I'd wager that more societal good comes from paying actual humans actual money than it does to digitize those humans' likenesses so that money can instead remain in producers' pockets.

It's not just Hollywood extras who are victims here - it's everyone.

I don't think laws requiring that extras in films be real humans is a very effective social safety net.

> I don't have a good solution to the problem that UBI solves though

These sentences are at odds, you admit that UBI solves a problem, but since it doesn't end classism altogether is's not worthwhile?

computer generated characters are not the problem. scanning real humans and keeping the perpetual right to use the data without paying is the problem.

It's scanning humans without telling them that's what they're being scanned for.

While the stories I've heard may be anecdotal, I've heard people who, as extras on a production, tell stories about being scanned with zero explanation as to why.

If people want to sign away their likeness, fine, but they need to be the ones agreeing to that.

not until we have laws that make sure that those rights can not be signed away exclusively. no contract should be able to prevent someone using their own likeness to make a living.

it's the same problem as with non-compete clauses.

I don't believe your calculator example was written as a way to compare "societal good" as much as it was written to be an example of a tool that replaces a human.

To answer your question, I don't feel the same when using a calculator. When I use a calculator I'm not putting someone out of a job. If I don't have a calculator, I don't go hire a human computer - I just use different tools (my brain).

That's not the say calculators, or similar, haven't put people out of jobs in the past.

I think digitizing someone's likeness so that you don't need to hire them again is a different thing entirely. When talking about that in the context of "societal good", replacing an entire segment of jobs that humans can get paid for (so that studios can keep a few bucks) doesn't seem like it increases "societal good", and actually decreases "societal good."

Maybe that could have been said about calculators ages ago, and maybe 20 years from now the notion of hiring extras will feel a lot like replacing human computers with electronic calculators.

I don't know. We have automated a ton of jobs with technology, and while that makes some rich people richer there is great societal good in it. In fact I think keeping any job that can be automated artificially existing through regulation decreases societal good, in my opinion.

I think pushing for regulation here can actually backfire. A big studio can handle the logistics and costs of hiring extras, while a smaller one may not.