Nolte: Disney Launches A.I. Task Force to Cut Costs

Disney has launched a task force to see how artificial intelligence (A.I.) can be used to cut costs, reports Reuters.

“As evidence of its interest,” the report says, “Disney has 11 current job openings seeking candidates with expertise in artificial intelligence or machine learning.”

These 11 “positions touch virtually every corner of the company,” including movies and television, along with the theme parks:

This supporter sees AI as one tool to help control the soaring costs of movie and television production, which can swell to $300 million for a major film release like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” or “The Little Mermaid.” Such budgets require equally massive box office returns simply to break even. Cost savings would be realized over time, the person said.

For its parks business, AI could enhance customer support or create novel interactions, said the second source as well as a former Disney Imagineer, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Watching actors and writers strike in opposition to A.I. is like watching buggy drivers protest against their employers purchasing those new-fangled automobiles. If the day ever comes when A.I. can do a better job of writing this column than I can, I won’t go on strike. How do you protest the future, progress, and the inevitable? You have to roll with the times. You have to get out of the way of the tide. At least do it with some dignity.

If it saves them money, removes the headaches inherent in dealing with human beings, and ensures a strike will never again stop them from doing business, there is no way these big corporations will not use A.I. And who can blame them?

Here’s the other thing that anyone familiar with Hollywood history will tell you… Nothing would make these studios happier than never having to deal with an “artist” again. They spend half-billion dollars on a movie only to have the director and actors run out and trash half the potential customers at Nazis. Seriously, nothing would make the studios happier than to be able to create products without all the personnel headaches, drama queens, neurotics, and egos.

What’s more, if A.I. develops a product—movies, music, TV shows, books—the public enjoys more than the garbage we have now, it is all over for today’s “artists.”

And don’t come to me for sympathy.

I know there are exceptions, but those exceptions are too rare for me not to advocate for throwing out the bath water, baby and all.

More than 99 percent of America’s artistic community hates my guts and enjoys nothing more than denigrating and insulting me. I’m all for it if A.I. can replace these bigoted and untalented jerks with less divisive art that unites us around universal themes. I’m honestly supposed to pretend to care if a bunch of marginally-talented, left-wing haters, perverts, and crybabies lose their jobs to a robot?

No.

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