WGSA Online Session: From Artificial Intelligence to African Intelligence – Part 2

From Artificial Intelligence to African Intelligence – Part 2

Following the successful WGSA first workshop on AI in September, which was a call to leadership and solidarity towards AI regulation with WGSA member, Zunaid Mansoor, you are invited to join us for another online session in which the urgency to become aware of the loss to our livelihoods, and the need to support regulation, will be emphasised and amplified by the addition of expert voices.

The widespread adoption of AI apps and models in the creative industries, particularly screenwriting and book publishing, offers a solution to a problem that did not exist, and in so doing, poses an existential crisis for writers and content creators, lowering our expectations of what we will write, read and watch, diminishing the sacred act of writing into a menial, routine task which anyone can do without having learned, practised or even intended.

Global thought leaders like Oprah Winfrey, Yuval Noah Harari, Bill Gates, Tambay Obenson, and a cohort of AI technologists and developers themselves, have equally warned of the certainty of job displacement en masse and role obsolescence. Its impact on all forms of writing has been described as fundamentally dehumanising, and as a social weapon of mass destruction.

The Writers Guild of America East and West, along with the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds – of which the WGSA is a member – have perceived this impact as a violation of human rights, a threat to democracy, resulting in strike action, and international lobbying for the protection of writers’ IP through formal regulation. For now, whilst U.S. screenwriters are protected by their Guild’s procurement of a Minimum Basic Agreement, and screenwriters and other professionals in the European Union are protected by the new AI Act, South African screenwriters and content creators remain unprotected, naked and maximally vulnerable to exploitation, plagiarism, and outright theft.

Let us stand up together in peace and with courage, for the craft and business of writing – the most powerful force of nature there is, second only, perhaps, to love

Session details:

This session will be hosted by Zunaid Mansoor, interviewing various guests.

Date: 26 October 2024
Time: 10h00 – 12h00 SAST

Location: Online (The Zoom link will be distributed via email by 6pm on 25 October 2024. Please add pdpassistant@writersguildsa.org to your contact list)
Registration closes on 25 October 2024 at 18h00 SAST

Meet your speaker

Zunaid Mansoor is a professional script editor, story development consultant, screenwriting lecturer/researcher, and creativity coach serving live-action, animation, documentary, video game, literary fiction and creative writing. He also serves as an independent film fund advisor and script editor with the NFVF, KZN Tourism and Film Authority, and the Durban Film Office.

The U.S. and South African governments named him the Amy Biehl Awardee as the top Fulbright Scholar in 2007 – his field of study was Screenwriting. After completing an MFA at Oscar-winning film school, Chapman University’s Dodge College, he worked at CBS’ The Bold and The Beautiful, and for Oscar-nominated producer, Alexandra Rose.

As Senior Lecturer and National Head of Screenwriting at AFDA Johannesburg for 12 years, Zunaid served some 10 000 students of film and screenwriting. Known for his servant leadership, devotion to community service, his nurturing of authentic voices for the page and screen, and his results-driven, in-demand consultation, his alumni and clients have been nominated and decorated several times for the Student Oscar, the SAFTA, WGSA Muse Award, the NEFTI Prize, the 48-Hour Film Project, the KykNet Silwerskerm and awards in all continents. Several of them were selected as Berlinale Talents, Durban Talents, MultiChoice Talent Factory participants, and have films/series/doccies/content on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Showmax, SABC, DSTV channels, YouTube and TikTok. They are commissioning editors and managers with MultiChoice, and have been listed as part of the Mail & Guardian Top 200 Youth.

He serves as a jury member for SAFTA, the WGSA Muse Awards, the Simon Sabela Film & TV Awards, and for the UFVA Screenwriting Competition for U.S. film schools. He was appointed to the Oscars selection committee for South Africa with the NFVF. An award-winning public speaker, Zunaid has guest lectured at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, the Durban University of Technology, UKZN, the University of Southern California, and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He was honoured in 2024 when he was selected to co-facilitate the isiPhethu Screenwriting Programme during the Durban International Film Festival alongside the legendary, Mr. Edmund Mhlongo.

In 2009, his South African-based feature film screenplay was selected to be pitched to the president of Creative Artists Agency, Richard Lovett, in Los Angeles – the world’s largest and most prestigious talent agency. At just 16 and 18, Zunaid was the youngest accredited journalist in the world at both the World AIDS Conference in 2000, and the World Conference Against Racism in KwaZulu-Natal, in 2001. He is also a proud alumnus of UKZN where earned law and social sciences degrees cum laude, passing his attorney’s admission exam in 2006.

NB: Registration is essential. WGSA members attend for FREE. Non-members pay ZAR 75.00