A Netflix job posting has generated outrage when it offered up to $900,000 for an AI management position.
After weeks of failed discussions, Hollywood actors have joined writers on strike.
Months after the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike, members of the US union Sag-Aftra joined them, and performers across the world have showed sympathy, including the cast of Oppenheimer, who left the UK premiere early to “write their picket signs.”
In other news, Orange Is the New Black performers claimed they were not appropriately compensated for their work, while Gilmore Girls actor Sean Gunn spoke out against Netflix.
However, the streaming service is now providing a substantial sum to one individual.
The ‘product manager’ position is to increase the ‘leverage’ of their machine learning platform, which offers ‘ML/AI practitioners across Netflix the means to achieve the highest possible impact with their work by making it easy to develop, deploy and improve their machine-learning models.’
The listing notes: ‘The overall market range for roles in this area of Netflix is typically $300,000 – $900,000.’
Comedian Rob Delaney has hit out at the streaming site, calling the listing ‘ghoulish’.
He said: ‘So $900k/yr per soldier in their godless AI army when that amount of earnings could qualify thirty-five actors and their families for SAG-AFTRA health insurance is just ghoulish.’
Rob recently appeared in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror episode Joan Is Awful, in which Joan (played by Annie Murphy) discovers her life has been startlingly extended into a big adaptation, all because she didn’t read the fine print for Streamberry (aka, Netflix).
He continued to The Intercept: ‘Having been poor and rich in this business, I can assure you there’s enough money to go around; it’s just about priorities.’
Social media users and supporters of the authors and celebrities on strike are equally dissatisfied.
One wrote: ‘honestly so surprised the wga strike has lasted this long!!! it’s so nerve wracking to witness execs holding off from basic demands….and the audacity of that 900k ai job at Netflix.’
Another said: ‘Netflix has listed a job for an AI Product Manager with a salary of up to $900,000 during the #WritersStrike As every day passes we’re becoming closer to Black Mirror becoming reality.’
Star Trek: Picard writer Christopher Derrick added: ‘Netflix Posts $900,000 AI product manager As SAG & WGA Strike For Fair Pay & Protections Against AI Talk about tone deafness, FFS!’
This comes after Succession actor Brian Cox expressed his opposition to AI taking control and scripting programmes.
‘It’s a situation that could really get unpleasant and it could go on for quite some time,’ he told Sky News.
Brian also described a recent incident in which AI was attempted to be employed and warned that it is not a good substitute for genuine authors if the strikes persist.
‘There was a whole lot of AI suggesting what I would do which was absolute nonsense. It was a kind of jokey thing anyway, but I found it really extraordinary that they made up this scenario that doesn’t exist and has nothing to do with who I am,’ he recalled.
Brian also warned about AI: ‘It’s the bogeyman,’ before adding ‘especially when you’re going on a strike, especially when you’re striking certain issues’.
‘The streaming services could easily go to create AI, which would be nonsense and there would never be an original voice.
‘You would never have an original Jesse Armstrong [Succession creator] or the original guy who created the White Lotus [Mike White]. It just wouldn’t exist.
‘There would be some monkey copy of the show, and that is unacceptable,’ he concluded.
