The era of disruption

Thousands of Hollywood actors, including A-listers, went on strike last Friday after negotiations between the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), a representative labour organization of the actors, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers fell through.

As reported by the American media, this is the first time since 1980 that a strike at such a mass-scale has threatened to cripple the Western world’s largest entertainment industry.

Actors, performers and entertainers have joined the Writers Guild of America, an 11,000-strong body of the TV and film writers who are already on strike since May this year. At the heart of controversy is the demand for protection of economic rights and the increase in wages that have been affected by the use of generative content in plays and movies produced by artificial intelligence.

The labour union’s national executive director, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, has called for changes in the contracts of the actors, stating that “You cannot keep being marginalized and disrespected and dishonoured. At some point, you have to say no.”

The industry-wide shutdown speaks to the broader disruption that is shaping the future of work. While AI-inspired machines and generative content are bringing in innovations, improving efficiency and improvements in the way work is conceived and delivered, there are valid fears of machines replacing humans, leading to massive layoffs. Some people have gone to the extent of predicting doomsday scenarios, warning about the destructive power of technology in general and AI in particular.

Companies and businesses are increasingly taking to deploying machines and processes to cut costs and deliver efficient output in a highly competitive market. Unskilled and semi-skilled labour especially faces an existential challenge, as millions of jobs are likely to be wiped out in the not-too-distant future.

Another ongoing controversy around the use of ChatGPT has led to the exchange of fevered arguments for and against the disruptive application, besides highlighting ethical issues and putting academic institutions on notice. Teachers and parents have been alarmed by students’ proclivity to use AI-generated material for their assignments and papers. Struggling with attention span issues and consumed by different interests, younger people are confronted with a challenge of creativity or its lack thereof with implications that go far beyond building individual careers.

As Allama Iqbal stated in one of his verses, when faced with creative disruptions that seek to change the way they think and act, nations have always found it hard to embrace new ideas and have instead taken refuge in the old order.

How individuals and nations accept change and reconfigure their default responses has been a subject of massive interest for sociologists, political scientists, and academia. Is this embrace an exercise in willing acceptance or an expression of helplessness before the forces that are but the by-product of technological evolution?

There are also legal and moral questions of safeguarding human agency, rights, and liberty involved in the process of wholesale acceptance of the changes. It is equally pertinent to ask: do these disruptions reinforce and strengthen the status quo or aim to democratize a society by empowering communities? How do they help enable nations to protect their ideological moorings, socio-cultural identities and advance the national objectives? How will these changes affect human relations?

While there are no simple and categorical answers to the perplexing questions raised above, the fact remains that great civilizations have moved forward by exploring ways to deal with disruptions and converting them into opportunities through deep reflection.

The foremost imperative in the process of preparing societies for a pivotal reset is to develop their intellectual strength to shed fear. Actions based on inadequacies and fears often prove counterproductive and betray a lack of confidence. Fear-afflicted thinking erodes people from within and deprives societies of their collective wisdom to act proactively in pursuit of national goals.

Lost in the debate on how individuals and societies respond to externalities reshaping their overall mental, physical and socio-economic landscapes is the powerful role played by imagination as the motivator and shaper of human actions and attitudes.

As parents obsess over their children’s grades and are keen to get them the kind of education that offers more employability potential, we, as a society, are fast losing our connection with art, culture, history and literature. The idea here is not to play up or down the importance of one genre or another or establish any particular preference but to simply highlight the need for an education system that inspires students and the youths to ‘think creatively’.

Our education is largely devoid of the ability to ignite the power of imagination. We are a people who are sold on the ideas of material progress but are unable to cope with the disruptions that question our assumptions and threaten the way we have lived. Later or sooner, humanity will have to pause and think over the moral basis of its actions. Without addressing this important dimension, the whole idea of material development will continue to remain incomplete.

Life is a totality and needs to be dealt with accordingly. It is as much Milton as it is Newton. Where disruptions are drivers of progress and development, they are also the source and creators of fears and anxieties. Technology may offer the prospect of exploring higher avenues for advancement but it will never be bigger than the human power of imagination rooted in moral identity, spirit of inquiry and independence of thought.

The writer is alumnus of the University of Sussex and has a degree in International Journalism. He tweets @Amanat222