Is there anybody here who is afraid of AI taking their job?”
Visual effects veteran James Blevins, whose credits include “The Mandalorian,” “Icarus,” “Air Force One” and “Space Jam,” was speaking last Wednesday to a crowd of several hundred people at the Hollywood offices of FYI, the productivity platform for creatives founded by Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am.
Only one person—a reporter on assignment for a news organization (me)—raised his hand. Everyone else in the audience, comprised of a self-selecting group of artificial intelligence–enthused visual effects artists, filmmakers and financiers, was apparently not afraid. Quite the opposite. Fearing AI was, in Blevins’ words, “like being afraid of the automobile or [of] going to the moon.” To them, AI promised a vehicle to the stars, not a portal to the dark side.
