Follow Up

More on AI environmental costs

January 23, 2025 Follow Up, Geek Alert

In my earlier explainer about recent AI developments, I linked out to a Wikipedia entry that ran through some of the environmental impacts of AI models, mostly in terms of energy and water usage.

Since that post, Andy Masley came out with a much more useful comparison of AI costs. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but the short version is these costs seem much less massive when you compare them to everyday things like hamburgers and leaking pipes.

Low costs are not zero costs. But if you’re making choices as an individual, there are many more effective steps you can take to reduce your carbon footprint.

Masley’s whole article is worth reading, and a good reminder that big numbers (20,000 households!) and tangible metaphors (a bottle of water) can often lead to framing effects and vividness bias.

How ChatGPT resets the levels

December 22, 2022 Follow Up, Geek Alert, Hive Mind, Meta

On a [recent Scriptnotes](https://johnaugust.com/2022/rian-johnson-returns), I showed off ChatGPT to Craig and Scriptnotes guest Rian Johnson. We asked it to write up a plot summary for a future *Knives Out* movie set in space.

We got an answer similar to this query I just ran: ((The prompt is “Give me a plot summary for a Knives Out set in space.”))

> In the far-flung future, wealthy space entrepreneur Harrison Thorne is found dead in his luxurious space station, the victim of an apparent suicide. However, Detective Benoit Blanc, a renowned investigator known for solving even the most complex cases, has a hunch that foul play is at work. As he begins to investigate, he finds that every member of Thorne’s eccentric and contentious family has a motive for murder.

> As the detective delves deeper into the mystery, he must navigate the tangled web of lies and deceit spun by the suspects, all while trying to stay one step ahead of the cunning killer. With the help of Thorne’s loyal assistant Marta, Blanc must unravel the truth before the killer strikes again.

> As the body count rises and the tension mounts, it becomes clear that no one is above suspicion in this high-stakes game of space-age crime and deception. Will Detective Blanc be able to solve the case before it’s too late, or will the killer get away with murder in the cold vacuum of space?

None of us were blown away by the plotting. It felt like it was copy-pasting ideas from the first movie, with a lot of generic pitch filler. Still, we all agreed that the sentence-by-sentence writing was surprisingly good. It didn’t feel like it was written by a bot.

When we asked it to write a scene, it was functional but weightless. Here’s one based on the summary above: ((Prompt: “Write me a scene from this movie where Blanc first meets Marta, in screenplay format.”))

INT. SPACE STATION – DAY

Detective BENOIT BLANC, a middle-aged man with a southern drawl, walks through the sterile corridors of the space station, his face etched with determination. He approaches a door labeled “Harrison Thorne – CEO.”

BLANC

(to himself)

Time to get to work.

He opens the door and enters the office, which is spacious and well-appointed. A young woman, MARTA, sits at a desk, typing away on a computer. She looks up as Blanc enters.

MARTA

(stands up)

Can I help you?

BLANC

(flashes badge)

Detective Benoit Blanc, ma’am. I’m here to investigate Mr. Thorne’s death.

MARTA

(nods)

I see. Well, Mr. Thorne was a good man. I can’t believe he’s gone.

BLANC

(nods sympathetically)

I understand. Is there anything you can tell me about his final days, or any unusual circumstances leading up to his death?

MARTA

(hesitates)

I’m not sure. I mean, he was under a lot of stress with the business, but he always seemed to handle it well.

BLANC

(nods)

I see. Well, thank you for your time. I may have more questions for you later.

MARTA

(nods)

Of course. I’ll do whatever I can to help.

BLANC

(smiles)

Thank you, ma’am. I’ll be in touch.

Blanc exits the office, deep in thought. The investigation has only just begun, and he has a feeling that it won’t be an easy one.

To be generous, it’s not nonsense. Unlike [earlier attempts at algorithmically-generated screenplays](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/an-ai-wrote-this-movie-and-its-strangely-moving/), you can follow what happens, and characters do feel like they’re talking to each other. But there’s no nuance or character motivation despite the endless parentheticals.

It’s not a scene, but a simulacrum of one.

Listener JR, who makes his living using tools like these, wrote in with an interesting perspective:

> Language models are built on “training data,” which is the text you feed into a learning process to produce the output. For very sophisticated models, the training data is vast: for something like ChatGPT, it includes something like _all the text you can scrape off of the last twenty years of the Internet, or so_.

> But this means ChatGPT is about as smart as the average writer on the Internet has been over the past twenty years — and indeed, the models that comprise GPT **drag the results toward the average, not the extraordinary**, because the average has much nicer statistical properties than the extraordinary for companies that seek to produce a marketable, scalable product from their models, which requires the ability to tweak, diagnose, and defend what you’re selling.

ChatGPT isn’t optimized for breathtaking originality because that’s not its goal. It’s meant to be conversational and approachable, not wild and daring. It’s giving you hamburgers rather than Japanese wagyu sando with white truffle shavings because 90% of the time, that’s what you want.

JR continues:

> Ultimately what these models mean is that with the click of a button you can now be just as good as the average writer who posts content to the Internet, and so the old “average” is now the new “zero.” **If you wrote at the average level of the Internet in 2022 you now write at the zero level.**

That’s a big idea, so let’s turn it over in our hands a bit.

Let’s imagine we can pick something that represents the average quality of English writing on the internet. It might be an article about [holiday lobster prices](https://news.yahoo.com/plenty-fish-sea-eaten-holiday-201000334.html) or a piece of [Peloton marketing copy](https://blog.onepeloton.com/fitness-accountability-partner/).

Could any English speaker write at that level? No.

You probably don’t have to think that hard to come up with several people in your life who can’t write up to the standards of “Yahoo News article” or “Peloton blog post.”

Many folks don’t write, won’t write, can’t write.

In fact, if we want to consider it “median” writing quality rather than “average,” then approximately half the English speakers on the internet couldn’t hit this level of sophistication.

Only now, with tools like ChatGPT, they can. It’s very good at taking awkward, ungrammatical writing and making something decent out of it.

I fed ChatGPT this text —

> if youre stove won’t light here’s what you do 1) check that that the gas is on turn the knob do you hear it 2) lisen if it’s clicking that’s the igniter. if it’s not clickign you could light it with a match 3) lift off the burner cover cuz sometimes that the issue 4) try another burner

— with the instruction to “Rewrite this as a good blog post.” Here’s the result:

> If Your Stove Won’t Light: A Step-by-Step Guide

> If you’re trying to cook a meal and your stove won’t light, it can be frustrating and time-consuming. Here are some steps you can try to troubleshoot the issue:

> 1. Check that the gas is on. Turn the knob and listen for the sound of gas flowing. If you don’t hear it, the gas may be turned off or there may be a problem with the gas line.

> 2. Listen for the igniter. If you hear a clicking sound, that means the igniter is trying to light the gas. If you don’t hear a clicking sound, you can try lighting the burner with a match.

> 3. Lift off the burner cover. Sometimes, food or debris can accumulate underneath the burner cover and prevent the gas from lighting. Removing the cover may resolve the issue.

> 4. Try another burner. If all else fails, it’s possible that there is a problem with a specific burner on your stove. Try using a different burner to see if it lights properly.

> By following these steps, you should be able to get your stove working again in no time. If the problem persists, it may be a good idea to call a professional for assistance.

Imagine you’re a technician asked to document how a system works. You could describe the steps and let ChatGPT do the writing. Would you still need to proofread it, to make sure it’s not hallucinating something wrong? Absolutely. But most reluctant writers are competent readers. They should be able to spot when it’s gone off track.

Where I think these tools have even more benefit is for people who don’t feel confident in English. Type in your native language and let the AI do its work, translating not just the words but the intent.

Which brings us back to JR’s thesis, that a tool like ChatGPT resets the levels. In a world in which everyone can write at the old “average” level, what happens?

I’m not sure. There’s not a great comparison in recent human history. Calculators enabled ordinary people to do a lot more number-crunching, but were they transformative? (For the human calculators of *Hidden Figures*, perhaps so.)

A world filled with AI-polished text might push us in unexpected directions. To err is human, and we might find language incorporating mistakes to porve a hooman wrote it. Or we might use these tools like Instagram filters to make us look like someone we aspire to be.

Personally, I don’t think screenwriters are particularly endangered, at least not in the short term. Future tools may be trained and tuned for scriptwriting, but they’ll be working off a corpus of all the screenplays that have come before. **And that’s how it’s always been.**

JR notes:

> All writers are competing against the cumulative past of our species and its semi-automatic weapons of creative destruction, and are competing to stand out from an average defined over the past couple of decades or so.[…]
> Writers should only worry about automated writers as much as they are already worried about the agglomerated capacity and output of our species up until the present moment, which, eh, we can do better.

How classes use Writer Emergency Pack

October 11, 2022 Education, Follow Up, Writer Emergency, Writer Emergency Pack

Since the launch of Writer Emergency Pack in 2015, we’ve partnered with youth writing programs to get decks into classrooms and after-school groups. By far our biggest partner is NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program.

With the arrival of [Writer Emergency Pack XL](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnaugust/writer-emergency-pack-xl?ref=41qc4k), I asked NaNoWriMo’s executive director [Grant Faulkner](https://twitter.com/grantfaulkner?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) for an update on how the original decks are being used.

**JOHN: A lot of people are familiar with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but what is [Young Writers Program](https://ywp.nanowrimo.org)?**

GRANT: It’s a version of NaNoWriMo, just for kids. When I was a kid, I didn’t dream of writing a novel (and I was bookish). Because of our Young Writers Program, though, now nearly 100,000 kids write novels each year, and educators from over 9,000 classrooms around the world participate.

The challenge is, like NaNoWriMo, to draft an entire novel in November. We believe that giving kids agency and making writing fun is the best way to learn. For 30 wild, exciting, surprising days, kids get to lock away their inner editor, let their imagination take over, and just create! You might say our pedagogy is rooted in joy.

**What are students doing in the program?**

We provide teachers a virtual classroom so they can do things like read student novels and create chat topics. And then we also provide kids with free classroom kits — which include Writer Emergency Packs! — workbooks, and Common Core-aligned K–12 lesson plans.

Kids set word-count goals for the month (appropriate to their age and capabilities) and then draft their novel right on our site. They track their progress, and then they also get support from published authors and an international community of fellow novelists.

photo of high school classroom, students looking at teacher

**How are teachers using Writer Emergency Pack in the classroom?**

I’ve heard so many stories. I’ve heard of teachers who weave cards into the mini-lessons they might do on things like conflict or characterization. I’ve heard of teachers who hand out cards to students who might have hit a wall and have writers’ block. I’ve heard of teachers who give the cards to groups of students and have them use the cards to collaboratively create a story together and then tell it to the class as a way to warm up to write in November.

There is one commonality, though: all teachers make the cards part of the classroom, which is important, because the classroom becomes a writing community during NaNoWriMo.

**What feedback have you gotten from teachers about the decks?**

They love them! The cards are encouraging, approachable, and fun! They provide the same lessons a book might—but in a single illustrated card. Like NaNoWriMo itself, the cards are all about sparking the imagination, making writing not about a teacher’s red correction marks but the joy of storytelling.

**Do you think the new decks will have the same reaction?**

I do. I think the size of the cards makes them more inviting. All of the relevant information is now on a single card, and with 52 cards there’s enough for every student in class, even bigger classes.

And, just one more thing: I know adult writers who use the cards as well (me).

—

Writer Emergency Pack XL is [now on Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnaugust/writer-emergency-pack-xl?ref=41qc4k). For every deck we send to backers, we’ll be sending a deck to our youth writing program partners, including NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program.

Photo by Kenny Eliason/Unsplash

PayUpHollywood progress, an update from ‘Christian’

October 10, 2022 Film Industry, First Person, Follow Up, Television

Three years ago — October 8, 2019 — a writer who went by “Christian” emailed about [their experience as a writer’s PA](https://johnaugust.com/2019/hollywood-assistants-have-always-been-underpaid-but-this-is-different), explaining how they were expected to do the jobs of multiple support staff on a tiny salary. We discussed their email on the show, including the issue of [needing to have a car](https://johnaugust.com/2019/scriptnotes-ep-422-assistants-arent-paid-nearly-enough-transcript).

Last week at the premiere event for The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror XXXIII (delightful, btw), I met “Christian” in person. They filled me in on what had happened in the past three years.

Some legitimate progress had been made, which Christian felt could be traced to the #PayUpHollywood movement. Their pay had gone up from minimum wage — but not necessarily to a living wage — and conversations about pay were becoming more open. That’s the good news.

Frustratingly, studios were still balking at reimbursing staff for things like assistants’ use of their own cell phones. Showrunners weren’t willing to engage on getting assistant and support staff properly compensated for their hours. It felt like the same grind for a few dollars more.

Christian ended up quitting work as a writer’s PA to focus on their writing, which had gone neglected for two years due to stress and overwork. I asked what advice they’d give to a writer who was looking at taking a coveted showrunner’s assistant job.

> Honestly, do it for one show, one season. Learn everything you possibly can. Make contacts. Then get a job as a receptionist at a law firm so you can have the time to write.

This week, Christian wrote in with some follow-up thoughts.

—

I wanted to thank you for not only graciously listening to me ramble last night, but asking me how things were going. As you could probably assume from what I said, it’s been a lot of ups and downs.

I won’t bug you further with the details behind my experiences, but just want to make it known that my toxic boss and the refusal to provide pay parity or stipends for what we were legally owed was happening on essentially both the studio’s and network’s biggest drama cash cow. So there really isn’t any excuse for nickel and dime-ing the assistants, other than the fact that they can.

But really, it doesn’t matter what the budget is, there’s no excuse for screwing the lowest paid workers out of fair wages when these corporations are making billions of dollars a year. The money is there. They just don’t care.

It doesn’t help that there’s a huge line of people willing to accept things as they are because they believe getting an assistant job is a ticket to staffing. (The person who took over my desk when I left was a previously staffed writer, who had left the industry for personal reasons, and was so hell-bent on getting a foot “back inside” that they accepted the demotion to Showrunner’s Assistant on a desk that doesn’t promote up and isn’t particularly kind. So there were really no consequences to my toxic former boss or the show for behaving so poorly.)

And I’m not sure that there’s an easy solution, because even though my boss was not supportive, I know countless assistants who *do* have supportive bosses, and even their bosses have gotten stonewalled when trying to help their assistants get paid what they’re owed. One example: a friend’s boss actually carved out the show budget so that there would be enough to pay each assistant $20/hr (this is back in 2019 I believe, well before union negotiations), and the studio refused to allow the Showrunner to pay the assistants that because it would “start a precedent.”

Even today, I have a friend who got promoted to manager at her POD, but is still getting paid at the assistant rate AND having to cover her former boss’s desk because the studio won’t give the POD the budget for a managerial wage and a new assistant until the POD has “more projects in development.” Currently, this POD has the #1 show on its network, a spinoff in the works, and several other projects being pitched around town.

I feel as though ultimately the only solution seems to be to unionize every assistant position at every level, but that is a hefty, years-long goal filled with complications and extra financial barriers for those who are already struggling to make ends meet, or even just to break in.

And in the meantime, I think the only other thing to do is to make it really, REALLY clear that being an assistant isn’t a gateway to becoming a writer anymore. It’s purely a networking tool at this point, and you should use it to build up connections with supportive writers, then get out and find something that pays better with less hours so you can hone your craft (unless, of course, you are lucky enough to land a boss who actually will lift you up). And, just to note from my own job search over the past few months, almost everything pays better for less hours outside of the entertainment industry.

One more thing that I really think assistants need, and I wish that the WGA or even IATSE offered, was a course on financial literacy. I know this isn’t something that’s a problem specific to assistants, or even to this industry, but it’s something I think every assistant would really benefit from, and it would give them more capability to walk away from bad situations, rather than staying because they need the money.

I think the biggest takeaway I’ve gotten from becoming financially literate is that you don’t need a lot of money to learn how to better manage it. I was essentially broke when I started to understand my finances. In fact, I think it’s more important to understand money when you don’t have it. Especially if you’re also trying to pay off debt. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot and also contemplating in the context of being an assistant.

Sorry for such a novel of an email. After our conversation, I felt there was a lot I had left out that was more useful than what I had actually said, so I hope that this has been of value for your time.