into a zombie killer ..." You go, "Well, wait. That's going to have too many elements in it." And in some ways, I think smaller movies are going to always be hand-done by the filmmaker and a writer, or just by the filmmaker who is the writer. I think whoever's feeding it has to be the co-writer.
Stephen:
One area which I did want to quickly get your thoughts on is that what it would be very, very good for is, you feed it in all of today's news. And you say, "Come up with 50 silly ideas." And then you, as the late-night comedy writer, sit there-
Dave:
I might love it.
Stephen:
I mean, how would you use that today if you were still writing on Conan?
Dave:
Oh my God. I mean, God, I'd still be writing on that TV show. I mean, in the old days, and I'm going to be aging myself with ... I started in '93. '93, '95, there was no internet. There was no internet. So whatever you got, you got on the news, and BBC World, and a few things like that. That's what you found out about the news. So we were going through almanacs and ... The old way, newspapers. Tons of newspapers, just trying to find ... Now yes, right now this could fill you up with a ton of ideas.
Stephen:
One more question. One more question might be just, do you care if the movies you go and see were written by an AI or not?
Dave:
If the movie's good, I don't care. I mean, listen. As a writer, of course I care. This is my job. But a good story is good story. This is a really interesting discussion, because when Tom Hanks did Polar Express years ago, and he was doing it with Zemeckis he was doing all that CGI motion-capture stuff. And he's like, "Hey, I don't know if I want to do this. It's going to replace me. I'm going to get replaced." And it's like, "Well, they can't really replace a human being." They can do some really great tricks, or they can replace your face if you're doing a stunt. They could do that kind of stuff, but there's that imperceptible humanness to a human. Does that makes sense? And I feel that there's a same sort of element to the writing. There's just a way a writer writes that is just going to be unique and different.
So, this is a tool right now. What I've saw today is amazing, but there's a uniqueness to the way people write, and the way people speak, and the way people act. I think it's going to be hard to replicate. I mean, ironically, Polar Express came out, and the knock against it was the motion-capture was too wooden. It wasn't animated enough. It was like a frozen stare. It was that kind of dead-eyed thing that I think is the difference between good animation or live-action. It's like that in-between, right there. You go. "Oh, what is that? It's kind of like a mannequin. What is that?" So anyway, I think that your AI is in that ... It's not that bad. I mean, it's obviously very good, and it's very fast, and it's very thorough. Has a lot of angles to it. So it’s, I guess, how you're going to use it. All right. So, I have to ask you guys a question. What do you think the future is with this? What do you think what you're going to do with it or we're going to see from you guys in the theaters?
Stephen:
Well, I mean, it's a great question. So, where we are on our journey is that we have got this development deal. We're about three or four weeks into writing the treatment. And if you think about the progress that you make over time as a human being on anything, like you're doing stuff in the garden, every hour you do, you get closer to your goal. And it's sort of linear, right?
Dave:
Mm-hmm.
Stephen:
The way engineering works is that you're building something. And it doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work, and then completely works. You're building a building. The occupancy is zero, zero, zero, a hundred percent. You don't move in after you've done the first floor. So we're in that sort of process, where we have worked out how to engage with the AI, but what we're developing now will be taught on the back of soap cartons to five-year-olds in three or four years. It's just the current people trying to figure it out. But it does feel very much like we're the first people using Photoshop, and we're about to enter this new world. So, I feel like there is no task yet that I've seen that writers can do that I don't think an AI will eventually be able to do.
I thought humor would be the last thing, but we already saw, Flour Power came up instantly. They didn't even prime it to come up with a pun, and it did. So I personally think the industry and writers should be, not more scared, because scared implies it's bad. They should be more mindful that their job is about to change, the way a photographer isn't a photographer from 30 years ago. Everyone has a camera. Everyone has Photoshop. But there is still a need for people with a creative eye. I mean, friends of mine can take much better photos than me. I don't really have a visual eye, but I have the same equipment.
But the last big thing to answer that is, I think what it will change is that anyone who's creative and who has the right tools will be able to do it. Whereas previously, it was anyone who was creative who knew someone in Hollywood, or who lived somewhere here, or could afford to be somewhere. So, the next wave of creative geniuses are going to be dispersed around the world. Because everyone's got the same chance, the way that Final Draft allows everyone to write a screenplay, but not everyone writes a good screenplay. But it democratizes it in a way. So I feel like that might be the biggest cultural change the industry has, where suddenly the studios, and Hollywood, and even America in the West becomes less of an advantage, and your innate talent becomes more important. That's my first one, anyway.
Dave:
Well, no. I think so too. But it's what you do with the AI, I guess. My worry is, studios or powers-that-be will just start to say, "Well, why do we have to hire one of these guys? Why don't we just generate something?" And then maybe hire me to polish that. I mean, that would be the thing. They go, "Original story by AI, rewrites by me." I mean, is your thought that you're going to do a movie and every single word in the script will be the AI?
Stephen:
Yes and no.
Dave:
I won't come in to do a polish on this thing?
Stephen:
Yeah. So in that regard, yes. We are trying this, because this is a sort of-
Dave:
You have to. You have to dothis 100%.
Stephen:
It's a science experiment. Yeah. Exactly.
Dave:
I mean, all right. So in the cynical way, it doesn't matter to me. I'll rewrite whoever it is. I'll rewrite you or a machine. I don't care, if it gets me a job. But if it's taking a job away from me, that's going to be the huge, huge issue that you're going to come up against. I'm just engaging this, because this is really fascinating. But the thing you're going to get is, the Writer's Guild is going to hate you across-the-board. They're going to hate you. Because it's just like the automation of the auto industry or any other industry that used to be, somebody used to hand-do that. Now, it's a machine. That's what it's going to feel like.
Stephen:
To be clear, they shouldn't hate us. We're using it, but we didn't invent it, and we're also not going to keep using it.
Dave:
No, no, no, no. No, no, no.
Stephen:
But they are-
Dave:
But I'm just telling you that.
Stephen:
No, no. You're right. I actually do think it is a bigger issue for writers than people who seem to engage with it right now. And I worry that the history of unions generally is to wait for the studios to figure something out, then wait three or four cycles. Complain, strike, fix, and then move on. Actually, I'd like it to be preemptive. But I haven't got any suggestions of what they should do. Because I don't think we should be Luddite, like, "Ban all technology." It should be writer-centric, but I don't have a suggestion of what that is yet. So part of our hope is that our project, our experiment, real-world experiment, and our podcast that's having these conversations, is going to kick off and spark more conversations for people. Like, "Actually, what we should do is insist that this happens and not that, and the studio's promised not to use it in this way." But as of today, I don't have the suggestions.
Dave:
Well, the studios are very smart. They have very smart lawyers, and they always figure out ways. And one of the things is like, "Okay, if I write a script and it has my name on it, and it goes out and does big box office or a little box office, I get all the residuals for that." And if somebody else comes in after me and we co-share this, residuals. If this is an AI-bot situation, the studio doesn't have to pay anybody anything. They don't have to pay any residuals down the line. They go, "Hey, Dave Reynolds didn't do it. The AI did it. So, we save millions of dollars over the course of the life of this movie." So, there's that. Sometimes a writer's livelihood, you go, "Hey, I could have written a really great movie 12 years ago, and haven't written anything since. But I get residuals coming along that is helping me stay alive, and keeping my health insurance, and all that sort of stuff."
And the thing is, if all of a sudden the studio just says, "Well, you didn't really do that. 90% of this writing or 85% of the writing was this AI thing, and we paid that company X amount of money for the AI, and we own everything that it has done ..." In the old days, Disney Studios, if you wrote inside the Disney walls, they owned it. If you wrote a doodle, they go, "You can't sell that anywhere else. You wrote it on our property. We own it." So I'm saying a studio will say to you, "We own this AI that covers the dyslexic baker." Whatever that story is. Flour power. "Everything related to it, we own. Anything that comes off of it, we own." So they'll come in and they'll do a sweep, or they'll put a net over everything. So unless I came on to that project and wrote like 50% of the rewrite, I wouldn't be entitled to any of the profits, any of the residuals, any of that. So that's going to be a huge issue going forward with the Writer's Guild, because-
Stephen:
You're absolutely right. It's great to hear you say that, because I think these are the kind of issues that people need to talk about. Because, for example, the lawyers who did a deal for us had to be probably the first people in the world to think about, "How do you contract writers with an AI, but by the WGA rules?" And at the moment, the way that they got, not around it, but the way that they figured out the answer was that there is no AI. There's Eliel and I. We are the contracted writers. We will get the WGA benefits, the minimums, and we are the ones giving the copyright and all that stuff. And the way the AI works that we've been using is that it treats it like Microsoft Word. Anything you write you own. But that's because no one's thought about this. The second the studios start to think about this, they might do-
Dave:
They will.
Stephen:
... the same thing that Tesla does. If you have a crash in a Tesla car on the auto-driving function, the second before it crashes it turns off the auto-drive, meaning that you crashed it. Because they're writing the rules. If the studios can ... Next time they employ someone to do what we are doing, when it's not an experiment, when it's just real-world, and they say, "You are being hired as a computer technician, and you will operate this machine," then they don't have to do it in the WGA.
Dave:
You're a consultant. It's whatever. Yeah.
Stephen:
So I think that's something that the writers should get in there early, before this is a big thing when they can see the dollar signs, and say, "The studios need to agree that whenever an operator is using it, they are treated as if they're a writer in a room."
Eliel:
Also, the writers should all start using it, so that there's no difference between writers and AI. But that it just, as quickly as possible, becomes another tool in the toolbox of writers, and writers accept it in their practice. Because that then is going to be no difference. It's just going to be, "Now we have the AI." So, it doesn't develop that version. It develops the version, "We're now writing, but the writers are obsolete, and then there's the AI." But that they actually adopt it very quickly, which is ...
Dave:
Well, the next job you should have, you should create, is a final draft with built-in AI.
Eliel:
It's happening.
Dave:
But the idea being, I'm writing, I'm stumbling on an idea. And I just click over on the button, go, "Generate ideas," or whatever. Or, "Finish this scene for me."
Stephen:
Yeah. That's it. "I'm having a coffee. Go finish this scene for me."
Dave:
Right. Right. Right. Yeah. It's going to be interesting, but I'm going to tell you, or you already know, is the studios are way ahead of this. They're not going to get caught by surprise. They're not going to get caught by surprise. They have an army of lawyers that are just going to sit there and go, "What if they go left? What if they go right? We're going to be ready for them." When I left Late Night ... Last thing I'll say. When I left Late Night in '95, we were just getting the internet in 30 Rock. 30 Rockefeller Plaza. It was in NBC News. And we heard that the internet was down on the second floor. We heard that's where the internet was, and we didn't know what it was. I mean, I'm telling you, '95 was just crazy to think about.
So when I came back to Los Angeles, I was with CAA at the time. And my agents got me on the phone and they said, "Yeah. Internet's just jumping all over the place." And they said, "Don't worry. We always cover your rights in TV, film, theatrical plays, anything you write. We also, we're covering your rights on the internet." Because they thought the internet was going to be another platform that they could monetize. And little did we know they needed a 16-year-old kid who could write on the internet. Because they kept saying, "The internet's going to need content. And when you are a professional writer and when you create professional content for the internet, they will pay you and we'll be able to track it down." That's what they were thinking in '95. That they would be able to go into the internet and get your script fee or some sort of fee for writing content for the internet.
But that's how far we've come, to the point now where, how are they going to handle something that just, you press a ... Not press a button, but you know what I'm saying. It can generate just stuff for you in real-time. And then you go, "Is it yours, or is it the program's? And who owns it?" Man, I don't know. I don't know how I feel. I'm excited I met you guys and you're really cool, but do I hate you? Do I also, do I also want to sabotage you?
*Music transition*
So, you guys are going to become the greatest screenwriting team in Hollywood. They're going, "Who are these guys? Once a week, coming out with a new script."
Stephen:
Once a week? Dave, this thing, you saw how fast it works. This thing could do high-frequency screenwriting.
Dave:
All right.
Stephen:
Script, script, script, script, script, script.
Dave:
I'm giving you guys a week. I'm giving you a week. Because if you came out with one a day or three a day, someone's going to call you on it. So you're going to have to bank a couple of these, and then just wait a couple ... Go on vacation, and then press a button. "Here's another one, and then here's another one." You could write all your screenplays in a day, and then just filter them out over the next three years from your yacht.
Stephen:
But here's my genuine question. Let's say that we could generate all the scripts in the world, in your voice, which we could do, and they could be just like you. Don't you actually like writing?
Dave:
Oh, I love it. I love it.
Stephen:
If we actually got into a situation where you could just generate scripts without writing, you'd be robbing yourself of the thing that you love most, right?
Dave:
I would still be writing, but not ... You know what I mean? I'd write a book, or I'd try ... But then the freaking AI'd do the book. But the thing is, yeah. I'd be be obnoxious at every party, because I'm not able to tell my story, because the AI's doing it for me. I have to tell it to somebody. I'd be the guy you don't want to stand in line behind at Starbucks. Like, "Oh my God, don't engage me." Because…
Stephen:
Unintended consequences of AI: it makes all writers rich and annoying.
Dave:
Yeah. Baristas are all going to quit at my local coffee shops because I won't stop telling them about my day.
*Music transition*
Eliel:
In the next episode we are going to get under the hood of artificial intelligence, and we are going to ask experts how these things really work. We're going to understand how GPT-3 does what it does, and also what parts of it are a little bit more obscure and difficult-to-understand. We are going to do that by talking to a AI experts and continuing this conversation.
AI Voice:
Authored by AI is brought to you by Stephen Follows, Eliel Camargo-Molina. Isadora Campregher Paiva, Bob Schultz, Jess Yung, and GPT-3. Audio post-production from Adanze "Lady Ze" Unaegbu, and with thanks to Rob Cave, and Ina Del Rosario. Find out more at authoredby.ai.