From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.

Not that long ago, AI was almost a non-issue in Hollywood's labor negotiations.

Now it's a top concern as SAGAFTRA and the Writers Guild pursue their goals with the studios.

We talked to Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director of Billy Ray about the battle.

Do we think that AI ultimately becomes a tool of good?

I think history gives us many precedents to indicate that in the hands of the people we're

striking against, AI is a god-awful, deadly force.

Billy Ray talks about guild negotiations surrounding AI, and we learn that the fast-moving technology

already thinks it could do David Zazlov's job

as CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery.

And it says it could certainly host a podcast.

But first, we banter.

Stick around.

It's the business from KCRW.

Wait, what? The afraid. The very afraid.

I am joined by my colleague in banter Matt Bellany. Hello, Matt. Hi there. So Matt,

I wrote a very long story about Amazon a few months ago, about the spending, about the problems that they had.

And our sometime banter buddy, Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg, has now followed that with a story saying

that Andy Jassy, the head of Amazon, has started to ask questions about what are you people doing? What are you

spending this money on? Why was Daisy Jones and the six so expensive? Why aren't they getting

traction? All of these things that up in Seattle, as they call it from the LA studio, up in

Seattle, these things felt like things that nobody there knew about or understood or

...