Brian Merchant: The writers' strike was the first workplace battle between humans and AI. The humans won
The historic, 146-day writers' strike finally appears to be over. Details are scarce, but the Writers Guild of America sounds triumphant: It's calling the deal "exceptional" and heralding gains in just about every arena. And though there are many reasons that the union ultimately won out — smart organizing and a memeable picket line, strong allyship from SAG-AFTRA, and tactical blunders by the studio execs among them — there's one thing above all that lighted up the action: The way the writers refused to let bosses use AI to exploit them.
At a moment when the prospect of executives and managers using software automation to undermine work in professions everywhere loomed reason why Americans overwhelmingly had the writers' backs over the studios — , the public supported them over the execs by an astonishing margin of 72% to 19% — but it was a big one.
