“We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.”

That’s what the CEO of AI company Nvidia Jensen Huang told the New York Times recently in an interview with Ezra Klein that ran in the opinion section under the headline: Jensen Huang Thinks A.I Alarmism Has Gone Too Far.

Because who among us needs intellectual dexterity …

Here’s an excerpt from their exchange:

Huang: Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?

Klein: That’s my question for you.

Huang: Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.

Klein: But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Huang: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those.

Basic math — arithmetic — is the building block for all the math that comes after it. 

Understanding basic concepts, and experiencing the process of learning basic concepts, is how you eventually advance to more complicated concepts. Or, even invent some of your own. That this is so breezily dismissed by someone heading up “the largest company in the world, with $5.4 trillion in market capitalization,” per the New York Times, is … alarming.

Today’s captains of industry want us dumb. It’s worth asking why, while we still have the intellectual dexterity to do it. 

I was thinking about this mindset as I read NPR critic Eric Deegans on Paramount-Warner Bros. deal, which is now apparently a fait accompli after the objections raised by 12 states attorney generals are now kaput.

From Deegans’ summary of the news:

“I don’t think these two companies should merge,” [California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta] said, somewhat plaintively, at his own press conference Monday.

Ah yes, my favorite aphorism: “If only someone in a position of power would do something,” said someone in a position of power.

Back to Deegans:

So why settle the lawsuit without any of the structural changes or protections for consumers Bonta originally said he wanted?

I haven’t yet delved deeply into this agreement. But the early details leave a troubling sense that Paramount got off lightly.

Why indeed.

A judge still has to rule on the settlement, stressing that “The court isn’t a rubber stamp of your agreement” and wants to ensure “this is not something that was the result of collusion, but instead was more of an arm’s length process.”

I’m cynical enough to think the deal will ultimately be approved regardless, but we’ll see.

But this is what really caught my eye in Deegans’ piece:

… it was instructive to hear superagent Ari Emanuel interviewed about this deal by my NPR colleague Steve Inskeep, who asked about the loss of press freedoms. Emanuel said, “Move the [expletive] on, because it’s important for Hollywood, my clients to make film and television.” 

He and his clients will also be affected by a potential loss of press freedoms — despite efforts to wall themselves off in a bubble of money and careerism — but whatever, move on.

This guiding principle is connected to “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity” because the underlying message is the same.

But do you know what “move on” actually reminds me of? 

The 1994 Hollywood satire “Swimming with Sharks,” in which a sexist, abusive, tyrannical studio boss is kidnapped and tortured by his fed up assistant. 

There’s a famous speech in which the executive barks back at his captor:

What, your job is unfair to you? Grow up, way it goes. People use you? Life's unfair? Grow up, way it goes. Your girlfriend doesn't love you? Tough shit, way it goes. Your wife gets raped and shot and they leave their unfinished beers, their stinking long-necks, just lying there on the ground? So be it. Way it goes.

Way it goes. Move on. Circumstances will not change unless we say so, so shut the fuck up and be happy with what we give you. 

“Swimming with Sharks” is, understandably, not a movie that gets mentioned very much these days. To do so would mean giving oxygen to its star, Kevin Spacey, who, in real life, has been accused by more than 50 men of sexual misconduct. (That number is according to reporting by Vox.)

It’s a grimey circumstance for the movie.

But I’m struck that “way it goes” is no longer just a behind-the-scenes attitude, but now extends outwards to us, the audience. We’ve probably always known that. Ari Emanuel just made it explicit. 

(The movie is currently free on Tubi.)

A few years ago, in the wake of MeToo, I revisited the film — a talky, rippling, swaggering horror show that’s framed as a comedy of deranged impulses — with its screenwriter, George Huang, who based the story on his own experiences working as a Hollywood assistant. You can read that here. 

As for the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal, so far there’s been no reporting on the fate of Turner Classic Movies, aka TCM, which is owned by WB.

Kristen Lopez, who has an expertise in classic film, has been one of the only journalists so far to consistently raise this question. “We also don’t know the fate of the massive WB production archive up in North Hollywood,” she told me, “which is a massive warehouse of physical items going back to the silent era. Walls of costumes, props, cars, boxes for movies that never got made.”

Lopez was able to tour the archive, noting that “Warners is one of just two studios that retains an archive of their physical props, sets and costumes (the other being Disney).”

The warehouse houses thousands of items, so a substantial historical collection.

And it’s unclear what happens now.