It's an old railroad term, maybe no longer in use (but maybe should be). It refers to union contracts that require the presence of certain railroad crew even though their function had been superseded by technology or practice.
Another example: In Chicago (was, at least, in a pevious century), if you wanted to show a movie to a group in a hotel meeting room, you could bring your own projector, thread the film and screen it entirely by yourself, but you still had to hire a union projectionist to sit in the room with you.
Now, the same problem arises regarding Artifical Intelligence (AI) and copyright law.
From Media Bias/Fact Check:
There are…concerns about the impact of AI-generated content on the creative industries. If AI is granted copyright, it could reduce demand for human creators, as corporations may turn to AI to create their content. This could significantly impact the livelihoods of artists, writers, and musicians.
Midway though the previous century, when I was a kid and in the sci-fi phase of my life, stories of life far in the future (the 21st Century!) often pictured a utopia in which machines did all the work and humans had somehow better things to do. Turns out there was a bug in that picture (maybe two bugs, if "better" counts).
If people don't work, they don't get paid. If people don't get paid they can't consume…anything from Michelin-starred restaurant meals to beans from a pantry, from an internet-connected refrigerator to a bag of ice. And the machines grind to a halt.
What to do?
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