LAT: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley's magical thinking

[DBoon]

In one respect, the actors and writers of Hollywood uniting on the picket lines in a historic, industry-shaking strike is a tale as old as time: one of workers fighting bosses for better pay. Yet the reason this battle is shaping up to be so uniquely intractable and momentous — as you might have gathered from all the headlines about artificial intelligence and streaming economics — is very much of our moment.

But it’s not, ultimately, technology that’s at the root of the problem. It’s that the studio executives both new and old have embraced the powerful — and ultimately disastrous — magical thinking pumped out by Silicon Valley for the last 10 years.

Studio heads are touting the disruptive properties of digital streaming, the transformative power of AI, a brave, unpredictable new world for entertainment writ large — and how writers and actors must adapt to this new future. But just as it did when it was issuing from the tech sector during the 2010s, this talk too often amounts to a smokescreen that lets executives and investors line their pockets and risks leaving workers holding the bag.
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In the end, the answer is immaterial. Silicon Valley’s invasion of Hollywood brought with it science fictional notions of growth for the industry, a penchant for secrecy and unaccountability and the expectation that it could get away with treating workers like robots or invisible code. We’re seeing what happens when those notions meet, for one of the first times, with a powerful, organized resistance.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-07-21/column-hollywood-sag-aftra-strike-strike-silicon-valleys-magical-thinking