Artificial intelligence giveth and taketh away

And it looks like all that will remain is the wailing and gnashing of teeth

My plan was simple: Spend the next 10 or so years being a background actor in Hollywood movies, learning how the process works, meeting some movers and shakers and developing a reputation as someone who can be counted on to do what he is told.

The payoff? Instead of sitting home as a vegetating octogenarian, I would be getting casting calls to appear in minor yet significant scenes where a bitter old white man yells something to the effect of, “Get off my lawn you worthless (fill in some venomous term for other human beings)!”

And the plan was working perfectly. My first gig was the 2021 movie “Here Today,” starring Billy Crystal. I’m easy to find during a key scene with a couple of other big stars, Daytime Emmy winner Tiffiny Haddish and Tony award winner Laura Benanti.

But today? I’ve thrown in the towel. Artificial intelligence is making irrelevant the hopes and dreams of millions of people in thousands of jobs, including the entertainment industry. Set designers and construction crews, script writers, wardrobe creators… you name it, a lot of jobs — all represented by occasionally cranky union chiefs — are about to vanish.

Decades ago, computer graphics allowed movie directors to create anything, such as what looked like a full-scale replica of the Titanic breaking apart in the iceberg-clogged north Atlantic Ocean. But today, even major actors, can be replaced by A.I.

How easy is it to produce a movie with scenes of human beings without actually using human beings? Anybody can do it at home.

Here are a couple of examples. In high school and junior college, I played three sports. My athletic career was easy to sum up: Usually a starter, never a star. My picture occasionally appeared in newspapers, such as a 1968 high school football game (Baltimore Sun) and a 1970 college basketball game (Annapolis Evening Capitol).

One of my sons took those two pictures and, well, while I did occasionally tackle people and score baskets, I never picked a running back off the ground or dunked a basketball on some guy six inches taller.

So, there you have you it. Today, I have no future in the motion picture industry because of A.I. But my past? I am now better than I ever was because of A.I.

And the only part of my long-term plan that could still come true is that I will likely one day be a vegetating octogenarian cussing out a world where everything is possible and nothing is true.