BUSINESS NEWS LESSONS

Hold on to your jobs, humans: The rise of

the bots
1 Warmer

a. Discuss the questions.

1. Do you think AI bots will replace humans in some sectors? Why (not)?

2. Should we restrict the types of tasks or jobs executed by AI? Why (not)?

3. How can human interests be protected against unforeseen harm from AI technology?

2 Reading for gist

a. Skim the article and choose the main idea.

a. AI bots are producing more engaging screenplays than humans, making screenwriters anxious.

b. Demands are being made to protect human screenwriters’ work and future careers.

c. AI bots are collaborating with screenwriters to aid them in better crafting dramas.

3 Key words

a. Read the definitions and find key words in the article that match them. The paragraph numbers
are given in brackets to help you. Check your answers and your understanding of how the
words are used by using them to complete the example sentences after each definition. Then,
read the complete article to see how each key word is used in context.

1. gradually reduce the value or level of something or become reduced in this way

(paragraph 2)

Their failure to deliver what they promised has their clients’ trust.

2. something that you say or do in an attempt to gain an advantage

(paragraph 3)

Their reckless was a success, and they were pleased with the

outcome of the negotiation.

3. very small, slight (paragraph 4)

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Most companies in the aerospace sector had profit margins than in

previous periods.

4. useful (paragraph 4)

You will find the latest version of our app includes a ‘export’ feature.
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 BUSINESS NEWS LESSONS
Hold on to your jobs, humans: The rise of
the bots
Key:
Level: Advanced (C1–C2) 1. erode, eroded
2. gambit
Time: Approximately 90 minutes (plus extra 3. slim, slimmer
time for writing task) 4. handy
5. polish
Business topics: AI, worker rights, ethics 6. rank, ranked
7. tilt
Business language: Useful business 8. fanciful
vocabulary, collocations, language for
9. vestige, vestiges
expressing strong opinions
10. residual
11. disband, disbanded
Activities: Discussing the future of AI in the
workplace, key words, understanding the text, 12. deploy, deployed
business language, discussion, expressing 13. fragment, fragmented
opinions, writing a manifesto 14. deskilling

Groups: Whole class, one-to-one, small groups 4. Understanding the article

a. Ask students to scan the article individually to
Overview: This article discusses the rise of AI
bots, specifically in the screenwriting industry.
The Writers Guild of America is making
demands to protect writers’ work and ensure a
sustainable future for human writers.
1. Warmer
a. Ask students to discuss the questions in small groups
to activate their previous knowledge and introduce the
topic. Note down relevant emergent language on the
board. Elicit ideas that arose from the discussion from
the whole class.
2. Reading for gist
a. Ask students to skim the text and identify the main idea.
Set a time limit and remind them not to read for detail.
Key:
b out potential scenes based on thousands of
Advanced
complete this activity and compare their answers.
Remind them that they don’t need to read the whole
article each time but should instead look over it
very quickly to locate the information and then read
it carefully.
Key:
1. They are in the worst possible position: they have
seen their pay erode in the streaming era, have
lost the comfy conditions of broadcast television,
and fear robots will take their jobs.
2. Because it draws attention to the fact that
software might be able to do some of their job.
3. Because writing dramas that engage viewers
requires a lot of expertise, structuring them into
episodes, and polishing dialogue.
4. administration and legal services
5. ordering many pilot episodes, turning only some
into series, and gradually winnowing them down
6. They preferred shorter series and started hiring
writers on short-term contracts – this meant less
money and less experience.
7. to use an outline written by a human to rough

existing scripts
3. Key words 8. The guild wants to stop its members’ work from
being used to train AI. It also wants them to
a. Have students complete the task individually and be paid as much for rewriting AI output as if it
compare their answers in pairs. Elicit answers from were theirs.
the whole class. Many of the words have a more literal 9. for AI to be used to augment labour and
meaning. Ask students which ones they know and in raise productivity
what context the word is normally used.
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 BUSINESS NEWS LESSONS

5. Business language – adjective + 7. Wider business theme – AI ethics and

noun collocations governance

a. Ask students to work individually to match the words a. Read the situation with the whole class.
and scan the article. Ask them to compare their
answers in small groups and elicit the answers. b. Allow students time to make a list of their ideas
and beliefs.
Key:
1. imagination c. Divide students into groups of three to five. Ask them
2. chance to meet to discuss the union’s collective beliefs and
3. reward mission. Tell them they will need notes from this
4. path activity for the next task.
5. extravagance
6. employment d. Ask students to give examples of manifestos. (The UN
7. contracts Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Martin Luther
8. showrunner King’s ‘I Have a Dream’; The Communist Manifesto by
9. cycle Marx and Engels; Common Sense, Rights of Man by
10. deskilling Thomas Paine; US Declaration of Independence)
11. implications
12. question Ask students to use their notes’ ideas and write a
manifesto for the workers' union. This can be done
b. Ask students to work in small groups to take turns individually or in pairs. Students can support each other
reading the sentences and choose the best collocation with peer editing before sharing their text with the rest of
for each gap. Check answers with the whole class. the class.

Key:
1. traditional path
2. crucial questions
3. vivid imagination
4. consistent employment
5. slim chance
6. high rewards
7. short-term contracts
8. financial extravagance
9. broad implications
10. vicious cycle

6. Discussion

a. Put the students in pairs or small groups and ask

them to discuss the questions. When students have
covered all the questions, bring the whole class
Advanced

back together so that they can share their answers

and any interesting information that arose from
their discussions.
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5. improve using skill (paragraph 4)

She came up with the first draft of the sales pitch and got help from her team to

it.

6. put something onto a list according to its success, importance, size, etc.

(paragraph 5)

Our firm in the nation’s top ten best companies to work for last year.

7. making something change slightly so that one particular person or thing is preferred or more likely

to succeed than another; change in this way (paragraph 6)

The best design strategies in favour of answering customers’ needs.

8. not serious or sensible (paragraph 6)

Their business plan has been described as and unrealistic – they’re

not likely to get any returns in the first decade.

9. a very small sign of something that has almost disappeared or stopped existing

(paragraph 7)

The building that was now home to low-key small businesses still showed

of a more glamorous past.

10. remaining after the rest of something has gone or ended (paragraph 8)

While management–employee relationships have vastly improved, the

effects of a more strained past were still evident.

11. stop working together (paragraph 11)

A group was formed to investigate work-life balance, but it was quickly

Advanced

when its own activities intruded into its members’ private lives.

12. use something (paragraph 12)

They their A-team to deal with the incoming customer complaints.

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13. break into a lot of separate parts (paragraph 13)

A dozen new takeaway restaurants have popped up in the area and

the market that was previously dominated by two Italian restaurants.

14. the action of reducing the level of skill that a worker needs for a job by using new technology

instead (paragraph 13)

Are robots in hospitals helping nurses to combat burnout or another example of

?
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 BUSINESS NEWS LESSONS
Writers vs AI bots is more than a
Hollywood drama
SCREENWRITERS’ STRIKE REFLECTS WIDER JOB INSECURITY AND FEAR OF BEING USURPED
BY TECHNOLOGY
JOHN GAPPER
1 A confrontation broke out in Los Angeles this week as
11,500 writers for film and television went on strike.
Screenwriters know all about confrontations: they
are the second acts of three-act dramas, when the
main characters face a crisis that only gets resolved
at the end.
2 “You put them in the worst possible position they
could ever possibly get into in their lives,” George
Lucas, creator of the Star Wars films, once remarked
of the second act. In this drama, writers have seen
their pay erode in the streaming era, have lost the
comfy conditions of broadcast television and fear
their jobs will be taken by robots.
3 It is strange to find among a list of demands
submitted to producers by the Writers Guild of
America the call for only humans, not AI chatbots,
to be allowed to “write or rewrite literary material”.
Drawing attention to the fact that you think software
could do some of your job is a bold gambit but
screenwriters have vivid imaginations and reasons to
be insecure.
4 The chances are slim of ChatGPT or another artificial
intelligence agent advancing rapidly enough to
write The White Lotus or Everything Everywhere All
at Once in the immediate future. They sometimes
make things up, which could come in handy, but
it requires a lot of expertise to create dramas that
engage viewers, structure them into episodes and
polish dialogue.
5 Nor is screenwriting high among the professions that
economists expect to be disrupted by AI soon:
entertainment and media rank only in the middle of
Advanced
industries likely to be affected, with administration
and legal services at the top, according to Goldman
Sachs. Robots are not yet beating down the doors of
the writers’ rooms on which Hollywood relies.
Published by Macmillan Education Ltd. © Macmillan Education Limited, 2023.
6 But the writers’ strike reflects a wider business
phenomenon: the tilting of high rewards towards a
few individuals at the top end, and the disruption
of traditional paths to promotion with growing
responsibility for apprentices. Machines are learning
more than before, while humans learn less: it is not
fanciful to fear a collision between the trends in future.
7 There was a moment during the last writers’ strike
over pay in 2008 when studios let slip what was
to come. Jeff Zucker, then chief executive of
NBCUniversal, talked to the Financial Times of the
“vestiges of an era that’s gone by and won’t return”.
He cited the broadcast tradition of ordering many pilot
episodes, turning only some into series and gradually
winnowing them down.
8 It was an expensive habit, but it provided steady work
for writers on series that would run for 20 episodes
or more, as well as residual payments for repeat
showings on cable networks. Writers were employed
for much of the year, and they worked not only on
drafting initial scripts but also on rewriting during
production and learning how dramas worked in
the studio.
9 “Part of the job is to train the writers under you so
they eventually understand what you do. How can
you make a show if you’ve never been taught?” says
Blake Masters, a writer and producer who created
the drama Brotherhood. What felt to employers like
financial extravagance meant consistent employment
and long-term training and opportunity for the writers.
10 This diminished with the rise of streaming platforms
such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, which preferred
shorter series of six to eight episodes to give their
subscribers constant novelty. They also paid highly to
attract the top showrunners, such as Netflix’s reported
$150m deal in 2017 with Shonda Rhimes, writer and
producer of series including Bridgerton.
Continued on next page
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11 They moved to hiring writers on short-term contracts
to develop new dramas in what are known as
“mini-rooms”; these are disbanded before the show is
commissioned. This approach not only pays writers
less and limits residuals but means they do not gain
practical experience in productions; they must find
themselves another mini-room project instead.
12 So writers cannot be blamed for fearing that studios
will also exploit AI. Rhimes is not going to be replaced 14 The strike thus has broad implications. As Erik
by a robot, but AI could be deployed in subtler ways.
It is easy to imagine a future showrunner creating
a story outline, getting an AI model that has been
trained on thousands of scripts to rough out potential
scenes, and finally giving the result to humans
to polish.
13 The guild wants to stop its members’ work from
being used to train AI. It also wants them to be paid
as much for rewriting AI output as if it were theirs.
Both safeguards appear fair to me: without them,
studios that fragmented the work of junior writers
seem very likely to use AI to do some of their work
for free. Technology could unleash a vicious cycle of
creative deskilling.
Brynjolfsson of Stanford University has written, the
crucial question for AI in the workplace is whether it
gets used to augment or automate labour. The first
would raise productivity (and make better drama); the
second would concentrate wealth and power in fewer
hands. I hope for a happy resolution, but the danger
is real.

John Gapper, 5 May, 2023

© The Financial Times.
All rights reserved.
Articles republished from the Financial Times.
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4 Understanding the article

a. Answer the questions with as much detail as possible.

1. Why are screenwriters in ‘the second act’?

2. Why was submitting the Writers Guild of America’s list of demands a bold move?

3. Why is it unlikely that an AI agent will write something spectacular in the immediate future?

4. According to Goldman Sachs, which sectors will most likely be disrupted by AI?

5. According to Jeff Zucker, what broadcasting tradition is a thing of the past?

6. Why was the rise of streaming platforms bad news for writers in more than one way?

7. How is AI likely to be employed in studios?

8. What is the guild demanding regarding its members’ work?

9. According to the author, what would be a happy outcome of AI use in the workplace?

5 Business language – adjective + noun collocations

a. Use the nouns in the box to complete the collocations. Then, find and circle them in the
article to check your answers.

contract chance cycle deskilling employment extravagance

imagination implications path question reward showrunner

1. vivid

2. slim

3. high

4. traditional

5. financial

6. consistent

7. short-term
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8. top

9. vicious

10. creative

11. broad

12. crucial
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b. Complete the sentences using the above collocations.

1. Most of my peers in the start-up world did not follow a as I did, and
many of them do not have degrees.

2. To design a user-friendly new product, you need to ask some about

user needs.

3. Many viewers have speculated that her latest film about workplace discrimination is not just the
product of a but is a borderline memoir.

4. Millennials have suffered the consequences of the economic recession, and around 20% have
not secured .

5. Jack is competing with two more senior colleagues for the position, so he has a
of success.

6. Internships can provide a tough start to a new career, but await those
who persist.

7. We don’t have an in-house tech team, but we hire support on on an

as-needed basis.

8. Corporate travel, once thought of as essential for networking and business growth, is
now considered .

9. The new law has for all companies providing tech services
from abroad.

10. There has been a of low pay and burnout in the sector.

6 Discussion

a. Discuss these questions.

• Which applications of AI might be positive for humans and should be promoted? Why and how?

• Besides screenwriting, which other careers are most at risk of being usurped by technology?

• Apart from unemployment, what are the other implications of creative deskilling?
Advanced

• Should AI be regulated? Why and how?

• Who should be held accountable for AI regulation and responsible use?

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7 Wider business theme – AI ethics and governance

a. Read the situation below.

Situation
Imagine a not-so-distant future in which most large companies make most of their employees
redundant and replace them with AI bots. Their technology is more efficient, productive, and less
expensive than their flesh-and-blood peers. Companies and (many) customers are happy. But
what about the humans that used to do those jobs?

b. You are attending a labour union meeting to discuss your stance on the situation. First,
list your ideas and beliefs about the new role of technology and humans in this changing
corporate landscape. Think about what the union’s mission should be regarding workers’
rights when competing with AI bots. Consider employee rights, company needs, profitability,
sustainability, customer needs, future implications, etc.

c. Then hold a meeting to voice your ideas. Discuss the union’s collective beliefs and mission.
Make notes.

Useful language

I do not doubt that …

I’m utterly convinced that ...

I firmly believe that …

It is undeniable that ...

… is the core issue here. / … is crucial.

If we wish to …, we should …

Therefore, the best course of action is to …

d. A manifesto is a concise document that declares beliefs, ideas, or a mission and calls for
change or action. Write a manifesto on behalf of the labour union. Make your manifesto as
engaging as possible. Elaborate on and support each idea and include a call to action.
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