“Hacks” tackles A.I. in Season 5, and star Hannah Einbinder isn’t holding back. During a recent press conference discussing the show’s final season, Einbinder and Jean Smart shared their take on the impact of artificial intelligence on entertainment and the culture — as did series creators Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky.
But it was Einbinder who humorously didn’t hold back: “The people who make this stuff are losers. They’re not artists. They’re not creative,” she said at the “Hacks” press conference last month at the London hotel in West Hollywood. “And they’ve wanted their whole lives to be special. And they’re not special. So, they’re trying to rob real creative people of our gifts. And you can’t. And even if you try, you will never be cool. You guys suck. No one likes you. Anyone who’s near you is because they crave power and access over any ethical standard. You are a loser. You will never be cool. And you probably had a rolly backpack in high school. I wanna put your head in the toilet and flush.”
That elicited a bunch of laughs from the audience, and a joking protest from Downs: “Now, I did have a rolly backpack in high school. I’m going to say, just for those of you who did, some people are OK.” Added Aniello: “Avoiding scoliosis, you know? We were in AP classes. We had a lot of books!”
Einbinder told the “Hacks” creators that they were fine. But the AI tech bros? “They did it in a way that I didn’t like.”
Smart shared her concerns that “people are being trained now to not ever believe now what they see or hear,” and that “the ramifications of that are terrifying.”
She also added, “as a mom, over the years, I’ve been concerned about the fact that kids are on screens all the time. And I read something that was sort of disturbing. They said that if you see something on a screen as opposed to reading it on a page, your mind then pictures it. But if it’s already there in front of you on a screen, either a TV screen or a Gameboy – Gameboy, I’m dating myself – is that then your mind doesn’t have to take that step. Your imagination doesn’t need to because it’s right there in front of you. They said that part of the brain, literally where your imagination is, is getting smaller and smaller physically. That’s scary, too.”
Downs said the A.I. episode this season doesn’t mince words and doesn’t leave their take on it open-ended, “because we feel like when it comes to the creative process, that’s something we don’t need to optimize. That’s one thing that’s like, please leave it alone. There’s a lot of things that maybe you can do. But let’s not go there.”
Statsky noted that the episode reflects how the writers feel about the push by tech companies to optimize every part of our lives.
“To what cost?” she asked. “At what point, how far are we willing to go? You don’t need to optimize everything because the grit and the struggle is part of it. That’s part of the creative process. It’s what makes things good. It’s what makes the things human”
Statsky noted that A.I. does have useful applications, including in medicine and science. “But the problem is that in the society we live in, constantly this technology is used to put people out of jobs and to make the people at the very top richer and everyone else suffers,” she said. “I wish that I believed that it was in better hands, but I don’t. And until there’s guardrails put on, until there is some stoppage mechanism to make sure that we are protecting the humanity both in art and people’s livelihoods, it ain’t good.”
Downs pointed to the journalists in the room. “We talk about the fact that it is unregulated, especially in this season where we’re dealing with the attack on the First Amendment and the attack on free speech and the attack on truth. It is really scary what it can be used for. We gotta wrap our arms around this and talk about it in a more critical way. A lot of people say, ‘it’s inevitable, get on the train.’ OK, well, slow down. Let’s make sure the train has wheels before we get on the train. Is the track finished? What’s going on?”
Leave a Reply