Dollars & Sense

Hollywood Gets “Amazoned” 🤖

Over the last three decades, Hollywood and many that rely on the entertainment industry have embraced ordering goods over Amazon.com.  Recap: Amazon is a technology company that often cuts costs by replacing humans with code and robots and bypasses local red tape like, um, taxes and labor rules.  Hollywood writers, producers, and ticket goers embraced a technology company that made their lives easier but often at the cost of others (aka retail workers). 

Today, technology is hurting these entertainment folks just like their tech darling Amazon hurt our retail industry.  Hollywood labor is on strike over Netflix streaming royalties and artificial intelligence (AI) movie making.

Hollywood actors and writers likely thought their jobs couldn’t be replaced by technology like the store cashier’s job. They happily ordered books, plates, and klieg lights with a click. Now, they realize they were wrong.  Much like ordering via Amazon, you can save a lot of money making a movie using AI. Computers don’t require state labor taxes, awards parties, or SAG rules. AI may be be able to write drafts of a film, replicate actors, design scenery, and even do its marketing campaign.  It could shrink a shoot from 10 days to 5 days and reduce its cost by 50%. One has infinite choices with AI for pennies on the dollar. This may be good for the studio and movie goer but it’s bad for the help.  We saw similar trends in retail when Amazon arrived.  Amazon offers infinite choices at half the price delivered in half the traditional delivery time.  Sadly, there were no protests or rallies. In fact, Hollywood and most of America embraced Amazon’s tech world.  To see tech upend Hollywood is cinematic karma.  Sorry, Jennifer Aniston, you may need to cut back on your Amazon deliveries to your Montecito mansion because AI replaced you. Welcome to our Luddite club. 

Hollywood is not alone. There are lots of other industries in which its workers have embraced shopping on Amazon, including health care, education, and government.  I hope technology nips at their jobs, too, and they are reminded that they are just as important as the store clerk they bypassed with each shopping click. 

The bigger picture I see is that many Americans have been turning their back on the indie, often non-tech, retail community.  I have a friend that works in government relations for a university in Rochester, NY, my hometown. Five years ago, he, his university, the local hospital, and local officials all collaborated to solicit Amazon via cash perks to locate a second headquarters (HQ2) in my city.  This was an affront to the local retailers. That’s like the mayor of Hollywood offering to give AI company ChatGPT money to set up shop in town.  Sadly, my friend and his employer weren’t alone: 200 other cities offered Amazon money to “pick” their city. (Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, bid for Amazon’s HQ2: https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/18/16905670/amazon-headquarters-los-angeles-finalist-hq2 .)

It’s great to embrace technology, as long as it doesn’t take your job—but it will. We need to support each other and band together before there’s no job left untouched. We don’t want a Hollywood ending. 

……..

Read the WSJ article about AI in the Hollywood strike:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-the-core-of-hollywoods-ai-fight-how-far-is-too-far-f57630df

Read about NYC’s Amazon HQ2 bid here: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/amazon-hq2-long-island-city-virginia.html

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Amazon hollywood hq2

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