Never mind that the main issue for writers isn't necessarily the shorter season, but rather the pared-down writer's rooms.
For one thing, the notion of AI making writers obsolete. Which is simply a laughable premise through and through. The idea that "unions" have made it impossible for writers to work. Which union? The writer's guild? (Not technically a union). I mean, I'm not sure what to counter since you made a statement with no cited evidence, but if the Guild was making it impossible for writers to work, it seems like they'd elect new leadership at the very least. Seasons got shorter as audience attention spans decreased. Had nothing to do with making things less stressful for writers.
I personally, as a writer, would absolutely consider a different career path. Not because of AI (as Crosis said, is laughable) rather due to assholes on the internet crying about ruining someone's goddamn childhood. FFS, grow up. If you don't like something, don't watch it. If you do, watch it. If you don't like something, and you watch it, the algorithms tell whomever that the show is being watched and whomever then continues to produce that show. If you don't like something, and bitch about it on the internet, whomever is telling writers not to write good stuff, just stay away from stuff people are bitching about - like star trek and star wars. Its not rocket science.
Why is it laughable that AI is making writers obsolete? It seems to me that the Star Trek writers are using AI and we've seen stories of studios using AI. We see fans making AI content for Star Trek and Star Wars that get more views than actual Star Trek and Star Wars. The unions went along with covid restrictions and halted productions during that period when they should have been defending their members and taking actions to move production forward and putting pressure on the government to open things up sooner. They didn't do this, instead we had pretentious celebrities telling us what to do and preaching to us and forcing people put their pronouns in their profiles and if you put beep, bop, boop, you get fired. I've heard from at least one Hollywood writer who's been in the business for 20 years that seasons got shorter because studios don't want to pay the writers so they shortened the size of writers room and because people got sick of the 26 episode pressure a lot of people left the business. Now California and Hollywood in particular is so expensive that the smaller people, carpenters, set builders, etc are moving away. Needless to say, these smaller seasons are the result of many factors and it's to the detriment of entertainment. In the case of this particular story, I think Dunc and Egg should be a little longer, but not much longer. I think it serves it's purpose a one off short story.
Have you tried to do anything with AI? I'm guessing not. Writing AI just to say a guy walked from point A to point B is, at least, 10,000 words. No, AI is not anywhere near ready to replace monkeys and typewriters pumping out Shakespeare.
Sure, but let's say you want to talk about Benjamin Sisko in an episode of Starfleet Academy. An inexperienced writer who knows nothing about Star Trek might ask AI to give them a summary of Benjamin Sisko and it would tell you the most basic information like he likes gumbo, was a good dad and likes baseball and nothing else. The writer wouldn't go back and actually watch DS9 because they're lazy. So you end up with a crap episode that basically had nothing to do with Sisko and didn't resolve the question it asked in the beginning, shoehorned in Dax, and the writer inserted herself into the episode with bad makeup.
You're still using AI to help write your stories. Do you not think that studios would eventually just hire people to just prompt the AI to write episodes?
Tell you what. Why don't you do that - not a whole episode. I know that's a lot of work. just write one conversation between ... say, Sisko and Dax. Go.
Write me a conversation between the characters of Benjamin Sisko and Jadzia Dax from the television show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where Sisko uses baseball as analogy for a scenario on the station where the Cardassians have seized Bajoran territory Setting: Sisko’s office. The lights are low. Bajor hangs in the viewport. Reports about Cardassian forces occupying a disputed Bajoran agricultural zone are scattered across Sisko’s desk. Sisko stands by the window holding a baseball. Dax lounges in a chair, reading a padd. SISKO: You know what this reminds me of? DAX: If you say baseball, I’m leaving. SISKO: (smirks) You’re not leaving. DAX: No… I’m not. All right, Captain. How is an interstellar territorial crisis like baseball? SISKO: Bottom of the seventh. Close game. The other team just took the lead with a cheap infield hit. Nothing illegal about it—but it shouldn’t have worked. DAX: And the Cardassians are the team that bunts when no one’s expecting it. SISKO: Exactly. They saw an opening—political hesitation on Bajor’s side, Federation neutrality protocols tying our hands—and they advanced a runner. DAX: So what’s our play? Charge the mound? SISKO: That’s what they’re expecting. An emotional response. Bajor mobilizes, we protest loudly, everyone digs into their positions. Benches clear. Nobody wins. DAX: So we don’t swing at the first pitch. SISKO: Not when it’s outside the strike zone. DAX: The problem is, from Bajor’s perspective, that pitch is right down the middle. It’s their land. Their people. SISKO: I know. (pauses, turning the baseball in his hand) But if you swing too hard trying to correct a bad call, you pop the ball straight up. Easy out. DAX: You’re suggesting patience. Let the inning play out. SISKO: I’m suggesting we control the tempo. The Cardassians thrive on forcing their opponents into mistakes. They count on pride. DAX: That does sound like them. SISKO: If we respond strategically—apply diplomatic pressure, bring in neutral observers, question their supply lines—we make them defend their move. We make them prove it wasn’t just opportunistic expansion. DAX: Force them to stay on base without letting them steal another. SISKO: Exactly. They’ve got a runner on first. I’m not letting them get to second. DAX: You know, in one of Curzon’s lifetimes, he negotiated a border dispute that lasted twelve years. He said the trick was convincing both sides they were winning. SISKO: That sounds like Curzon. DAX: The Cardassians won’t back down if they feel cornered. But if we give them a dignified way to “clarify” their presence as temporary security assistance— SISKO: —they can withdraw without calling it a retreat. DAX: And Bajor regains control without firing a shot. SISKO: A sacrifice fly. DAX: (smiles) You really can turn anything into baseball. SISKO: It’s a perfectly good metaphor. DAX: It’s a very old Earth game. SISKO: So is diplomacy. DAX: Fair point. But what if the Cardassians aren’t playing for one run? What if this is the start of a larger offensive? SISKO: Then we adjust our defense. You don’t assume a grand slam every time someone picks up a bat. DAX: Spoken like a man who’s lost a few games. SISKO: Spoken like a man who’s learned from them. (They share a quiet moment, both looking out at Bajor.) DAX: The Bajoran provisional government is going to want reassurance. SISKO: They’ll get it. We stand with them. But we do it smartly. DAX: So what’s the call, Captain? SISKO: We hold the line. Open negotiations immediately. Quietly reinforce Bajoran patrol routes with “joint training exercises.” And we let the Cardassians know we’re watching every move. DAX: Keeping the runner close. SISKO: (nods) Keeping the runner very close. DAX: You know, Benjamin, someday I’d like to see an actual baseball game. SISKO: When this is over, I’ll take you to Earth. Seventh-inning stretch and everything. DAX: If this works, I’ll even wear the cap. SISKO: Careful, Dax. That’s a commitment. DAX: So is peace on Bajor. (Sisko places the baseball back on his desk.) SISKO: Then let’s win this inning. DAX: Aye, Captain.** ETA: What AI didn't do in that conversation use the term,"old man"in the conversation so that's where you would need to have a human writer and a fan to know that. All they would have to do is edit the conversation. There is no writer's room thinking up scenarios and asking questions or plotting out the episode and thinking about the consequences of the actions of the characters.
I bring it up because I *REALLY* enjoyed Game of Thrones about until the writers got beyond what GRRM had written and were just freestyling. Those seasons sucked. They sucked so bad that a series that for years was a cultural phenomenon everyone has just decided to flush from our collective memories.
Here's a basic plot I created. All you need to to is prompt the AI to write dialogue as I demonstrated above and then edit it and tailor it to your liking. I'm sure over a 3 month period you could crank out 10 episodes easily. Then start filming. No need for writers.
So … when you read that. Can you picture Jadzi and Sisko saying those things? Because I can’t. Well, this part was …. [ re-strategizing response ] Parts of it do read a bit like Jadzia and Sisko (no, I’m not going to quote those parts. I’m on my ipad now and not so easy to quote like on a pc. Hence the reason for re-strategizing my response. Anyway, the parts that do sound like something Jadzi and/or Sisko might say, the rest of it is so out of place it takes you out of the story. It’s like … I don’t know, watching Tom Cruise do a romantic scene. It just doesn’t work.
OK, so the AI did EXACTLY what you complained about the SFA writers doing - seizing on a single character trait of Sisko (loves baseball) and creating a whole fucking scene spoken in baseball metaphors, something Sisko only - to be charitable - did in the very first episode explaining linear time to the Prophets and even that wasn't as terminally drawn out as this shit. Also, an easily spottable error in the first few lines - Bajor would not be visible as more than a bright "star" in Sisko's window as DS9 was moved from orbit to the mouth of the wormhole, over 150 million kilometres away. Has this thing even watched the show???!!!!!! I've been using ChatGPT extensively the last week or so to write some code. It does a good job of giving something that superficially works - and I have no doubt YOU were impressed with the result of your prompt - but try to tweak it and you'll rapidly hit issues. It'll "fix" one thing but break another and eventually just write the whole thing from scratch because the model isn't retaining information longer than a few pages. It's not working like a writer with a draft to edit/refine.
So, I asked ChatGPT why your baseball-heavy scene occurred when Sisko never spoke like that, and it responded: This raises another point - you asked it to write a scene with two established characters. It was able to do that, albeit poorly, because character traits from those individuals are in its training data. If you want a scene for characters it hasn't trained on, you're going to have to write it a character summary and it's then going to invent based on similar types (EDIT: or it CAN write the characters from scratch but it's going to be very superficial i.e. "the logical one" "the competitive one" etc)
Among the reasons we know that writers are generally not using AI the way FF seems to envision: 1. AI is not ready to generate scenes or plots in any meaningful manner. As the scene he used AI to generate shows, it just cannot at the moment put together anything that sounds like normal people interacting. Trying to fix a scene like that to approach the ballpark of an actual script would take more time than the AI "saved" by spitting that out. It's just not good. And that's with (presumably) some elements from DS9 for the AI to draw from. I would imagine that the AI has (or could have) pulled from actual DS9 scripts, novels and comics, along with commentary and blogs about it that have been around for 20 years. Trying to start from nearly scratch with an original concept is just beyond it. It's nowhere near the point like in Star Trek where you can tell the computer to generate a mystery in the style of Sherlock Holmes and it can do it. 2. Self-worth. One would have to imagine writers have enough ego to not rely on AI as a crutch. Yes, writers as a rule have pride in their work. 3. Oversight in the writers' room. Even if we were to pretend a writer for whatever reason were desperate or lazy enough to use AI for major script help, it would almost certainly get caught by other writers/producers, and called into question. As I understand it, generally in Hollywood although one or two people are credited as writing the episode, everyone in the writers' room of the show reads the script and offers revisions. Surely, if the equivalent of that Sisko/baseball scene were turned in, more than one person would say WTF. 4. Economic self-interest. As FF should know, one of the issues in the writer's strike he keeps bringing up was concern about Hollywood potentially turning to AI to cut out or minimize human writers. In the face of that, it would be extremely foolish for writers to rely on AI themselves and to suggest that Hollywood would be right to plug stuff into AI rather than use human writers.
That said, this Chat GPT generated scene generated off the prompt: "Generate a scene from Star Trek: Starfleet Academy where a 21st century Internet person named Federal Farmer finds himself interacting with the characters and finding it woke" ain't half bad...I mean other than just making up a Cadet T'Lana and such: Scene: Starfleet Academy - Campus Plaza Federal Farmer steps off the transport pad, still dizzy from the disorienting rush of being pulled out of his own time. He's an Internet-based person from the 21st century, having spent his life behind a screen, scrolling through forums, commenting on controversial news, and watching conspiracy videos. The campus around him is pristine and futuristic, with sleek buildings, shiny walkways, and countless cadets in uniform moving briskly to their destinations. The air is crisp and clean—too clean, if you ask him. “Okay… this is definitely not Kansas anymore,” Federal mutters, adjusting his hoodie and rubbing his eyes. A cadet approaches, a young woman with short purple hair and an eager smile. Her uniform is bright and colorful, a patch reading "Communications Division" sewn over her left chest. Cadet T’Lana: “Welcome to Starfleet Academy! Are you new here? You must be the visiting cadet from the 21st century. I’m T’Lana, Communications Division. We’ve heard a lot about your timeline.” Federal gives her a side-eye, trying to gauge if this is a prank. Federal: “Yeah, that’s me. But, uh, where’s the rest of everyone? What’s with the… the bright uniforms?” T’Lana: “This is Starfleet, Mr. Farmer. In the 24th century, we celebrate diversity, inclusion, and unity. Starfleet represents the ideal future for all species—one where there’s no room for prejudice. We focus on understanding and cooperation, no matter one’s background or identity.” Federal blinks. “So… like, everyone’s just okay with everything? No judgment?” T’Lana: “Exactly. Everyone is encouraged to express their individuality, as long as it doesn’t harm others. In fact, you’re encouraged to explore all facets of yourself, no matter how unconventional it may seem to others.” Federal laughs nervously. “Okay, sure, so this is like… a utopian society where everyone’s just walking on eggshells to make sure nobody gets offended?” T’Lana: “Oh, no, it’s not about avoiding offense. It’s about fostering respect. We engage in direct but compassionate dialogue, and we focus on personal growth and understanding, not just our own experiences but those of others. For instance, you’ll see some cadets using pronouns—whether they’re human or alien. Respecting that is part of the Starfleet Code of Ethics.” Federal frowns, thinking of the debates and online rants he’s seen about "woke culture" back home. Federal: “Wait, hold up. So you’re telling me that the great future of humanity—space travel, warp drives, first contact with aliens—was built on… respecting pronouns?” T’Lana: “Not just pronouns, Mr. Farmer. It's built on empathy. The Federation was formed because its founders—humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites—realized that only through mutual understanding could they conquer the worst aspects of their nature. The same is true of us today. For example, did you know the Vulcan Kolinahr tradition encourages non-Vulcans to learn about the Vulcan philosophy of mental discipline? It’s an expression of respect for other cultures, and it's available to everyone.” Federal's eyes widen. “Kolinahr? Mental discipline? You’re telling me you’ve got all these races just… working together?” T’Lana: “Indeed. And every cadet here, regardless of their species or where they come from, has equal standing. Even those who don’t want to serve in Starfleet can contribute to society. As a cadet, you’ll be expected to apply the principles of equality, fairness, and justice, regardless of someone’s background.” Federal blinks and looks around. The plaza is filled with a colorful array of beings, some humanoid, others… less so. There’s a Tellarite arguing with a Ferengi about their respective cultures, a human cadet with an Andorian standing together as they laugh. It’s all too perfect. Too woke. And yet… it’s oddly beautiful in its own way. Federal (quietly): “Well, this sure beats all the dumpster fire discussions back home…” T’Lana: “If you’re looking for arguments, I suggest you visit the Diplomacy Division. But for now, I recommend that you go to your orientation session. You’ll learn more about the academy’s values and the role of Starfleet in promoting peace and mutual respect in the galaxy.” Federal: “Yeah, I guess I can… get behind the whole peace thing. As long as no one’s demanding that I, I don’t know, participate in a ‘non-toxic masculinity’ seminar or anything.” T’Lana raises an eyebrow. “We do have seminars on emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and how to support others who might be struggling. Starfleet values holistic growth, after all.” Federal freezes. This was more than he bargained for. Federal: “Right, yeah. Okay. I’ll go to the seminar. Just don’t… don’t make me meditate or something. I’m not ready to get that woke just yet.” T’Lana smiles warmly. “Don’t worry, Mr. Farmer. Starfleet will help you find your balance. No one’s asking you to change who you are, but we encourage you to consider what it means to be a true leader in the galaxy: understanding, empathy, and unity.” Federal watches her leave, the air around him feeling simultaneously futuristic and oddly soft. As much as he wants to argue against the "woke" vibe, something about the atmosphere feels… calming. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. He sighs. “Well, maybe the future ain’t so bad after all…”
It is 100% true that any decent self-respecting writer would rather scoop his eyes out with a rusty spoon than use AI to "write" for them.
I overall agree, but I have to concede that there are probably some indecent or non-self-respecting writers out there. Some attorneys have been caught using AI to help them write briefs because the AI cited to non-existent case law. I'm not sure why an attorney would do that, especially against the backdrop of the possibility that AI "hallucinates" cases. That said, I would say writing for TVs or movies, there would likely not be the deadline pressure that might give someone an incentive to attempt to AI generate a fictional story and that there is much more ego involved than the typical lawyer has in writing a brief.
