When Sam Rockwell’s character busts into a Norms diner in the opening scene of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, there’s a lot to be confused about. His ragged clothes make him appear homeless and he’s shouting about time travel and claiming to be from the future. He’s also trying to recruit the diner patrons to aid him on a mission to save mankind, even though he’s not quite sure who he needs. One thing comes across perfectly clear, though: he’s not a fan of AI.
Amidst his shouting, Rockwell’s character explains that the future he hails from has been devastated by an all-powerful artificial intelligence (basically, Skynet) and he’s come back to our time to install some AI safety protocols before it’s too late. So it makes sense that this unnamed time traveler has a grudge against the technology, and as it turns out, the cast of Good Luck feels the same.
Of the bunch, Zazie Beetz, who plays a teacher in the film, takes the strongest stance against generative AI and its incursion into Hollywood.
“If we’re speaking in realistic terms, I suppose AI can be used as a tool in the same way CGI can be used to enhance certain things, but ultimately, my heart really is like, fuck AI,” Beetz tells Polygon. “I don’t want it to play a role in film. The cat is out of the bag. It’s going to have to come down to regulation and legislation. I think we should just get rid of it. I think we still could get rid of it. I wish we got rid of Instagram when it first started. I wish we got rid of everything. We should just go back to the 1990s.”
Michael Peña, who plays a substitute teacher alongside Beetz’s character, echoes the same notion.
“Yeah, fuck AI,” he says.
Peña admits to trying out the technology to see how it would write jokes for him, “just for shits and giggles.” He wasn’t impressed.
“It just sucked,” he says. “It was not funny. It didn’t even read a little bit funny. It wasn’t funny and it wasn’t heartfelt. It was just what it thinks heartfelt should be. In terms of true expression and artistry, I don’t think it can help you very much.”
Rockwell seemed somewhat more measured.
“I think there are things that it can do to help you research a script or piece of material or brush you up on certain facts. I think it is useful,” says Rockwell. “I just think that it can get a little out of control. But ultimately AI is derivative. It’s never going to be original. If you need an original thing, you need a human being.”
Finally, while the film’s director, Gore Verbinski, admits AI’s usefulness for file management and similar tasks, he stresses that “I don’t think it should perform any of the tasks that we actually fundamentally need to do as humans. We need to tell stories. We need to write poetry. We need to illustrate. We need to do photography.”
He adds that our overreliance on technology, AI included, has already affected us.
“We all think there’s something wrong,” Verbinski says. “It’s why the movie had to get made now. There’s a palpable loss of identity — the loss of purpose or global ennui or something. People are feeling it.”
That’s also why, if he were in that diner when Rockwell’s character stormed in looking for recruits to stop the AI onslaught, Verbinski would join him.
When I put the question to him, the director replies emphatically: “Oh hell yeah!”