While I have deep sympathy for the plight of artists, trying to use conventional bargaining tactics today will, I fear, prove impotent.

Pragmatically, the disruption of human labor by machine labor has reached the point many of us working in technology have been predicting for decades. Technological exponential change by nature is slow and stealthy. It moves “under the radar” until it bursts forth with increasing power that can be ignored no longer.

All one needs to do is look at just how suddenly AI has begun to monopolize our socioeconomic conversation. A year ago, AI wasn’t in the mainstream at all. Now it’s a pervasive topic of discussion.

AI will continue to double its abilities to replace us using just half the time of the previous doubling. If and when it becomes emergent or even just recursive it’s evolution will be in orders of magnitude per development cycle.

The Union is right to raise the alarm. However, effective solutions to the problem cannot be crafted at a microeconomic level. This is a paradigm shift of epic proportions. Neither actors, writers nor producers will be able to earn a living when anyone can generate complex immersive entertainment experiences for themselves. It’s much closer than you think. Apple Vision Pro is a big step forward.

A hundred years ago children would sit by the fire at their grandparents knee and say “tell me a story “. The creative spark from which that story emerged is now a glowing ember… soon to be a roaring inferno contained in a silicon mind that “lives” in a “cloud”.

We must all think way beyond the borders of our own career and industry to avoid extinction. Artists can lead the way. While on strike, take some time and write a screenplay that imagines a solution to this problem that isn’t constrained by conventional socioeconomic models and institutions. Imagination is our only hope.

Good luck!