On Letting AI Write the Story

This article from the Guardian discusses the ever present tension between humans and AI that is playing right now on the movie writing business.

“We envision a next-generation writers’ room where whenever they don’t know where to head to for the next scene, they would have Deepstory create it. The engine takes into account everything that you’ve written, and it will deliver you the next scene, or the next 10 pages, or write it to the end.”

If there is one field most technophobes seem to agree is that of Art. That’s art with a big capital A. If there is something AI can’t do that has to be art. After all isn’t art creation and appreciation the highest expression of the sensibility of human soul?

One potential drawback is that AI eliminates not only financial risk but creative risk, too. The fear is, if you fed in a vaguely challenging or experimental or atypical project into the machine – say Mulholland Drive or Under the Skin – the algorithm would discourage you from taking the gamble. Why not do a Dwayne Johnson action comedy instead?

I personally find computer-created art (AI or not) a fascinating concept. And I find it very interesting how polarizing such a concept is. Behind every piece of software or AI, there is a human component that has created such technology. So we can’t truly separate AI creation from human creations. And this concept is specially important when we are talking about decision making and bias.

Tabitha Goldstaub, a tech entrepreneur and commentator who specialises in artificial intelligence. Her work has raised deeper concerns about AI. Far from being a dispassionate tool, it often reflects the biases and prejudices of its creators, she says. “A lot of people think it’s maths so it can’t be biased, whereas in fact it’s completely the opposite way around: it’s maths, and therefore it’s data, and whatever data you feed a machine will have bias in it. The world is biased, and so these machines exacerbate our own biases.”

—‘It’s a war between technology and a donkey’ – how AI is shaking up Hollywood