How Biden’s Labor Chief Is Thinking About AI’s Threat to Hollywood Workers

Attendees at the Screen Actors Guild Awards this year will not only be brushing shoulders with the stars of Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer and other awards hopefuls — but also a sitting member of President Biden’s cabinet.

In a sign of the times in Hollywood, acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su will be attending the guild ceremony to acknowledge the impact of SAG-AFTRA’s 2023 strike and resulting contract. “It’s been a big year for SAG-AFTRA,” Su — who is attending the awards in her personal capacity — explained in an interview on Wednesday. She added that she wanted to celebrate with the union and “acknowledge the important role that they played in lifting up workers.”

Su is no stranger to the Hollywood labor landscape, having served as the California labor commissioner for seven years and communicated with the actors’ union, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers during the 2023 strikes. (She did not, however, get involved in the negotiations, as she did during the West Coast port talks last year.) In an interview prior to her attendance at the SAG Awards, she discussed the role she believes Hollywood unions play in the larger labor landscape and explained her approach to AI, and the threat and opportunity it poses to workers.

Was there anything in particular that stood out to you as significant about SAG-AFTRA’s deal last year?

There was so much about what SAG-AFTRA did that I think was significant. One was obviously just being part of a moment in this country where workers are really demanding their fair share. We saw that from Hollywood to healthcare to auto workers to teachers to dock workers. All of these unions’ contracts had an impact not just on union workers, but also on non-union workers, it really just sent a strong message about the importance of working people. The other thing is that they had to go on strike to get those wins, and that is never easy. It demands sacrifice and discipline and tremendous solidarity, and so they helped to demonstrate the power of the strike. But one other specific piece, you asked about their contract, obviously it’s always about wages and working conditions, but SAG-AFTRA was one of the unions that really demonstrated the importance of AI and how the technological changes that we are seeing affect working people. And they drew a line in the sand about that, that we have to make sure that we create an industry and a future in which we allow working people to benefit from the positive aspects of AI and be protected against potential negative outcomes. And seeing them do that I think was very powerful, not just for their industry, but for all others who are facing AI in their own way.

What is your sense of the role that Hollywood unions play in the larger U.S. labor landscape at this juncture?

I think unions are the backbone of Hollywood, just like they’re the backbone of the American middle class. The president says all the time that the middle class built America and unions built the middle class. We saw that through SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild, and also numerous other unions who went to the bargaining table and took to the streets in order to demand their fair share. I think it is also not an accident or a coincidence that those things happened at the same time that we have the most pro-worker, pro-union president in history in office, who’s also been very clear that we can’t build the economy that we want if we don’t do right by working people. We can’t make America better, stronger, we can’t recover from the crises of the last few years if we don’t center the wellbeing of working people. So the unions you mentioned really demonstrated how that works. The other thing is, I think just the challenge [they posed] to employers, sending a clear message that when you do right by workers, you’re going to do better.

IATSE and the Teamsters are going into negotiations this year. Do you have any plans at this point to talk to their leaders and leaders of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers?

No. I mean, always being open to talking to anybody, labor and management, I feel that’s a core part of my job. I recently visited IATSE Local 720 in Las Vegas when I was there, I’ve been regular touch with the Teamsters. I did speak with AMPTP when the negotiation was going on [with the writers’ and actors’ unions in 2023]. So I think having open line of communication is very, very valuable. I also think that certainly in any industry, when employers are negotiating with one union, they are looking forward to see what else is coming. And so you asked an earlier question, what do the outcomes of what SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild accomplish mean? I think it does set a measure for what comes next. That’s the way that workers doing well lifts up other workers, too. So I imagine, although I haven’t talked about this specifically, that the industry is looking at those contracts as models for what could happen in future ones. But certainly, again, I’m going to leave it to the parties to negotiate what they need to determine what the priorities are and always remain available to talk and to figure out alongside them whether me doing anything more than that would be helpful.

Let’s talk a little bit about AI. Where are the areas where unions and management can currently be productive in tackling this issue, and where does policy really need to play a role?

One way to answer your question is just that employers and workers should really think together about the impact of AI. It’s important for it not to be a unilateral decision about not just what AI is going to be deployed, but when and how and to what purpose. But one of the things is AI is evolving. And oftentimes by the time a contract is negotiated, it has evolved. And so there is a role for policy, and that’s why the president has issued an executive order about AI that’s really calling on all of us, his administration and private actors, to think about what secure and safe AI looks like. And I would say that AI is neither safe nor secure if it harms working people. So my approach to the executive order is to figure out what do we need to do to ensure that AI does right by workers? I think we also need to challenge AI developers, technologists to really ask themselves, if you are truly committed to innovation, how do we innovate in a way to make technology solve some of the real issues we have in the world, in the workplace?

What is the Department of Labor currently working on when it comes to AI?

So some of it is just this exact question, [which is] how do we think about AI as benefiting workers? We’re also looking at from a workforce perspective, like what jobs change because of AI, and I want to be really clear, the answers to those questions are also not set in stone. It’s not like the robots are coming and we just have to figure out how we adjust to it. Every decision we make determines what that outcome is going to be. We also see that AI could create jobs and how do we ensure that we have a workforce that’s ready for those jobs and that workforce looks like America, that everybody has access to [them]. I’m not somebody who believes that [AI is] going to wholesale eliminate whole categories of jobs, although it’s important for us to look at that, but how do we think about how AI can complement human ingenuity, human talent, human capability, and then really build a workforce system that helps to prepare workers for those changes?

For me, one of the benefits of Hollywood having been so out front in terms of what’s good for workers over this last year is talk about human creativity, talk about human ingenuity, right? There are some things that really you need humans to do. I’m reminded of something that the writers said to me when I met with them during the negotiations: They had certain sayings that was like, “AI has never been to fat camp.” “AI has never had childhood trauma.” Thinking about AI in the context of how do we preserve and expand the beauty of human creativity is I think a really important part of that question too.

How much are you and the Biden-Harris administration paying attention to displacement caused by AI tools that creators say were created on the backs of their work, using copyrighted content as training materials?

Congress has been trying to figure out what to do in this space as well, and they will often come to us for technical assistance about things, which we always do provide. One of the ways I think about that, though, is much of AI is developed using information that is taken from workers, let’s say, driving self-driving car technology is built from analyzing the movements, the actions, the decision-making of real drivers. And so I think one question that’s important to ask is how do we make sure that workers who are helping to make the technology possible actually benefit from it, including get compensation for their work? Their labor is helping to make that AI possible. And so thinking about you’re learning something or building something off of the labor of workers, we want to think about what the compensation for that should be. There’s a lot of things that the answers are being sort of developed, explored as we speak, but I think that’s one element of protecting workers.

In the entertainment business, the recent introduction of OpenAI’s text-to-video model Sora has created a lot of fears of the technology threatening jobs in this industry. Have you and your colleagues at the Department of Labor taken a look at Sora yet?

Like you said, it’s relatively new. I’m aware of it. That relates to the [idea that] technology is evolving, it’s evolving really rapidly. But I’ll say again, that none of the impact is inevitable. All of it is going to be the result of choices that are made, and we want to be sure that the choices take into account what’s good for workers and include workers in the conversation.

To end on a more lighthearted note, are you rooting for any particular nominees at the SAG Awards this year?

No, I support all of them. I mean, I’m not only the acting labor secretary, I’m a big fan. I grew up in LA, so I have long been a fan of both movies and TV. I’ve always been excited about diversity and representation in the industry, and so [I’m] certainly happy to see that and happy to see the ways that the industry is prioritizing that and consumers are responding. I’ve long believed that when you seek out diversity, you find excellence, and when you demand excellence, you get diversity.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.