Reese Witherspoon is hyping A.I. again, and American authors have a few thoughts.
The Oscar-winning actor and producer, known for spotlighting women’s voices through her famed book club, television and screen projects, may have been barking up the wrong tree when she told her social media followers that it was time to learn A.I. on Wednesday.
“Well…I’ve decided it’s TIME,” she wrote in the caption of an Instagram reel on Wednesday. “The AI revolution has begun, and I need to learn as much as I possibly can about AI and share it with all of you. Also, FYI: the jobs women hold are 3x more likely to be automated by AI, yet women are using AI at a rate 25% lower than men on average. We don’t want to be left behind. So…do you want to learn with me?”
In the video, which the star shared across social media platforms, Witherspoon said she was with 10 women at a book club this week. “I said to the 10 of them, ‘How many of you guys use AI?’ And only three of them used AI. And then I said, ‘How many of the three of you feel like you really know what you’re doing or using it the right way?’ And there was only one person,” she said.
“So, if three out of 10 women are the only ones using AI, that means 70% of that group is not keeping up. The thing I’ve learned about technology is if you don’t get a little bit of understanding from the very beginning, it just speeds past you. So you have to have little bits of learning just to keep up.”
The “Big Little Lies” star then seemingly put out a feeler for an A.I. learning course saying, “I think we should learn the basics together and learn some really good tools that are going to make our everyday lives easier and better. Do you want me to share what I’m learning with you?”
While there were plenty of comments from fans and stars hyping up Witherspoon’s sentiment — Former co-stars Ali Larter said “Yes yes yes!” and Kerry Washington said “THIS” — many of the replies called the actor out, citing environmental, economic, social, educational and intellectual concerns, among others.
One group that was especially vocal in their opposition to A.I., was the literary community, and writers and authors across the country didn’t hold back when sharing their two cents.
Bestselling “Bad Feminist” author Roxane Gay chimed in on Threads, writing, “Oh Reese. Absolutely not.”
“This is obviously a scripted ad and it’s genuinely infuriating. Notice how AI’s biggest defenders are the ones cashing checks from it,” wrote screenwriter and director Charlene Bagcal on Threads. “AI isn’t inevitable. Technology follows society. If people stop using it, it dies. We still have agency.”
“Jagged Little Pill” author and literary agent Eric Smith weighed in, “As someone who champions authors and books the way you do, this is so disappointing.”
“AI plagiarized all my books. It seems unlikely that I’ll be ‘left behind’ if I don’t use it, given that it’s trained on work I did years ago,” wrote “Get Well Soon” author Jennifer Wright.
Writer and actor Rati Gupta said, “How am *I* the one being “left behind” by not using AI when *my* cognitive function will remain fully intact and compromised?”
And Sophia Benoit posted, “There’s something particularly insidious about seeing that women— the group you have built your brand on— have not adopted something and instead of assuming it’s out of wisdom, infantalizing them with ‘we’re falling behind.’”
In 2021, Witherspoon’s company, Hello Sunshine, partnered with World of Women (WoW), an NFT collective, and the actor similarly caught flak from followers for tweeting “In the (near) future, every person will have a parallel digital identity. Avatars, crypto wallets, digital goods will be the norm. Are you planning for this?”
Representatives for Witherspoon have not responded to the Times request for comment.
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