As writer Van Robichaux puts it, he only has an agent because an assistant read one of his scripts, liked it and flagged the right person. That assistant went on to become a producer on the Oscar-nominated “The Brutalist.”
He got his start, like many executives in Hollywood, reviewing scripts and passing them to higher-level decision makers, according to Robichaux, who declined to name the person. But as the presence of artificial intelligence expands throughout the industry, low-level jobs like a script reader will be among the first to disappear.
“Would his job even exist if they didn’t need assistants reading all the screenplays coming over the transom?” Robichaux said in an AI roundtable hosted by WrapPRO last week. “If his job doesn’t exist, does he not become a producer and does ‘The Brutalist’ not get made?
“Worst of all, would I have a career?”
The hypothetical question posed by Robichaux, who has written episodes of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and is writing the “Wedding Crashers” sequel, has a firm basis in reality, with AI promising to handle a lot of the lower-level grunt work for everyone. It’s happening faster than you think, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei telling Axios that he expects the technology to wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs over the next one to five years (although he wouldn’t be the first tech executive to make overly aggressive predictions).
But what’s less discussed is the consequence of losing some or even all of those entry-level jobs, whose real value lies in bringing in young talent and educating them about the business from the ground up. That kind of institutional knowledge is invaluable in a field as complicated and politically fraught as entertainment, and the industry risks losing what is essentially a training ground for the next-generation of decision makers.
“It does create a pipeline problem,” Robichaux said. “Every single major Hollywood producer started with a low-level industry job that is going away.”
What is lost
In India, thousands of people grow up aspiring to work for consumer goods giant Unilever. Once hired, the company sends that new hire to a rural community to sell soap, according to Arun Chandrasekaran, an analyst at research firm Gartner. That’s because the company wants the employee to understand how consumers buy their products and how price sensitivity actually works in the real world.
It’s a practical example of the kind of institutional knowledge a person gains when doing entry-level work as they work their way up the ranks of their field, and isn’t different from the kind of skills, hacks and short-hand communication you pick up on the set of a film or show.
But what happens to that experience when AI starts to replace these positions? There’s the risk that short-term gain in reduced costs may come at the expense of talent with the necessary critical thinking skills to lead down the line.
“We would lose some of that lower-level tacit knowledge, which is important for higher-level decisions,” Chandrasekaran said.
Talent agencies, for instance, start trainees in the mailroom, having them progress as assistants handling administrative tasks before eventually getting the chance to become an agent. Likewise, script readers and assistants get a chance to absorb nuances of the entertainment business, learning what works and what doesn’t work with audiences as they end up being the producers or writers of the next generation. Losing those positions means one of the more realistic entrances into entertainment is shut off.
Getting into Hollywood is already difficult, oftentimes reliant more on who you know vs. what you can do. With fewer opportunities up for grabs, it could just get worse.
“AI could accelerate the existing dynamics,” said Brian Justie, a senior research analyst at the UCLA Labor Center.
It’s already happening in tech
Hollywood has been relatively conservative when it comes to adopting AI, so you can look to the more aggressive tech industry as a bellwether for the impact of the technology.
It’s nothing short of brutal.
The total tally of layoffs in the tech industry has exceeded 100,000 this year, according to a count conducted by The Bridge Chronicle. That’s been led by big cuts from Microsoft, Meta, Intel and others.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in April said up to 30% of his company’s code is now written by AI; over the next three months, his company laid off 15,000 employees. Google was willing to spend $2.4 billion to hire a CEO and a few engineers because their AI expertise was specifically focused on programming to replace coders.
Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees, “In the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
While the entertainment industry may not follow tech’s playbook to a tee, it’s not a stretch to see the allure of cutting costs inspiring similar moves. Advancements in AI capabilities around VFX could potentially see layoffs in that area alone.
Entry-level 2.0?
Not everyone thinks the end of grunt work for a new hire spells doom for the industry. Scott Mann, founder and co-CEO of Flawless AI, a post-production visual effects company, said AI could potentially change what an entry-level position looks like.
Traditionally, it’s incredibly difficult to jump into a position where you’re directing or writing a film. But AI tools will eventually make it easier to craft films from the get go, said Mann, who was also on the WrapPRO AI roundtable. You’re already seeing it with creators, with tools provided by the likes of YouTube and TikTok enabling more polished videos.
“It’s scary because it’s not what we know,” he said. “But it changes what ‘entry-level’ could look like.”
Hannah Elsakr, vice president of global GenAI new business ventures at Adobe, echoed the sentiment, noting that new hires may enter at a different level without the grunt work. She added that it’s happening with coders, and that the more sophisticated work required, whether it’s creative or coding, may help companies identify the “real gems” earlier, allowing them to advance faster.
It’s also unclear if AI will actually replace all of these tasks. While the technology has made huge leaps over the last three years, there remain limitations, particularly on the creative side. Justie warned that AI won’t have the same impact across all jobs.
It’s clear there’s a shift happening with increasing comfort in relying on AI and bots to handle tasks for us. But what happens if that institutional knowledge built up over experience and grunt work goes away?
“The risk is we become so dependent on AI, when we have a catastrophic element that AI doesn’t foresee, we can’t make decisions,” Chandrasekaran said.
And if Hollywood is anything, it’s unpredictable and, at times, even catastrophic.
