The 5 Stages of Grief applied to Ai

[dualnon]

A bit of backstory about me and how I came to write this:

I work in the film industry, and I've been a big enthusiast of cinema since I was a teenager (around 13-14 is when I really started to develop an identity around wanting to be in the movies as a career). The recent developments in Ai have obviously been disruptive to this whole thing, and I've noticed a lot of changes in the way I orient my identity towards film, and also how depressed and hopeless I have felt about cinema being supplanted by synthetic moving images. 

As time went by I started to become more accepting of it, and even experimented with making a few little projects using Ai. But I still felt an overall sadness at the industry and line of work I am in getting destroyed. Especially because where I live there are people I care a lot about who are having a hard time lately as the state of the economy has had a massive impact o their livelihoods and the looming threat of Ai makes everything seem so hopeless.

I started to engage with discussions online about Ai, and I noticed some recurring rhetorical tactics that seemed irrational and illogical to me. Denial of the current state of the technology. Denial of the economic viability of synthetic video. And how difficult it was to navigate a discussion about these topics without it devolving into pro/anti ai tribalism.

Then, earlier today I had the following insights about what I had seen, and how I myself had felt. And it seemed to all map on really well to the 5 Stages of Grief model. I thought you guys would find it kinda interesting.. So here it is. 

 

Denial

Denial is when people say things like “AI is Is slop” or “AI isn’t useful” or “AI generates hands with 6 fingers”. The reality is that we’re way past that. Even when that was the case, the the fact was that it was going to improve. People who are in the denial stage often coalesce around other people who are also in the denial stage, and they sort of reinforce their denial collectively. And what’s interesting about that stage in particular is that it is kind of tribal. If you try to reality check, or you know, try to impress upon people that actually Ai has improved. They see that as a threat, and they see that as you taking a defence position in favour of AI. And they see you as the enemy.

 

Anger

Now, after the denial stage people might move into Anger. And this is where people become really fed up and say, “well, fuck AI. Fuck all this shit.” “Fuck the AI companies.” You know? “Fuck it all. I hate them. I hate anyone who uses AI. I hate it all.” And that’s a really powerful thing as well because it also has a bit of a tribal thing to it.

 

Bargaining

And then people go into the bargaining stage where they might say, "Well, no matter what, human creativity will always be superior."  Or "human creativity will always be better and AI can never do what humans can do". You know? And "AI will never be able to do what I can do as an artist." You’ll often hear people in this stage say things along the lines of “AI doesn’t have a soul”. Like, it can’t it it can’t convey the kinds of feelings that I can convey in my art. This is bargaining.

 

Depression

And then people move into the depression stage where they think, “oh, well, fuck it. It’s all fucked.”, “what’s the point anymore?” That kind of thing. They may even have, a suicidal ideation as the total falling apart and reckoning with the fact that there’s not really much that you can do to change it or resolve it.

 

Acceptance

And then they move into the acceptance stage. The thing about the acceptance stage is that acceptance doesn’t mean becoming pro AI. It just mean it just means meeting reality where it is and actually being very honest about the environment that you exist in, and just accepting that reality is as reality is. And recognising that in order to be able to do anything proactive towards your values, you have to exist in reality. And you may still pursue artistic endeavors in the traditional way, but just means that you don’t you’re not pursuing them out of anger or denial of Ai.

Edited 2 hours ago by dualnon
Gave an introduction, and a bit of grammar cleaning up

[zazen]

Good breakdown man - the times are uncertain as to how AI will have a cascading effect on many industries and “knowledge work” with now even creative work being disrupted.

There could be a return to the “real world” where authentic reality becomes more valued - perhaps including “human made” work. Imagine instead of “Made in Italy” we have “Made by Human” as a marker of value.

Almost like a vintage antique parallel world where human made becomes premium even if not as “perfect” as AI/robotic made products/production.

Unreal how good seed dance 2.0 is that came out this week:

I just watched Marty Supreme last night - nothing will beat that real gritty rawness of real world movie making imo.

Edited 1 hour ago by zazen

[dualnon]

@zazen Thanks! Yeah, it is definitely a crazy time. I really enjoyed Marty Supreme as well. I think there will still be interest in good films that are made by people. And there will definitely be a significant market segment of people who will ONLY watch movies made by people. At least in the near term. In the end  if the product is good, it's viable. That's how I see it.

But I also wonder about the impact of Ai on filmmaking infrastructure as a whole. Infrastructure is expensive. Soundstages, gear rental houses, all the businesses and vendors that go into making films. When the big studio money stops demanding these goods and services what happens to the infrastructure? Basic economic thinking would think it could collapse. 

I think there are a lot of things we take for granted about the process of filmmaking that can't be saved by sentiment alone. That's not to say man made films won't exist. But it could mean that man-made films stop being viable at studio scale.