There’s recently been a lot of talk over what jobs will be the first to be replaced by AI, as all of humanity furrows its brow in the staff break room after the massive buy out of the company by robots. Part of the reason behind the 2023 actors and writers strike was the studios admitting that with AI it now took them no talent at all to make movies, with one studio exec admitting that “Mate, I caught Taylor Lautner’s face in my dashcam* while driving through Hollywood last week, now I have enough footage to release a dozen more Twilight movies. Watch out for ‘Twilight 8: Imprinting on Elves‘ this Christmas! Does anyone have any cocaine? Don’t print that last part”.
(*he was asking to clean the exec’s windows at a traffic stop. Taylor Lautner is… not in a good place, man… Partially because of AI! But, yes, mostly because of the PCP)
The UK government has “pledged to ask responsibility” on AI weapons, with a government source quoted as saying that “We would never enact the use of our kick ass, super cool war robots with anything less than absolute seriousness”. The source then did a robot dance with a toy gun in each hand while making ‘P-choo! P-choo! P-choo!’ laser sounds, before stopping, putting the toy guns back in their briefcase, clearing their voice and announcing “So, yeah, that’s pretty much how it works”. The government pledging to ‘act responsibility’ in the production of autonomous weapon systems – widely known as ‘killer robots’ – is like your weird uncle Danny pledging to ‘drink responsibly’ after lining up a dozen Jägerbathbombs (like a standard Jägerbomb with a sprinkling of bath salts) on the bar in front of him.
We should seriously consider the jobs that are likely to be lost to AI though, as it’s not just a way to more easily enact lethal imperialism over poor brown people and pushing former ‘Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl‘ actors into drug dependency, a lot of jobs are likely to be lost. Think of those poor movie studio executives. Imagine if your job was just to just sit back and confirm whether another low effort and low quality movie should be released?? Your job could be replaced in seconds! Shit, it could be replaced now: I’m just going to ask ChatGPT to come up with a movie idea:
Hmmm, OK, not a great example, but more often than not AI will actually suggest a movie worth making, just look at this as an example of… Oh shit! They just made it!
Motherfuckers! That was my idea! Or at least, it was my prompt into ChatGPT! I guess I’ve only got myself to blame, I actually sold Jeff Bezos the film rights to the entirety of my blog back in July 2015 in lieu of paying for Amazon Prime that month. Ever seen ‘The Voyeurs‘? Basically lifted word for word from this blog, with a few tiny artistic changes (my tits are far bigger than Sydney Sweeney‘s). I can see why these studio execs are complaining though, I definitely feel that I deserve $498mil over five years for all the work it took me to come up with that movie premise.
And Rishi Sunak? He’s apparently the Prime Minister, but you’re telling me that we can’t just write a code that can program some AI to come out every now and then to announce that “Yeah, totally, dudes, AI seems pretty fucked up fr” but not actually do anything or announce any policies whatsoever? And the policies that this AI does announce? I think we’ve already covered that when we talked about autonomous weapon systems – just killer robots aimed at the poors and the foreigns. It’s a fucking piece of piss!
I’d argue that The National were one of the groups of workers most at risk of being replaced by AI, if it wasn’t for the fact that large swathes of ‘First Two Pages of Frankenstein’ and ‘Laugh Track’ sound like they were already concocted by some sort of large language model after the rest of the band’s career was fed into it. You’re telling me that the band bothered to sit down and write and record tracks like New Order T-Shirt or Tropic Morning News or Space Invader or the song Laugh Track?? Ma dudes, just Midjourney that shit
The band first released ‘First Two Pages of Frankenstein’ in April, which was another album of midtempo piano ballads. OK, said the world. But then! Then they announced they would be another record released by the band in September! Maybe this would prove to be the more aggressive, more propulsive and intense hideous secret sister of ‘Frankenstein…’ that The National needed to hide in the loft lest it scare the house guests!? It came out and… yeah, another album of midtempo piano ballads. More real rather than electronic drums, as the band were obviously a bit worried about being called out. The National are borderline taking the piss now.
They get away with it though. Because kudos to whoever programmed that National generative artificial intelligence program, because it keeps producing gold. Because AI can still produce some good stuff. Those Killer robots still kill loads of poor brown people. My AI produced film ‘Candy Cane Lane’ is still loved by… 43% on Rotten Tomatoes?? Jesus, Bezos, I’m really starting to regret trusting you with my intellectual property. I tried really hard to dislike these albums: they’re lazy unadventurous retreads of a sound the band has long mastered. The cast list is impressive – Phoebe Bridgers; Taylor Swift; Rosanne Cash; Bon Iver; oh hey, Sufjan Stevens! -but they add nothing past their impressive names on the billboard. I’d even argue that Swift’s contribution on The Alcott is the only one you could even make out.
But – bah gahd! – it’s still really good! The band are such accomplished songwriters that any AI program with their back catalogue uploaded couldn’t help but spit out some absolute gems out the other end. I hate how much I like these albums. I would have loved to make a point by not including them on this list, but as a fellow AI master: game recognises game. ‘Laugh Track’ is ranked slightly higher – it was actually far more difficult for me to find examples of rote National songs than it was for ‘Frankenstein’, and it also ends with the thrilling Smoke Detector, which suggests a future where the band might pull their fingers out (of the Viso Suite Platform) and really start challenging themselves again.
#51 2019, #11 in 2017, #21 in 2013, #7 in 2010
Metacritic: 79 (Frankenstein) 78 (Laugh Track)
Necessary Evil 
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