The last time the Writers Guild of America went on strike, in 2007, workers pushed back against the nascent streaming industry, advocating for higher residual payments for content released over streaming. Now a new technology, artificial intelligence, stands to drastically change Hollywood again as Guild strikers return to the picket line. Streaming giants like Hulu, Netflix, and Disney have come to dominate the industry, changing the models by which content is produced and distributed and making it increasingly difficult for writers to earn a sustainable income. And as artificial intelligence technology rapidly improves, the WGA aims to place limits on the use of AI in movies and TV scripts. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) --which is negotiating the contract on behalf of Hollywood studios, streamers, and production companies--say their priority is "the long-term health and stability of the industry" and they are dedicated to reaching "a fair and reasonable agreement" according to the Associated Press.

Both of these resources are only really available to big companies. And although some of the most exciting applications, such as OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT and Stability.AI's image-generation AI Stable Diffusion, are created by startups, they rely on deals with Big Tech that gives them access to its vast data and computing resources. "A couple of big tech firms are poised to consolidate power through AI rather than democratize it," says Sarah Myers West, managing director of the AI Now Institute, a research nonprofit. Right now, Big Tech has a chokehold on AI. But Myers West believes we're actually at a watershed moment.

Hosted by Dylan Doyle-Burke and Jessie J Smith, Radical AI is a podcast featuring the voices of the future in the field of artificial intelligence ethics. In this episode Jess and Dylan chat to Sarah Myers West about "Racism and Sexism in AI Technology? How do we build technology that meets the needs of everyone? To answer these questions and more The Radical AI Podcast welcomes Dr Sarah Myers West to the show. Dr Sarah Myers West is a postdoctoral researcher at the AI Now Institute.