Billy Wilder talks microchips

Now and then an old video clip pops up on social media that is more relevant than ever. Sometimes the video is deliberately mislabelled to drive home that point. This is one such clip that should make you pause for thought and if you have the time read my previous blog entries on the subject of AI.

The clip is Billy Wilder's speech while accepting the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1986.

“I’ve been here for over 50 years - that's more than half a century - and all through those years I've watched Tinseltown vacillate between despair and fear. First it's going to be the sound that will kill us, then it was going to be television, then cable, then pornography, then cassettes, and now that terrifying new word: microchip.

They tell me that these guys working in the Silicon Valley, they really believe that pretty soon we will not need theaters anymore, nor studios for that matter. We will have (or they will have) invented tiny little screens which you can attach to your steering wheel, or big 20-foot screens on the ceiling of your bedroom. And then someday somebody is going to press a button and send this signal to a satellite which in turn will light up 5 million screens all the way from Albania to Zanzibar. Fantastic, isn't it? All the hardware is there, beautifully programmed, bravo. Except for one little detail... what about the software? What are they going to do on all those screens? Who is going to write it? Who is going to direct it? Who is going to act it?

For all I know, these wise guys are trying right now to supplant the human factor. Microchips that will replace the human brain, and the human heart. Mechanical gadgets that can simulate emotions — dreams, laughter, tears - well, so far they have not succeeded. Not yet anyway. So relax, fellow picture makers, we are not expendable. The fact is, the bigger they get, the more irreplaceable we become. For theirs may be the kingdom, but ours is the power of the glory."

Billy Wilder was saying what any rational person should still be saying today. New technologies are always being introduced. They accumulate in a filmmaker's tool set. Whenever they come along there are horrifying stories in the media about how jobs are going to be eliminated and become redundant. But what actually happens is the playground becomes larger. More people enter the space. There are more toys for everyone to play with. The human endeavour behind every project and the human audience doesn't change. Those parasocial relationships are part of the species