HALLIE EPHRON: Most everyone kmows I have a definite familial "through line." My parents were Hollywood screenwriters. My sisters write fiction and movies. I reluctantly succumbed in my 40s and started writing fiction, too.
I also do a lot of teaching, and when I talk to writers about using ChatGPT well, I talk about how concerned we all should be about how it will be putting workers (content creators, in particular) out of work.
The other day, my daughte and I sat down to watch one of my parents' movies: THE DESK SET.
It's a romantic comedy featuring Katharine Hepburn as the head of the research department for a big corporation. Spencer Tracy plays a gruff efficiency expert whose job it is to bring in an enormous computer (think: Mac truck) to take over her (and her co-workers') job.
Needless to say, sparks fly.
I was surprised at how, even then (1957), people understood how computers and AI could end up putting people out of work.
Then I remembered something about my father's misspent youth. Before he got himself thrown out of Cornell, he starred in a college production of THE ADDING MACHINE, a play written in 1923 by Elmer Rice.
My dad plays MR. ZERO, a lowly bean counter at a big company, who discovers (after 25 years at his job) that he will be replaced by an adding machine. And, by the way, his wife is cheating on him.
He snaps and kills his boss. And goes to jail. And gets executed. (Not a happy ending.
Here's a picture from the Cornell alumni magazine showing my dad playing the part...
I'd never put together this early dramatic role in The Adding Machine with The Desk Set screenplay he and my mother wrote thirty years later.
And now writers is struggling with the very same implications of machines replacing people.
I'd never put together this early dramatic role in The Adding Machine with The Desk Set screenplay he and my mother wrote thirty years later.
And now writers is struggling with the very same implications of machines replacing people.
When I teach, we often get the how (and whether) to use generative artificial intelligence. Will a machine have written the next mystery novel you zip through and put the next generation of writers out of work. I wonder what my parents would have had to say on the topic.
Are there any through lines for you and your family, going back to parents and on to offspring? Maybe some political activism? Passion for food or travel? Music or art?? Morphing from generation to generation but still a constant.
Are there any through lines for you and your family, going back to parents and on to offspring? Maybe some political activism? Passion for food or travel? Music or art?? Morphing from generation to generation but still a constant.
This whole issue of machines replacing people is downright scary . . . .
ReplyDeleteNo obvious through lines for our family . . . .
I hope all of the writers here who had their work stolen by Anthropic filed their claims. Less than $3,000 per work isn’t enough, but it’s something.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was a heavy equipment operator - did that lead to me and my sister having Tonkas instead of Barbies, and did they influence me to pursue civil engineering? Maybe. I have a picture of me before I turned two - there was utility construction happening in the street and every day I would march down the sidewalk with my little folding chair and watch.
Later I became a CFO. My mom was a bookkeeper and so was her aunt. When my great-aunt retired in 1969, she was keeping the books for 19 companies belonging to Bill Davidson (who also owned the Detroit Pistons).