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For some in Hollywood, as Silicon Valleys AI models have become impossible to ignore, its better to have a seat at the table as these new technologies emerge, rather than sitting back and letting the tech titans take full control. This, at least, is the impetus behind Asteria, the generative AI studio cofounded by the filmmaking couple of Bryn Mooser and Natasha Lyonne, who promote their company as using ethical AI. Lyonne has justified her embrace of the technology by explaining: Its better to get your hands dirty than pretend its not happening. The company has faced some backlash, both because Lyonne (tastelessly, her detractors would argue) claimed the late David Lynch had endorsed AI, and because its flagship model is proprietarymeaning we have no way to verify that it is indeed trained only on licensed material (as Lyonne and co. say it is). Meanwhile, James Cameron is on Stability AIs board, and has expressed his hope for using AI to make blockbuster filmmaking cheaper. Jason Blums Blumhouse Productions has partnered with Meta for AI testing and chatbots. Lionsgate signed a deal with Runway, an AI startup valued at $3 billion, to let the company train its model on the studios 20,000+ films and TV series; Runway also signed a deal with AMC. This embrace of AI, though, puts the James Camerons and Natasha Lyonnes of the world at odds with industry peers who are opting to push back on these would-be robot overlords before they take over. Studios are understandably wary of copyright infringement, especially since generative AI models trained on publicly available data can reproduce intellectual propertyfor example, creating an image of Elsa from Frozen upon request. That concern is at the heart of several ongoing lawsuits against AI companies, including one from Disney and Universal against Midjourney, which includes dozens of side-by-side pictures comparing the studios own IP to Midjourneys outputs. Meanwhile, last year Disney formed an Office of Technology Enablement to oversee how the company can responsibly use AI in postproduction and VFX, among other initiatives. This demonstrates the balance Hollywood is trying to strike, with attempts to protect whats theirs while ensuring they are not left behind by these technological developments. Tensions are running high. Are you on board, or standing in the way? Nuanced decisions being made by studios, producers, investors, and talent right now will determine whether Hollywood will look recognizable in a decade. Similar tensions have sprung up before in Hollywood. Past introductions of television, cable, streaming, and more have sent shivers down the spines of studios and their labor forces alike. In each instance, when you are fighting for the right to continue running your business, its understandable that you would leave no stone unturned, says Brandon Katz, director of insights and content strategy at Greenlight Analytics. The issue is finding the right approach, as the use of AI in the creative industries remains deeply contentious and presents a different sort of multitiered threat. As Katz understands it, the studios are trying to preserve as much as they can before the machine takeover, as it seems clear that this technology is inevitable. This means everything from licensing content to train AI, cutting production costs by streamlining visual effects, dubbing and subtitling more efficiently to serve global markets, and flirting with full generative production. It is that final one, of course, that tends to draw the most scrutiny. We are enduring a painful contraction of the entertainment industry, Katz says, because legacy media doesnt have the same money to play with that they once did, so these companies need to figure out cost-cutting moves. It is unfortunate that the result is not only job cuts but reliance and embracement of technology that might otherwise replace some of the creative human labor force. With this in mind, Hollywoods unions are unsurprisingly deeply invested in how AI use in the industry develops, and the technology was key to the writers and actors strikes in 2023, when they won protections from nonconsensual cloning of actors and from AI scripts. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, executive director of the Screen Actors GuildAmerican Federation of Television and Radio Artists, tells Fast Company that since then, the industry has largely taken a more cautious approach to the technology. He notes that people think they have a right to their own image, but they donthe should know, since he himself was subject of a deepfake video during the strikes. The union is advocating for the No Fakes Act in Congress, to protect individuals from the misuse of their likeness (some argue the Act could actually do more harm than good). As efforts like Asteria and Runway have emerged, he adds, we want to make sure to talk to every single company that wants to use this technology. Meanwhile, various courts are regularly issuing (often contradictory) decisions, including a recent win for AI companies in California which ruled that these companies do not violate fair use law when they train their models on copyrighted material. As both the tech itself and the discourse and legislation around it rapidly develops, Crabtree-Ireland recognizes that the union represents vast swaths of performers with different attitudes, as many want to find ways to use AI as a tool, while others (he estimates 10 to 15%) would prefer to prohibit it completely. From the unions perspective, though, what were able to do best is focus on the core principles of informed consent and intended use, so performers not only give their consent but are also told exactly how their likeness or image will be used by the technology. The bigger question is whether audiences will accept what these companies intend to do with AIand the way these backlashes have played out is not going unnoticed. Crabtree-Ireland says performers have been protected by the uncanny valley for longer than we expected, as even the best models today still look rather unnatura. Nevertheless, itd be irresponsible to keep counting on that, or to assume that audiences wont [start to] respond to it. Were focused on making the right push, contractually and legally, he adds. We want to be able to channel how this technology is going to be used. Katz points out that AI is also a boon to the creator economy, and will almost certainly help to further close the gap between professional and amateur productions, as YouTubers like MrBeast have already proved. Can they approximate 50 to 75% of what a Warner Bros. can do for a fraction of the cost? Katz says about how online creators will make use of AI. What kind of bite does that take out of Hollywood? The only thing that is certain as workers of all kinds struggle to carve out their place in the future of entertainment is how little anyone seems to know.
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With more and more people moving to urban areas, there’s an ever-growing need for people who can think at the scale of a city in order to solve problems. Experts in urban design are very much in demand. Fast Company’s new analysis of job listings across several design disciplines puts a number on it: job postings for urban designers are up 102% compared to the previous year. This boom may reflect the increasing relevance of the kind of work urban designers do, which is to create functioning communities and regions. Spanning architecture, city planning, landscape architecture, and urban development, urban design takes in the whole picture of a city and looks for ways that interventions at all scales can improve the system. “It’s really a field of integration,” says Tyler Patrick, chair of the planning and urban design department at Sasaki, a large multidisciplinary design firm. Patrick says that Sasaki has been hiring more and more urban designers every year, and including their input on nearly every project. “It’s a field that continues to add a lot of value.” Part of rise in demand for urban designers may stem from the fact that the way cities operate is inseparable from the issues of the day. From sustainability to community health to economic development, some of society’s biggest challenges canand perhaps mustbe addressed at the urban level. “Every project we go into we try to understand, How does this fit into the system? How does it change the system?” says Nick Leahy, co-CEO of the design firm Perkins Eastman. Urban designers are typically trained to use sophisticated data analysis tools, including geographic information systems (GIS) and site planning software like Autodesk Forma. These programs and visualization tools help to quantify the ways design decisions play out at the level of a city system. Leahy says this type of analysis is increasingly critical in projects, whether it’s a 2,000-acre plan in Mumbai or the redevelopment of a key parcel in a city’s downtown. And there’s plenty of work to do. Kris Krider, chair of the urban design and preservation division of the American Planning Association, says that the rise in urban design job postings is not surprising, especially in the U.S. “We’re looking at a lot of redevelopment within our existing cities and our communities, and it gets complicated pretty quick,” Krider says. Urban designers, who are skilled in interdisciplinary thinking, are well suited to this messy job, able to weave new elements into the fabric of a living city. “This is not a greenfield site where you can design the perfect town square,” Krider says, using an industry term for undeveloped land. “You’ve got to fix stuff.” The increased demand is likely to continue, especially given trends in American cities to try to move away from the car-centric planning of the past, and to make even suburban areas more vibrant, walkable, and livable. It would be hard to argue that most communities in the U.S. yet check all those boxes. That’s part of the reason, he says, that this type of designer can expect job security. “Urban designers never run out of work to do because there are so many mistakes to correct.” This article is part of Fast Companys continuing coverage of where the design jobs are, including this years comprehensive analysis of 170,000 job listings.
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This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. Wes Lowe uses so much Claritin that he started an Amazon subscription to avoid running out. His kids take two asthma medications. This reflects the normalcy of pollution in Californias San Joaquin Valley, where residents breathe some of the dirtiest air in the nation. Lowe lives about 20 miles outside of Fresno, in the valleys heart. More than a dozen highways, including Interstate 5, run through the region, carrying almost half of the states truck traffic. The sky is usually hazy, the air often deemed hazardous, and 1 in 6 children live with asthma. You dont realize how bad it is until you leave, Lowe said. He understands Californias urgent need to clear the air by electrifying the trucking industry and pushing older, more polluting machinery off the road. That would reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 17.1 tons annually by 2037, significantly reduce the amount of smog-forming ozone,and go a long way toward meeting federal air quality requirements. But as a partner at Kingsburg Truck Center, a dealership in Kingsburg, hes seen how difficult this transition will be. More than 15 percent of medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold statewide in 2023 were zero-emission. But the road has been bumpy amid growing uncertainty about Californias regulations and the Trump administrations hostility toward electric vehicles, the clean energy transition, and the states climate policies. The Golden State started its trucking transition in 2021 when it required manufacturers to produce an increasing number of zero-emission big rigs, known as Advanced Clean Trucks, or ACT. The following year, it mandated that private and public fleets buy only those machines by 2036, establishing what are called Advanced Clean Fleets, or ACF. The Environmental Protection Agency granted the waiver California needed to adopt ACT in 2023. But it had not acted on the exemption required to enforce ACF by the time President Donald Trump took office, prompting the state to rescind its application as a strategic move to keep options on the table, according to the California Air Resources Board. The U.S. Senate threw the fate of the Advanced Clean Trucks rule into question when it revoked the states EPA waiver on May 22, stripping the state of its ability to mandate the electrification of private fleets, though it can still regulate public ones. Now the one bright side for the states efforts to clean up trucking is the Clean Trucks Partnership, under which several manufacturers have already agreed to produce zero-emission rigs regardless of any federal challenges. All of this limits Californias ability to ease pollution. The Air Resources Board has said the Advanced Clean Fleet rule would eliminate 5.9 tons of nitrogen oxide emissions in the San Joaquin Valley by 2037. Another rule, the In-Use Locomotive regulation, bans internal combustion trucks more than 23 years old by 2030 and would reduce those emissions by another 11.2 tons. Even with those rules in place, the state would have to cut another 6.3 tons to bring air quality in line with EPA rules. With the fate of Californias campaign to decarbonize trucking in question, even those who want to see it succeed are wavering. Kingsburg Truck Center started selling battery electric trucks in 2022, but saw customers begin to cancel orders once the state was unable to enforce the Advanced Clean Fleet requirement. Lowe has had to lay off seven people as a result. We got heavy into the EV side, and when the mandate goes away, Im like, Shit, am I gonna be stuck with all these trucks? Lowe said. If I were to do it all again, Id probably take a lot less risk on the investment that we made into the zero-emission space. California remains committed to cleaning up trucking. But the transition will require creative policymaking because the Trump administrations hostility to the idea makes it extremely difficult for the state to hit its goal of 100 percent zero-emission truck sales by 2036, said Guillermo Ortiz of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Still, he sees ways the state can make progress. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would give the Air Resources Board authority to regulate ports, rail yards, and warehouses. That would allow regulators to mandate strategies to advance the transition, like requiring facilities to install charging infrastructure. Several state programs underwrite some of the cost of electric trucks, which can cost about $435,000about three times the price of a diesel rig. Thats not to say California isnt fighting back. It plans to sue the Trump administration to preserve its right to set emissions standards. Losing that will make it impossible to ease the Valleys pollution enough to meet air quality standards, said Craig Segall, a former deputy executive director of the Air Resources Board. Advanced Clean Fleets and Advanced Clean Trucks arise out of some pretty hard math regarding whats true about air pollution in the Central Valley and in California, which is that its always been largely a car and truck problem, he said. Even if the state loses the ability to regulate vehicle emissions and require electrification, Segall is confident market forces will push the transition forward. As China continues investing in the technology and developing electric big rigs, he said, companies throughout the rest of the world will need to do the same to stay competitive. He also said that trucking companies will see zero-emission trucks as an opportunity to lower maintenance and fueling costs. The Frito Lay factory in the Central Valley city of Modesto has purchased 15 Tesla electric big rigs. Ultimately, the economic argument for ditching diesels is simply too appealing, said Marissa Campbell, the cofounder of Mitra EV, a Los Angeles company that helps businesses electrify. She said the states decision to table the Advanced Clean Fleets rule hasnt hurt business. No one likes being told what to do, she said. But when you show a plumber or solar installer how they can save 30 to 50 prcent on fuel and maintenanceand sometimes even moretheyre all ears. Valerie Thorsen leads the San Joaquin Valley office of CalSTART, a nonprofit that has, since 1992, pushed for cleaner transportation to address pollution and climate change. She sees the Trump administrations recalcitrance as nothing more than a hurdle on the road to an inevitable transition. But any effort to ditch diesels must be accompanied by an aggressive push to build charging infrastructure. You dont want to have vehicles you cant charge or fuel, she said. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District won a $56 million federal grant in January 2024, to build two solar-powered EV charging sites along Interstate 5 with 102 chargers specifically for big rigs. About 45 percent of Californias truck traffic passes through the region, which has, over the past 25 years, eased nitrogen oxide emission from stationary sources by more than 90 percent. A majority of the remaining [nitrogen oxide] emissions and smog-forming emissions in the valley come from heavy duty trucks, said Todd DeYoung, director of grants and incentives at the district. The Trump administration quickly halted grant programs like the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program that would have expanded charging infrastructure. But DeYoung remains confident that construction of the truck chargers will proceed because work started almost immediately. Similar projects are underway in Bakersfield and Kettleman City. Not everyone is convinced the infrastructure needs to roll out as quickly as the trucks. Ortiz said emphasizing the adoption of the trucks will pressure the market to ensure chargers come online. That sends a signal to charging infrastructure providers, to utilities, saying, These vehicles are coming, and we need to make sure that the infrastructure is there to support it, he said. That support is crucial. Bill Hall is new to trucking. He spent decades as a marine engineer, but during the pandemic decided to try something new. He runs a one-man operation in Berkeley, California, and as he carried loads around the state he noticed a lot of hydrogen stations. Intrigued, he reached out to truck manufacturer Nikola to ask about its electric hydrogen fuel cell rigs. His engineering background impressed the startup, which thought hed provide good technical feedback. Hall bought the first truck the company sold in California, augmenting his personal investment of $124,000 with $360,000 he received from a state program in December 2023. Despite a few initial bugs, he enjoyed driving it. As an early adopter, Nikola gave him a deal on hydrogen$5.50 per kilogram, which let him fill up for about $385 and go about 400 miles. I proved that you could actually pretty much take that hydrogen truck to any corner of California with a minimal hydrogen distribution system that they had, Hall said. But weak sales, poor management, and other woes led Nikola to file for bankruptcy in February. Without its technical support, Hall no longer feels comfortable driving his truck. The companys collapse also meant paying full price for hydrogen, about $33 per kilogram these days. Hall is still paying $1,000 a month for insurance and $225 a month for parking. He says the state shares some of the blame for his predicament because it didnt do enough to support the technology. He would have liked to see it distribute 1,000 hydrogen trucks to establish them and subsidize fuel costs. I did the right thing, which ended up being the wrong thing, he said. Beyond the obvious climate implications of ditching diesel lie many health benefits. In addition to generating a lot of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, the transportation sector is responsible for 80 percent of Californias ozone-forming emissions. Theres no question that the transition away from combustion trucks to zero-emission would save lives, prevent asthma attacks, and generate significant, significant public health benefits all around the state, said Will Barrett, senior director for nationwide clean air advocacy with the American Lung Association. The state has come a long way in the decades since smog blanketed Los Angeles, and the San Joaquin Valley has enjoyed progressively cleaner air over the past 25 years. But people like Luis Mendez Gomez know there is more work to be done, even if the air no longer smells like burning tires. He has lived alongside a busy highway and not far from a refinery outside of Bakersfield for 40 years. It has taken a toll: His wife was hospitalized for lung disease earlier this year, and he knows 10 people who have died from lung cancer. This pollution has been going on for years, Mendez Gomez said. Nobody had cared before, until now. Were pushing the government and pushing companies to help us. But just when it looks like things might change, the federal government appears willing to undo that progress, he said. All the ground they gained is going to go away. Benton Graham This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/california-rolls-on-with-electric-trucks-despite-trumps-roadblocks/.Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
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