My Washington Post op-ed on A.I. + dan's Birthday = VICTORY! - HITRECORD

My Washington Post op-ed on A.I. + dan's Birthday = VICTORY!

Joe

Jul 24, 2023

I got to write an op-ed in the Washington Post! Read it HERE. Sorry I can't post the whole thing, but here's an excerpt:

“Generative AI” cannot generate anything at all without first being trained on massive troves of data it then recombines. Who produces that training data? People do. And those people deserve compensation.

And you can get the idea from this interview I did on MSNBC's "Morning Joe":

If artificial intelligence takes your job, AI should pay you, argues actor - YouTube

If artificial intelligence takes your job, AI should pay you, argues actor

At its most basic, this is about people getting paid fairly for the value they create. This has always been one of our Core Values on HITRECORD—Fair Compensation.

In fact, in the op-ed, I even refer to HITRECORD and the process we used when paying contributing artists.

Technologically speaking, the type of residuals program I have in mind would be a tall order. An AI system would have to track every piece of its training data, and then be able to determine which of those pieces influenced any given output generated and to what degree. On top of that, each of those pieces of data would have to be attributed to a verified human or set of humans, and there would need to be a channel of payment for those humans to receive their residuals. We did something a little bit like this at my company, HITRECORD, producing pieces of art and entertainment with sometimes thousands of online collaborators and paying each contributing artist. Residuals from AI, in comparison, would require an astronomically huge scale, keeping track of zillions of bits and bytes, as well as billions of people, dollars, cents and microcents.

Thanks to everyone at the Washington Post who helped with this. I especially wanted to shine a light on the editor assigned to my piece, Mark Lotto. Mark was an awesome guy and a great writer. He contributed enormously to this project, helping me streamline my thoughts and my language, even looking back at earlier and longer drafts I'd written and picking relevant sections he recommended I put back in. I actually didn't know just how collaborative it can be with op-eds, because I'd never written one before. If this piece of writing were created on HITRECORD, he would definitely have gotten credit! But I guess in the traditional newspaper game, it's all part of the editor's job not to. In any case, I wanted to shout him out here.

Now, coincidentally, today is my brother, dan's birthday. As you might or might not know, dan and I started HITRECORD together. He died about thirteen years ago now (what the?), but I still feel his personality and ethos coursing through this place.

dan had this thing about VICTORY! He didn't mean it in the competitive sense of winning and losing. More in the celebratory sense, like it's healthy to feel good about one's accomplishments (victories) both big and small. Like so many do, he'd previously had a tendency to downplay himself, and I think the Victory bit was sort of his way of pushing back on that tendency. Whenever you had any victories to report, it felt super good to be around him, because he made you celebrate and savor the moment, without fear of being seen as a narcissist or a braggart.

In that spirit, and on dan's birthday, I want to say that this WaPo piece feels like a monumental "Victory" for me. To be very honest, I have a deep-down fear that my work is light, disposable, superficial, because I come from the world of Hollywood entertainment. I'm drawn to the world of ideas and substance, but I'm worried that actors aren't really allowed in there. I have some kind of urge to prove myself capable of more than just delivering lines someone else wrote. That's not to diminish the art and craft of acting. It's just a hang-up of mine.

I'd been writing various versions of this op-ed for months. Then, when the opportunity came to share it with some folks from the Washington Post (and thanks to Will Graham for making that connection), I wasn't sure how they'd respond. When they said they liked it, and that they wanted to publish it, it was an enormous feeling of validation. A big old Victory, as it were.

dan's Victory ritual was Victory Ice Cream. The idea was to feel as awesome as possible while thinking of your victory. So you eat ice cream, and if you're doing it right, you close your eyes during that first bite, and while jolted with joy by the sweet glory of cold milk and sugar, really focus on the victory, what you did, why you did it, and why it's awesome to be victorious.

Today, I will honor the victories of dan being born 49 years ago, and of publishing an op-ed in the Washington Post. I might have to eat a lot of ice cream.