Lisa Kudrow worries about the whole “social unrest” element of AI taking everyone’s jobs

As The Comeback takes on AI in its third outing, its star says she has “mixed feelings” about it.

Lisa Kudrow worries about the whole “social unrest” element of AI taking everyone’s jobs

In each of its seasons, The Comeback has satirized contemporary Hollywood. When it returns for its third season on Sunday, it’s set to take on a post-dual strike industry. Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish will star in the first AI-generated sitcom in season three, and the first trailer shows some TV writers grudgingly sidelined. The fear of AI taking a job is hardly unique to people in entertainment, which Kudrow points out is probably not great for society. 

“I have a lot of mixed feelings. We talked to people who are working in [AI], and I have nephews in that world, and they say that for the broader public use, it is going to be a really great assistant,” she says in a profile published today in The Hollywood Reporter. “But I worry about how many jobs it will take, then what will people do? I don’t know whether I should say this out loud or not, but you can’t get to social unrest faster than hungry people who don’t get to work or take care of their families. That’s a scary thing.”

Kudrow is also scared of AI warping our already tenuous grasp of the trust, as she told The New Yorker in another The Comeback centered profile earlier this week. “I’m a little creeped out,” she said after seeing a video of Phoebe Buffay from Friends performing “Smelly Cat” with Kurt Cobain. “I hope nobody thinks there was some point in time when we were all sitting around with Kurt Cobain. He died before we even started! That’s the part that feels so dangerous to me, that we can’t trust anything that we see.” Hopefully, we can at least trust The Comeback to handle these issues thoughtfully and hilariously when it returns on March 22. 

 
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