Really rich guy and professional-dumb-idea-haver Marc Andreessen has done it again. This time, the egg-headed venture capitalist wants you to believe that artificial intelligence is here to “save” comedy.
Yes, his latest great idea is to have people like Dave Chappelle throw out their pencils and notepads and just produce hour-long Netflix specials via ChatGPT instead.
“Comedy needs a Renaissance very badly,” Andreessen said during a recent podcast interview with the CEO of Substack, Chris Best. “It’s basically died. So it could be the way the story gets told as, like, AI saves comedy.”
Some people have claimed that comedy is dead or dying or under attack. And while various scandals involving political correctness and comedians have occurred over the past several years, even prominent comedians will admit that their industry is doing just fine. Still, Andreessen thinks a software program could be the answer to comedians’ modern-day “struggles.”
After Best mentioned South Park, Andreessen said: “You’ll be able to come up with jokes and render a cartoon in basically half an hour that is as good as those guys that, 20 years ago, needed a complete production facility.”
To be sure, AI comedy is already a thing, although the clips I’ve heard sound like garbage, and the medium itself doesn’t seem to be inspiring much public enthusiasm. An AI-generated “George Carlin special” that was produced by a couple of YouTubers earlier this year led to criticism by Carlin’s daughter and a lawsuit by his estate. The lawsuit was later settled with an injunction that insisted the YouTubers never try anything like it again.
Andreessen’s comments on comedy came amidst a broader conversation between himself and Best about how AI could be used to automate creative work of all kinds. “The creative tool aspect of this is going to be profound,” the venture capitalist said. “Anybody who is a creative in a professional field all of a sudden has a new superpower,” he said, adding that it’s “just absolutely incredible what’s going to be possible creatively.”
On the one hand, it’s difficult to see how someone could so entirely miss the plot. The whole point of creative work is the actual, personal act of creation. You are the one creating it, not some computer program. Art is a personal experience for both the artist and their audience, which is why using software to do the work seems like such a massive betrayal of the creative process itself. It’s like telling an NFL player that the best way to “improve” their performance is to get a robot to run the ball for them. What’s even the point of playing, at that point?
On the other hand, it makes sense that someone who has spent their entire life thinking about money doesn’t really understand this. If the work is only valuable in so far as it makes money, then who cares how it gets produced? Just press a button and watch the cash come rolling in! This is probably also why people like Andreessen aren’t very funny–or, at the very least, not intentionally.
