SYNOPSIS

The Unmaking: A World Without Work [working title] is a feature documentary inquiry into the impact of Artificial Intelligence, robotics and information and communication technologies on the future of work. The “de-skilling” at the core of these advances has been underway since the birth of capitalism – but what will be shown to be unprecedented is the disruptive scale of the coming post-industrial revolution. With work being deconstructed into machine-learnable components across industries and professions, some estimate almost 50% of occupations in industrial societies are at risk in the coming decades from computerization. We seek out “Silicon Valley” inventors, engineers and business magnates – from California to China and Japan – to document their opposing visions of the promises and dangers of AI and related technologies as human labour, and with it, the means of making a living, is engineered out of the work place. This leads us to explore how such wondrous technological feats might be translated into well-being for the many rather than the few. An observation and a reflection upon the state of our society from the perspective of its core activity – work and employment -The Unmaking will challenge our assumptions about modernity and the social and economic model on which it is based.

The End of Employment - and the rediscovery of Work?

TWO PLATFORMS

A Feature Documentary which will explore the consequences for society of the rapid advances in the development of human-level artificial intelligence (AI) and the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) --- trends which promise to disrupt and radically transform whole sectors of human activity and all traditional working environments.

A Social Media platform, with portals focusing on the technological, political and fiscal measures that leading thinkers and actors in the field foresee for assuring that the announced technological changes do not result in societal catastrophe. Coverage of this «revolution in the world of work» will include the dissemination and sharing of the solutions and new social models by highlighting developing examples here and elsewhere on the planet.

TEAM

Writer/director - Harold Crooks, The Price We Pay, Surviving Progress, Anthrax War (writer), Pax Americana and The Weaponization of Space (writer), The Corporation (collaboration).

Research - Nancy Marcotte, Donald Cuccioletta

Social Media - Anik Salas

Co-producers: - Ian Boyd & Ina Fichman, Intuitive Pictures [Canada]

                       - Luc Martin-Gousset, Point du Jour [France]

Project Status - Research and development

Schedule - Principal photography – Fall 2017

                - Delivery – Winter 2018

Language - Original English & French versions

Format - HD, 90 minutes