Hollywood actor and director Joseph Gordon-Levitt is advocating for residuals to be paid to anyone whose work is used to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools and applications. In an op-ed titled “If Artificial Intelligence Uses Your Work, It Should Pay You,” Gordon-Levitt argues that residuals from AI training data should be made mandatory and that intellectual property laws should be amended to ensure that those residuals go to the individuals who deserve them.
Gordon-Levitt acknowledges that actors and screenwriters in Hollywood rely on residuals as payments for their work. Currently, Hollywood’s labor unions for writers and actors, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, are on strike, with streaming residuals being one of the key negotiation points. As a proud member of both unions, Gordon-Levitt strongly supports their demands. However, he believes that the case for residual payments extends beyond Hollywood and applies to the wider economy. He suggests that Hollywood writers and actors are the canaries in the coal mine, highlighting the potential impact of generative AI tools on jobs worldwide.
According to Gordon-Levitt, workers in various professions will soon face job threats from AI and the resulting economic dislocation. He argues that individuals whose jobs are at risk due to AI will be the same people who produced the data used to train it. Therefore, a new kind of residuals for these human data producers could potentially provide much-needed economic relief. He emphasizes that the cost of human labor to train AI tools and applications should be compensated through residuals.
Implementing a residuals program for AI would be technologically challenging. AI systems would need to track every piece of their training data and determine the influence of each piece on any generated output. Additionally, the data would need to be attributed to verified humans, and a payment channel would need to be established for the residuals to be received.
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Gordon-Levitt points out that just as major Hollywood studios profit from owning the copyrights to artistic creations, tech giants stand to benefit the most from AI tools and applications built from human-created data. This includes AI-driven movies that utilize digital data gathered online from past movies. He argues that the people who made those past movies deserve a substantial piece of the revenue generated by AI.
Gordon-Levitt advocates for a new kind of residuals for “human data producers” who deserve compensation for their contributions. He warns that tech giants and other profit-hungry entities will claim that AI can perform human-level work at a fraction of the cost. However, behind the scenes of AI is the cost of human labor required to produce the training data. He believes that AI will bring significant and unpredictable changes to the world and emphasizes the importance of actively shaping a future where careers are more productive, meaningful, and equitable.
In conclusion, Joseph Gordon-Levitt calls for the implementation of residuals for individuals whose work is used to train AI tools and applications. He believes that this compensation is necessary to provide economic relief to workers whose jobs are threatened by AI. Gordon-Levitt emphasizes that a bright future, where careers are productive and compensation is honorable and equitable, can only be achieved through deliberate action and work.
