Let’s chat about GPT.
A year after I finished my graduate degree, I got a call. It was one of those life-changing calls. In fact, I thought it was a prank. But within a few days, my resume was polished and I was sitting in reception of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, interviewing for an unnamed show. On May 25, 2008, I shot Mission Control as JPL’s Phoenix Mars lander descended onto our neighboring planet. It was absolutely surreal and I was convinced I had peaked early in my career. Little did I know, I would continue on a path entrenched in technology change that was always pushing the boundaries of what was to come.
I have learned many valuable lessons over the last sixteen years of my partnership with the space agency, but one that sticks out from all the others is the role that fear plays when approaching emerging technology or cultural shifts in the technical space. On the one hand, feelings of fear are very organic. The idea of the unknown is unsettling and anxiety-inducing, but it’s also essential. Fear starts the process of problem solving. It is the catalyst to creativity. The two exist in an inseparable dichotomy with one another. I believe an unspoken requirement of our technical local membership is the understanding that we cannot create when we are overcome with fear, but both are necessary ingredients to a successful project.
In my time with JPL, I have worked on over a dozen high-profile missions from the earliest stages of conception. Almost ten years ago,when we did a test at NASA’s Ames Aeronautical Laboratory at Moffett Field, we were in the midst of incorporating a lot of new technology while performing a very high profile test. I was terrified. Ames contains the world’s largest wind tunnel test facility. Their facility’s test section is eighty feet high by one hundred and twenty feet long, producing wind speeds up to 250 mph. This tunnel is used in anything where wind speed is a factor in transit, ranging from semi-trucks to jet engines. Our job was to conduct a series of parachute tests for the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) system of the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity. Curiosity’s EDL was newly designed and developed with the most radical design in the history of Mars missions. I encourage you to google “Seven Minutes of Terror” for the full breakdown.
My job was to set up a series of high frame rate cameras and video assist in the wind tunnel in order to capture the parachute so that its success or failure could be thoroughly assessed after the fact. One of the angles necessary to document the test required me to climb sixty feet up the side of the building to rig a camera for a profiled point of view of the deployment. The scope of the test would require an operator. The vibration from the wind tunnel hitting the walls and the glass of the window was potentially too problematic to be left unattended for such an expensive test.
So, for over an hour, I was harnessed in above a seven story drop while being bombarded with 250 mph winds. The facility’s manager, the safety managers, a fellow video engineer, and I worked to ensure that I would be safe and that the camera would be rigged in such a manner that I couldn’t drop it, but that couldn’t block out the fear; the gnawing sense of anxiety that came with knowing that any unaccounted variable could be fatal and the responsibility of being tasked with shooting this one and done multi-million dollar test.
As the fans started to warm up, the lights across the facility and the neighboring town of Mountainview dimmed from the fan’s power consumption. The walls started to sway and breathe cold drafts of air. The wind continued to ramp up and the walls began to shake. The vibration grew in decibel level. I could barely hear the project manager on the walkie, but I faintly made out a voice calling, “Go!”
Another voice called, “Jil, hit record!”
My breathing was heavy, but I hit record. “Record system is Go!” I called back.
“All systems are a go. 5…4…3…2…1…Deploy.”
The noise from the vibration seemed to fade away as the parachute unfolded into a magical floating silk of orange and white. In the end, creativity won. On August 12, 2012, the Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars following a successful deployment of its EDL.
The skills that I acquired as a young video engineer—setting up full installation flypacks in the middle of desert and water proving grounds—were invaluable for the rest of my career. I learned to do the highest quality of work on a government budget, while pushing technology and vendors to improve their products so that we could better analyze space-flight hardware for successful launch and landing. The diligent, methodical, and scientific structure of these tests has carried with me into my work as a recordist in live TV or live-to-tape production.
Last fall, the IATSE appointed me Chair of the Artificial Intelligence Basic Negotiations Subcommittee. This is a subject where fear is prevalent and so this recent appointment forced me to assess what role fear and creativity will play in our upcoming negotiations. My research in the artificial intelligence (AI) space started years ago with privately funded projects and government assignments. I had the chance to work with Greg Brockman, President of OpenAI, in 2021. His talk on AI changed my thinking of everything to come. The earliest forms of ChatGPT were debuted to us and it set me into a multi-year analysis of how AI and generative tools would affect our industry.
As Don Draper from Mad Men once said, “Change is neither good or bad. It just is.” Artificial intelligence is inevitable at this point and we can greet it with either terror or curiosity. But if we do find ourselves filled with fear about this industry and cultural evolution, we have to remember to take a pause and grow past the unknown so we can embrace the creativity of the prospective.
I’m here to tell you, we do not have to fear this change. Instead, let’s get creative.
In Solidarity,
President Jillian Arnold
PS As we wrap up awards season, I want to take the time to acknowledge and thank all of the members of our Local who worked on nominated or award-winning projects. We have a very limited number of people in our Local who are eligible to receive a statue, but they do so with the help of all of those within the department whose talents, skills, and knowledge are creatively poured into these projects. If your name is on that list of nominees, please take the time to reach out to your crew and thank them one more time. And for those of us in fields that will never hold that Emmy or that Oscar or that CAS Award because your jurisdiction is deemed to be not creative enough to warrant one; I see you, I hear you, and I stand with you. Your talents and efforts are not unnoticed by the leadership of this Local. Congratulations to all who worked on projects that were nominated, and also to the crews that work the award show circuits for another great season.
