I've been thinking a bit about how to characterize the implications of AI applied to traditional modes of the education and work worlds. The simple result is the application of G.K. Chesterton's fence heuristic. In short, don't tear down the fence until you know why it was put there. It is becoming increasingly evident that AI has tremendous potential for good. However, each application comes with benefits and risks. Are the benefits correctly described and are the risks and their implications understood?
I believe that it is going to come down to each individual group, business, team, and person to conduct a clear-eyed assessment of benefits and risks so that AI applications maximize benefit and minimize risk. Lacking this, many good traditional things will be lost to time. And, once lost will likely be impossible to recover. Using this article as an example, what are the systemic consequences of losing professional writers to more "cost-effective" AI algorithms? Is this really being thought through? The impacts on education is another example.
I accept that this will be hard to do. I also accept that progress marches forward. My caution here is to own the future of AI and not to let AI own the future...g.
It remains beyond me that Succession has been so highly aclaimed and won so many awards. How can this possibly be when none of the Roy "children" could even complete a full sentence? And, why is a show built on dysfunction of this nature so popular - what does that say about the current ethos of the population?
It is the same "problem" as with the Iowa Caucus: the majority of folk aren't college educated, elitist arseholes. We aren't interested in the same things. We pay your salary by buying goods and services. If your goods and services aren't up to snuff in ANY big way, we'll walk. It is called, believe it or not, commerce and the free market. Put out something good that caters to US, the market, we'll come out in droves. Look at Barbenheimer. The girls came out for the girlie thing; the boys came out for the nerdy thing. A LOT of the boys thought Barbie was neat too - neatly subversive in a Stepford Husbands way. Rings of Power tanked. Hard. House of the Dragon got watched three times through by many. Strange New Worlds is Drek; Picard Season 3 was Trek. Bosch; Reacher; Yellowstone and the couple or three spun out of it. Watch what we dump on and compare it to what we come back to, you are supposed to be a creator. Get a ruddy clue.
If you write shit that panders to Woke, of course what you write will go in the toilet ignored by droves who will go to our vast libraries of the good stuff and re-watch it. Frankly we don't NEED or WANT your shite product. If you want to write for trannies and race-baiters; go for it by all means; but that is YOUR problem: writing to lick the arseholes of a small minority of lunatics. If all your programing shits on your audience.... So long, gay boys.
Wow! Didn't know Will Arbery was on the team. He is one of the most exciting young playwrights. Like Stoppard, he brings philosophy successfully to the stage. Thanks for the footnote!
never saw a single episode. that goes for all of the so called 'must see television' since the sopranos. why? because I am not simpleminded. that's why. when I was young I read something in the newspaper [remember those?] that said television was seeking the lowest common denominator audience which I took even then [1977] to mean the same thing lowest common denominator always means when it comes to humans, the stupid people. people who can be easily manipulated and duped [twist, anyone?] and who never recognize the same old tired story being repackaged over and over again. every police show sucks. every hospital show sucks. every family based show sucks. does not matter how much perversion or malice the writers inject, they're always the same. from the awful hill street blues to nypd blue what is the difference? and when people wanted cachet from watching 'premium' channels all the fake sex and explicit violence was on display broken up by over wrought or fake depth scripts. and one is supposed to feel good because the manipulation and spectacle changed venues? anyone watching network tv in 2024 is a mouth breather. and anyone watching scripted television anywhere is a dupe and a sucker. full stop.
TV’s Golden Age tanked long before Succession. The rise of the streamers during peak pandemic was the embodiment of the decline just with more money, like the Marvelizing of movies. Netflix starting around the time they released Sense 8 went full steam ahead releasing mountains of mediocrities. Prime and HBO followed suit with forgettable but critically heralded fare such as Mozart in the Jungle or Transed.
While buoyed by a pandemic captive audience the rot had set in. Millions binged watched their way through countless shows that consistently after episode three or four would peter out. There were a few bright spots that held out promises of better things to come such as Black Mirror or The Terror. But the crap machine was in high gear cranking out one forgettable tome after another.
Then the unexpected happen. People began to venture out of their houses as the pandemic waned taking their attention spans with them. Compounding the streamer’s woes was the post George Floyd “Great Awokening” of all media giants. This gave us a historically incoherent black Anne Boleyn and Estella and girls who skateboarded in Betty, despite being uninteresting and not good at it. But hey, they were multi ethnic and girls. The crowning achievement was Anna Duvernay’s revisionist scoldfest, When They See Us. While the shit show that is Ted Lasso’s last season seemed to be written by an AI DEI administrator.
Despite the Awokenings poor ratings, the conglomerates have not let up on the DEI gas. Disney’s commitment to ideological capture, is best embodied in the words of the great Cartman of South Park, “Cast a chick and make her gay.” Be it movie or TV show, the largest entertainment engine has imbued every release with a DEI gesture in cast or script. See Snow Brown and the Seven diverse marginalized misfits. Netflix continually cranks out propaganda like Queens episode of the now magically black Macedonian, “Cleopatra”. They are now in production of casting the great Phoenician ruler descended from what are essentially Lebanese Semites, who at 34 gave Rome a hard time as a 68 year old black man named Denzel Washington. Then of course, the Exorcist reboot features a girl who harbors delusions she’s a guy. At least the demonically possessed were not so confused. Either way, representation for its own sake does not a storyline make.
The decline of TV boils down to the creative desert of bean counters combined with the mendacious rot of DEI. DIE would be a more apt acronym. Streamers hold their viewers in contempt. Taking us for fools, we take our eyeballs and our most precious commodity, time, elsewhere.
The words. The first and essential requirement. Yes, the actors can give life beyond the words, as can all the other creative elements involved, but without the words... nothing, literally.
Taking a step back, without humans putting thoughts into words and onto paper (into software, whatever)... nothing. At least nothing worthwhile.
AI-generated scripts will be as fulfilling as digital/robotic sex or lab-grown meat. Might feel good, might be tasty, but it's a road to ruin, turning our collective back on reality and humanity. No thanks.
(Just one more reason to feel sorrow for the young.)
I didn't love Succession, but I respected it, and I appreciate this piece. It's hard for me to mourn the Golden Age of TV when The Bear just gave us two fantastic, surprising seasons. I also loved Shrinking and Severance. Is anyone watching Reacher? I ask because the first season was silly but a lot of fun. This season is just awful and I'm wondering where the sparkle went.
THANK YOU. Terrible acting. Zero chemistry. Weird plot structure that ensures you don't care about anyone. I like having a few "don't have to think too hard" shows in our queue but this is not it.
When HBO began creating groundbreaking programming it ushered in a new era of entertainment for the home viewer and their competitors at Showtime, Netflix, etc. soon followed suit. HBO’s “The Wire” and “The Sopranos” paved the way for “Homeland”, “The Handmaids Tale”, “The White Lotus” and many others in between. They were free of censorship and other strictures that Networks had in place. We were presented with shows chock full of murderers, morally corrupt assholes, loathsome hypocrites and mentally/emotionally deranged characters taking us to dark places that actually exist in the real world. And who’d have thought they’d be so damn popular? They also allowed us access to comedians like Dave Chappelle who wasn’t forced to clean up his act to please the Networks and their family values friendly sponsors. But there was a trade off; you had to pay for it, though most would agree it was well worth it.
Cable networks, seeing the success of this not-made-for-TV model, moved to fill the gap in between. AMC brought us “Mad Men”, “Breaking Bad” and its spinoff “Better Call Saul” that pushed the envelope. FX and others had popular successes as well. The departure from safe, formulaic, happy-ending network shows made the network offerings nearly unwatchable (for me at least) albeit their writers were much better paid--a good gig if you could get it. Unfortunately it’s sorely lacking in entertainment value.
AI is well suited for writing scripts for the robotic characters and predictable stories the networks churn out. I don’t see it happening anytime soon for the others. There would be no “Succession”, “The Wire” or “Breaking Bad” emerging from AI world in my opinion. Some things are simply unachievable. It requires human emotion, nuance, intellectual courage and creativity that I believe can’t ever be programmed into a machine. Mike White’s mind is impossible to replicate. I hope I’m not wrong on that.
I think that's largely correct. While I can't see AI ever having the ability to get the nuance of the Succession/Mad Men/Breaking Bad sorts of scripts, I'm sure that even now it could crank out the next hundred episodes of Law and Order.
I live for Shiv
A warm glug of methadone - wow, that was stupid!
I'll never understand why Better Call Saul got passed over entirely. I'm not hating on Succession, but BCS is at least on the same level.
I've been thinking a bit about how to characterize the implications of AI applied to traditional modes of the education and work worlds. The simple result is the application of G.K. Chesterton's fence heuristic. In short, don't tear down the fence until you know why it was put there. It is becoming increasingly evident that AI has tremendous potential for good. However, each application comes with benefits and risks. Are the benefits correctly described and are the risks and their implications understood?
I believe that it is going to come down to each individual group, business, team, and person to conduct a clear-eyed assessment of benefits and risks so that AI applications maximize benefit and minimize risk. Lacking this, many good traditional things will be lost to time. And, once lost will likely be impossible to recover. Using this article as an example, what are the systemic consequences of losing professional writers to more "cost-effective" AI algorithms? Is this really being thought through? The impacts on education is another example.
I accept that this will be hard to do. I also accept that progress marches forward. My caution here is to own the future of AI and not to let AI own the future...g.
The use of ‘jejune’ in a scene with Shiv and her ex was utter perfection.
It remains beyond me that Succession has been so highly aclaimed and won so many awards. How can this possibly be when none of the Roy "children" could even complete a full sentence? And, why is a show built on dysfunction of this nature so popular - what does that say about the current ethos of the population?
It is the same "problem" as with the Iowa Caucus: the majority of folk aren't college educated, elitist arseholes. We aren't interested in the same things. We pay your salary by buying goods and services. If your goods and services aren't up to snuff in ANY big way, we'll walk. It is called, believe it or not, commerce and the free market. Put out something good that caters to US, the market, we'll come out in droves. Look at Barbenheimer. The girls came out for the girlie thing; the boys came out for the nerdy thing. A LOT of the boys thought Barbie was neat too - neatly subversive in a Stepford Husbands way. Rings of Power tanked. Hard. House of the Dragon got watched three times through by many. Strange New Worlds is Drek; Picard Season 3 was Trek. Bosch; Reacher; Yellowstone and the couple or three spun out of it. Watch what we dump on and compare it to what we come back to, you are supposed to be a creator. Get a ruddy clue.
There are still many great original shows. Many of them are limited series and many are on Apple TV.
If you write shit that panders to Woke, of course what you write will go in the toilet ignored by droves who will go to our vast libraries of the good stuff and re-watch it. Frankly we don't NEED or WANT your shite product. If you want to write for trannies and race-baiters; go for it by all means; but that is YOUR problem: writing to lick the arseholes of a small minority of lunatics. If all your programing shits on your audience.... So long, gay boys.
Wow! Didn't know Will Arbery was on the team. He is one of the most exciting young playwrights. Like Stoppard, he brings philosophy successfully to the stage. Thanks for the footnote!
never saw a single episode. that goes for all of the so called 'must see television' since the sopranos. why? because I am not simpleminded. that's why. when I was young I read something in the newspaper [remember those?] that said television was seeking the lowest common denominator audience which I took even then [1977] to mean the same thing lowest common denominator always means when it comes to humans, the stupid people. people who can be easily manipulated and duped [twist, anyone?] and who never recognize the same old tired story being repackaged over and over again. every police show sucks. every hospital show sucks. every family based show sucks. does not matter how much perversion or malice the writers inject, they're always the same. from the awful hill street blues to nypd blue what is the difference? and when people wanted cachet from watching 'premium' channels all the fake sex and explicit violence was on display broken up by over wrought or fake depth scripts. and one is supposed to feel good because the manipulation and spectacle changed venues? anyone watching network tv in 2024 is a mouth breather. and anyone watching scripted television anywhere is a dupe and a sucker. full stop.
TV’s Golden Age
TV’s Golden Age tanked long before Succession. The rise of the streamers during peak pandemic was the embodiment of the decline just with more money, like the Marvelizing of movies. Netflix starting around the time they released Sense 8 went full steam ahead releasing mountains of mediocrities. Prime and HBO followed suit with forgettable but critically heralded fare such as Mozart in the Jungle or Transed.
While buoyed by a pandemic captive audience the rot had set in. Millions binged watched their way through countless shows that consistently after episode three or four would peter out. There were a few bright spots that held out promises of better things to come such as Black Mirror or The Terror. But the crap machine was in high gear cranking out one forgettable tome after another.
Then the unexpected happen. People began to venture out of their houses as the pandemic waned taking their attention spans with them. Compounding the streamer’s woes was the post George Floyd “Great Awokening” of all media giants. This gave us a historically incoherent black Anne Boleyn and Estella and girls who skateboarded in Betty, despite being uninteresting and not good at it. But hey, they were multi ethnic and girls. The crowning achievement was Anna Duvernay’s revisionist scoldfest, When They See Us. While the shit show that is Ted Lasso’s last season seemed to be written by an AI DEI administrator.
Despite the Awokenings poor ratings, the conglomerates have not let up on the DEI gas. Disney’s commitment to ideological capture, is best embodied in the words of the great Cartman of South Park, “Cast a chick and make her gay.” Be it movie or TV show, the largest entertainment engine has imbued every release with a DEI gesture in cast or script. See Snow Brown and the Seven diverse marginalized misfits. Netflix continually cranks out propaganda like Queens episode of the now magically black Macedonian, “Cleopatra”. They are now in production of casting the great Phoenician ruler descended from what are essentially Lebanese Semites, who at 34 gave Rome a hard time as a 68 year old black man named Denzel Washington. Then of course, the Exorcist reboot features a girl who harbors delusions she’s a guy. At least the demonically possessed were not so confused. Either way, representation for its own sake does not a storyline make.
The decline of TV boils down to the creative desert of bean counters combined with the mendacious rot of DEI. DIE would be a more apt acronym. Streamers hold their viewers in contempt. Taking us for fools, we take our eyeballs and our most precious commodity, time, elsewhere.
The words. The first and essential requirement. Yes, the actors can give life beyond the words, as can all the other creative elements involved, but without the words... nothing, literally.
Taking a step back, without humans putting thoughts into words and onto paper (into software, whatever)... nothing. At least nothing worthwhile.
AI-generated scripts will be as fulfilling as digital/robotic sex or lab-grown meat. Might feel good, might be tasty, but it's a road to ruin, turning our collective back on reality and humanity. No thanks.
(Just one more reason to feel sorrow for the young.)
I didn't love Succession, but I respected it, and I appreciate this piece. It's hard for me to mourn the Golden Age of TV when The Bear just gave us two fantastic, surprising seasons. I also loved Shrinking and Severance. Is anyone watching Reacher? I ask because the first season was silly but a lot of fun. This season is just awful and I'm wondering where the sparkle went.
Agree. First season of Reacher was serviceable fun. Season two, execrable. Can't understand what the hell happened.
THANK YOU. Terrible acting. Zero chemistry. Weird plot structure that ensures you don't care about anyone. I like having a few "don't have to think too hard" shows in our queue but this is not it.
“Peep Show” was fantastic.
When HBO began creating groundbreaking programming it ushered in a new era of entertainment for the home viewer and their competitors at Showtime, Netflix, etc. soon followed suit. HBO’s “The Wire” and “The Sopranos” paved the way for “Homeland”, “The Handmaids Tale”, “The White Lotus” and many others in between. They were free of censorship and other strictures that Networks had in place. We were presented with shows chock full of murderers, morally corrupt assholes, loathsome hypocrites and mentally/emotionally deranged characters taking us to dark places that actually exist in the real world. And who’d have thought they’d be so damn popular? They also allowed us access to comedians like Dave Chappelle who wasn’t forced to clean up his act to please the Networks and their family values friendly sponsors. But there was a trade off; you had to pay for it, though most would agree it was well worth it.
Cable networks, seeing the success of this not-made-for-TV model, moved to fill the gap in between. AMC brought us “Mad Men”, “Breaking Bad” and its spinoff “Better Call Saul” that pushed the envelope. FX and others had popular successes as well. The departure from safe, formulaic, happy-ending network shows made the network offerings nearly unwatchable (for me at least) albeit their writers were much better paid--a good gig if you could get it. Unfortunately it’s sorely lacking in entertainment value.
AI is well suited for writing scripts for the robotic characters and predictable stories the networks churn out. I don’t see it happening anytime soon for the others. There would be no “Succession”, “The Wire” or “Breaking Bad” emerging from AI world in my opinion. Some things are simply unachievable. It requires human emotion, nuance, intellectual courage and creativity that I believe can’t ever be programmed into a machine. Mike White’s mind is impossible to replicate. I hope I’m not wrong on that.
I think that's largely correct. While I can't see AI ever having the ability to get the nuance of the Succession/Mad Men/Breaking Bad sorts of scripts, I'm sure that even now it could crank out the next hundred episodes of Law and Order.