Yikes, Artificial Intelligence is Coming for Your Job!

You can see my reply on LinkedIn, which was a follow-up to my original article on this blog.

I know Geoff personally, hence the satirical nature of my reply to him. This article is a proper response to his claim.

Soul Music

For the sake of argument, I’ll accept that humans have a soul in the sense he meant it, assume our soul can’t be simulated by artificial intelligence, and explain why AI will still go on to dominate all human creative endeavour.

Ask yourself whether you think robot actors will replace human actors? Can a future Teslabot that looks and sounds like Elvis Presley replace human impersonators? Can a movie created on the fly that meets your specifications ever replace Hollywood’s best efforts?

Geoff would assert they can’t, because artificial intelligence lacks the soul at the heart of human creativity.

But does AI need a soul to produce entertainment that most of us would prefer to consume? I don’t think it does. Here’s why...

Google Flow

Consider Google Flow, an artificial intelligence project that creates a 30-second segment of video footage based on a description provided by you. You can try it for yourself by clicking the previous link.

The result is a short film that includes video, sound effects, music, and dialogue.

Now imagine where that technology will be in a few years from now, and picture the following scenario...

You’ve had a busy day, you’re tired, and you want to watch something relatively mindless to unwind. You ask this future version of Flow to...

• Recreate the movie Die Hard, but...
• Put Jason Statham in the lead role rather than Bruce Willis, and...
• Set the whole thing at London’s Charing Cross Station, rather than Nakatomi Plaza.

It’s Die Hard. But not as We Know it...

I’m a fan of the movie Die Hard, I love action films that star Jason Statham, and I’ve suffered much frustration waiting for a delayed Southeastern “service” to arrive at Charing Cross station.

Frankly, I’d find such a movie irresistible, especially if I happened to be delayed at Charing Cross Station at the time.

I’m sure you can come up with your own irresistible scenario. And you needn’t limit your choices to movies. Pick anything that takes your fancy.

Now that’s what I call Music!

Perhaps you’d enjoy watching ABBA perform the hits of Metallica? Or watch the Justice League of America and their respective cadre of villains come together to perform Mozart’s symphony No. 40 in G minor?

Perhaps watching Donald Trump explain the quantum measurement problem using his typical idioms and gestures takes your fancy?

“Folks, the quantum measurement problem, it’s a tremendous mystery, absolutely huge, where nobody really knows why these tiny particles, the best particles, collapse into one state when you look at them. We’re gonna figure it out, believe me!”

Artificial intelligence is about to make it possible for you to request entertainment on demand. I assert that this type of technology isn’t far away and that it’s going to disrupt the entire entertainment industry.

Grok 4: On the Game

After the recent introduction of Grok 4, X user Danny Limanseta (@DannyLimanseta) used it to create a first-person shooter (FPS) prototype in around five hours.

Needless to say, this is much faster than a team of human writers, coders, artists, and musicians can produce.

Danny started with SuperGrok Chat and generated the initial prototype. He then refined it in Cursor using Grok 4 MAX, incorporating AI-generated code, textures, and assets (graphics, sound, music). The build was done quickly for a livestream demonstration that showcased Grok 4's capabilities to rapidly develop games.

See this post on X to view footage of four game prototypes that Danny built using Grok 4 and consider what is coming down the pipe for the gaming industry. And in case you didn’t know, the global gaming industry produces roughly six times more revenue than Hollywood.

Superiority Isn’t the Issue

I’m not asserting that artificial intelligence is superior to human creativity, and neither am I claiming it can’t be.

What I’m saying in this article is that AI will be good enough to prove irresistible. And as a result, at some point, it’s going to capture the investment capital that currently funds the entertainment industry.

Now, let us consider Hollywood’s recent tendency to avoid entertaining us and instead indulge the political ideologies of its creative producers.

A Terminal Case of Foot in Mouth Disease

Some of the larger mouths in Hollywood have recently taken to being disrespectful to those they expect to pay for their output. People who might have been sympathetic to their coming demise.

Oops.

I suspect that Hollywood is already in terminal decline, and that the rise of entertainment created on the fly by artificial intelligence will be welcomed by a large section of its former audience.

Take Disney, for example. They allowed their activists to betray the trust of parents, and I doubt the company has a viable path back to profitability.

When the real-time generation of entertainment by artificial intelligence that I describe in this article turns up, what possible use do parents have for a company such as Disney?

The Gloria Gainer Effect

I’m sure human performance will survive and live on among aficionados, just as there are people who are passionate about riding horses.

But I don’t believe there is anything humans can do that can’t be simulated by artificial intelligence in ways the rest of us won’t be able to resist.

As I said in my previous article, the rise of the machines is coming. And, frankly, not even Sarah Connor will stop them.