Hi friend,
There are some people out there whose vast, vast profits depend on you believing their version of the AI future is an inevitability. Get on board or be left behind.
When you believe that you have no choice, your brain chemistry changes. You go into a stress response where you can’t be creative. Which is perfect for the people and corporations who need you to stand on the sidelines so they can speed run the deployment of this technology.
But what that means in reverse is that every single time you engage your own creativity, you inherently reject the lie of inevitability and re-engage your own power of choice. Choosing creativity is an act of rebellion.
That’s what Ted Tremper, the interim executive director of the Creators Coalition on AI, told me on stage at Shared Futures in New York last week.
Entertainment is the first industry where the people who build AI are convinced they can replace the entire workforce at scale. So a group of creatives—6,000 signatories across every job in the industry—have decided to stop fighting in single-player mode and start organizing as a collective. Traditionally, adversarial groups are sitting at the same table, using democratic polling tools that find hidden consensus across divergent factions instead of amplifying division.
What they found: the loudest voices on social media don’t represent the majority. Most people don’t want to ban AI or surrender to it. The majority want an equitable path, and they have more power than they’ve been told.
“We are the experts. We know the values within our society. And oftentimes the tool makers want to do the right thing, but nobody’s painted that clear picture of it.”
Watch the conversation above (it’s a quick one, just under 20 min) for a clear vision of a genuinely possible path forward.
CCAI is a template. If creators can prove this works, every other industry can open source the blueprint: coordinating within your own field, collectively deciding what your values are, and signaling that to the people building the tools. Nurses, truckers, teachers, all of us.
Tell us in the comments what this would look like in your industry. We need your voice.
Stay free.
— Baratunde
Thanks to the entire Life With Machines team, especially Layne Deyling Cherland and Alie Kilts for editorial and production support.
