SAG-AFTRA And WGA Fears About AI Are Warranted After 15 Years Of Streaming Chaos, Says ‘Oppenheimer’ Director Christopher Nolan: Companies “Don’t Want To Take Responsibility For Whatever That Algorithm Does”

deadline.com:

Christopher Nolan sees the insistence by striking SAG-AFTRA and WGA members that studios and streamers limit the use of artificial intelligence stems directly from the explosion of streaming over the past decade-plus.

Referring to the current “labor dispute” without getting more specific, the Oppenheimer writer-director drew a parallel between recent actions by Hollywood and Big Tech and his film’s protagonist grappling with the thorny ethical dilemmas of nuclear science. “When you innovate through technology, you have to make sure there is accountability,” he said at a post-screening panel in New York. “A lot of companies for 15 years have bandied about terms like ‘algorithm,’ not knowing what they really mean in any meaningful, technical sense.

These guys don’t really know what an algorithm is or what it does. People in my business talking about it, they just don’t want to take responsibility for whatever that algorithm does.

Applied to AI, it has terrifying possibilities. Terrifying.” He didn’t name specific companies, but the 15-year timeframe points directly to the initial direct-to-consumer streamers, Netflix and Amazon. (Apple, Facebook and others were well under way with their own algorithmic forays by that time as well.) Panel moderator Chuck Todd had also prompted Nolan’s digression into union strife by suggesting that Nolan screen the film for a Silicon Valley audience.