this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
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I agree with your take, but I also agree with GL on this one... if you continue to get around in horse drawn carriages because cars are smelly and dangerous and non-traditional, you're going to get left behind.
There are plenty of things horses and carriages are "better at" than cars, particularly traversing long distances in a country with streams and fields and no gas stations. However... there are also things that cars are better at than horses and carriages...
I used to program in assembly language about 10-30% of my working time, up through the early 1990s. What changed? Optimizing compilers finally got better at writing assembly code than me. They had been around for decades, but they had always been a little bit lacking, until then. I still code for a living, but I haven't even looked at an aseembly listing in 25 years. I get significantly more done, faster and more reliably using compiled (and interpreted) languages than I do using assembly code, which I used to be able to use to make the complied (and especially interpreted) programs dramatically faster. Compilers do that for me now.
As of today, AI is kicking my ass at reviewing my colleagues' code. It's not saving me any work, I spend 2-3x more time in code reviews now than I did before AI code review "was a thing" - but now, those code reviews are 20-50x more valuable than they used to be. We're catching many more problems in the code (and documentation) at review time, not after the software gets into customers' hands. That's a very good thing, and today I would consider anyone who ships critical code without an AI review to be negligent.
I'm glad you find it useful! I think people are scared of creatives being cheated of their already few chances, and of the brainless marketing that Anthropic, OpenAI et al keep spouting.
I don't like to be cold like this, but I think "creatives" need to depend less on their agents and production companies and all that industry infrastructure promising 1 in a million "stardom" while stringing the other 999,999 along with breadcrumbs leading nowhere.
The same technology they're bitching about destroying those jobs that most of them never had in the first place, is technology that enables smaller budgets to create competitive entertainment. Self-publishing is a very real thing now alongside traditional "Best Seller List" promotional publishing houses. No, you're not likely to get on "Oprah" or whatever the magic promotional outlet is these days with your self published book, but every creative who achieves that kind of stardom that virtually all of them are hungering for is absolutely stealing the limelight from hundreds or even thousands of other people just as talented as themselves or more...
In other words, stop whining and start making things happen for yourself, you have better access today than ever. There's still a place for superstars in today's world, but instead of the "top 100" getting all the attention, it's time for a top 10 to be followed by 10,000 you might also want to check out. The long tail has gotten fatter, and it should continue to grow.
At the end of the day, if the entire creative arts industries disappeared overnight, the world carries on without any real disruption. People might not like to hear it, but it’s true. The entire industry is essentially just a luxury thing.
There aren’t many industries that could be wiped out and nothing in daily life really changes, but the arts is one.
The arts is a vital part of our culture, not our survival - yes. The fact that we have over 4% of GDP going to "the arts" (that's over $1.2T in the US alone), is an achievement, not a waste. It also means - more or less 1 in 25 people you meet is dependent / heavily dependent on the arts not just as something to do with their time, but a significant source of their livelihood.
Have you worked as or with a creative?
I'd call myself more "creative adjacent" but, to your "or with" question: definitely yes.
To be honest with you, it sounds like you don't know what's it like to actually be a creative in this economy...
Using AI to double check your code is very different from using AI to replace your skilled creative talent on a motion picture. It's not even an accurate comparison.. GL isn't talking about coding, he's talking about visual effects, writers, even actors...all of whom who's careers are at risk.
You want to use AI to make sure you didn't miss a semicolon at the end of a line, great...knock yourself out. But that has literally nothing in common with what Lucas is blathering about here.
If a new tool can streamline and improve processes, eliminating jobs along the way, then that’s just an unfortunate side effect of progress.
Not every job needs to exist forever. Should electric cars be banned to protect ICE manufacturers and mechanics? Should digital cameras be banned to protect the jobs of film makers and film developers?
No. When a profession is no longer needed it goes away. The people in that profession need to adapt and move on.
If AI can do the visual effects in an hour what would usually take a team of 20 3 months to do, those jobs are no longer necessary. Sucks for them, but you don’t ignore the AI just to let them keep their jobs to your own detriment.
What's happening to movie production with AI is a lot like what happened to music production with digital audio workstations. The cost of making top tier production value product is plummeting like a stone falling to the moon.
You want to make music with a full symphony orchestra, you can still do that. We actually attend our city orchestra concerts a couple of times a year. However, if you want to produce your own music you can almost get better sound quality out of a smartphone today than the Beatles did out of Abbey Road studios back in their day.
The spontenaity of live performers, whether music or acting, is much MORE cost effective than painstakingly replicating that kind of performance through digital methods. I think we're going to see a continued appreciation of real actors in movies, in between all the slop that the industry "test markets" to see what they can get away with.
Most of the real actors are going to need to learn how to act a lot better then, because most of the biggest actors these days absolutely could be replaced with AI and get a better result. A genuinely great performance is rare.