Those of us in the world of entertainment (media, show business, anything but “content,” please!) can already hear the automation monster coming over the hill. It sounds like the buzzing of a thousand agents swarming to make The Ouroboros Channel: an AI-generated feed (named after the snake eating its own tail) that creates your next show based on what you’re watching now.
But the monster only knows what it knows: What audience behavior has taught it.
This violates rule number one in show business: The audience doesn’t know what it wants until you show them what they want.
Think about the shows and films that seemed to have come out of left field, like when NBC placed a short bet on a 6-episode order for Jerry Seinfeld’s show with his friend Larry David. NBC figured the audience would like a stand-up comedian carrying a sitcom, but Jerry and Larry never told the suits that it was intended to be “a show about nothing.” And the audience bit. Hard.
To be fair, giving the people what they want works—with diminishing returns, including for the LLMs. But if we don’t move the needle, we don’t contribute to the culture.
None of that happens without the fine-tuned instincts of creative teams. I saw it with David Letterman’s legendary Top Ten List, back when I was a writer there in the 1980s. Our first impulse was to parody the lists that dominated every publication’s yearly wraps. It evolved from a one-joke Top Ten List (“Things That Almost Rhyme With Peas”) to a nightly cultural commentary that lasted 30 years and more than 4,600 slots. It was successful because the writers’ room worked it over, pushed it around, transformed the “same old” into something no one of us could have made alone.
The Ouroboros Channel will certainly exist after automation, giving the people what they think they want. It’ll look like the dozens of cable networks you see today, programming the same things over and over. Eventually, the snake will eat itself. Fine! We teams of humans will stay a step or two ahead. Although our teams won’t look anything like they look today.
Building a team has always been about finding people who fill your gaps, letting them do what they do best, and challenging each other. In the age of automation, AI will be part of the team, but not the most important member. While The Ouroboros Channel will feed more of the same to the audience, human teams working with AI will take what the audience has told them, chop it up, turn it around, and…
…create something we won't realize we want until we see it.
