693. What’s Our Job as Humans Anymore?

Summary of 693. What’s Our Job as Humans Anymore?

by Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

57m•October 30, 2026
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Overview of Freakonomics Radio episode “693. What’s Our Job as Humans Anymore?”

This episode examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping creative work, especially in Hollywood and publishing, and asks a deeper question: if AI can generate text, images, voices, and even performances, what remains uniquely human? Through interviews with union leader Sean Astin, economist Joel Waldfogel, technologist Kevin Kelly, and AI performer Tilly Norwood, the episode explores both the threat and promise of AI for creativity, labor, and culture.

Main Themes

  • AI is changing creative industries faster than regulation is catching up

    • Hollywood, publishing, and online platforms are already adapting to AI-generated content.
    • Lawmakers and unions are still trying to define terms like “deepfake,” “synthetic,” and “digital replica.”

  • Human creativity is still seen as distinct, but increasingly harder to define

    • The episode repeatedly returns to the idea that human emotion, experience, and spontaneity may be the last truly irreplaceable ingredients in art.
    • At the same time, AI tools are lowering costs and barriers to entry for creators.

  • The future may be less about replacing humans and more about changing what humans do

    • One recurring argument is that AI may become a tool that helps people create, not just a substitute that displaces them.
    • The real challenge may be how humans stay central in an ecosystem filled with machine-made content.

Sean Astin: Hollywood’s Human-Centered Pushback

Union protections against AI

Sean Astin, president of SAG-AFTRA, explains how the union negotiated AI safeguards in its contract with studios and streamers.

Key protections include:

  • Restrictions on using AI to replace performers during a strike
  • Rules distinguishing between:
    • Digital replicas: AI based on a specific performer’s image or voice
    • Synthetics: AI-generated likenesses not clearly tied to one person

Political fight: the No Fakes Act

Astin also supports the bipartisan No Fakes Act, which would give people more control over unauthorized AI copies of their voice and likeness.

  • It aims to protect against deepfakes and unauthorized impersonations.
  • It includes carve-outs for parody, news, and some historical uses.
  • Astin argues Congress is moving too slowly and that people will be harmed without stronger safeguards.

Joel Waldfogel: What AI Means for Creative Markets

From gatekeepers to an “open flood” of content

Economist Joel Waldfogel explains that creative industries have always been risky and dependent on gatekeepers like studios, publishers, and labels.

AI and digitization reduce the cost of making creative work, which leads to:

  • More content
  • More competition
  • More low-quality output
  • Greater difficulty for consumers and platforms trying to find worthwhile work

The “random long tail”

Waldfogel’s key idea is that AI may produce a huge volume of content, most of it mediocre, but some of it unexpectedly valuable.

Notable points:

  • After digitization, music production expanded dramatically.
  • Since the rise of ChatGPT, the number of AI-assisted e-books has surged.
  • Many of those books score worse on average by consumer metrics like ratings and sales rank, but some are still successful.

His takeaway

Waldfogel is cautiously optimistic:

  • AI may help more people “get in the game.”
  • It can be a learning tool, not just a shortcut.
  • The danger is passive use, where people let AI do all the work instead of engaging with it creatively.

Kevin Kelly: Radical Optimism About AI

Kevin Kelly argues that AI should be viewed as a powerful technology that creates big problems, but also gives us better tools to solve them.

His vision: an “exoself”

Kelly imagines a near future where people each have a personalized AI companion that can:

  • Advise
  • Inspire
  • Protect
  • Help them think better

Human creativity in an AI world

Kelly believes:

  • There will be many kinds of AIs for many different tasks
  • Humans will still matter because people prefer other humans for humor, warmth, and emotional connection
  • AIs may be useful, but they may not replace the desire for human presence

Core idea

One of the most important human jobs in the future may simply be:

  • being human
  • offering empathy
  • making jokes
  • holding someone’s hand
  • bringing lived experience to creative work

Tilly Norwood: The AI Performer

A major centerpiece of the episode is the interview with Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated actress created by Aline van der Velden’s company Particle 6.

What Tilly is

Tilly is presented as:

  • An AI performer
  • A “new paintbrush” for filmmaking
  • A character that can talk, emote, and perform on command

What she represents

Tilly embodies the industry’s fears and possibilities:

  • She is meant to be a storytelling tool, not a direct replacement for human actors
  • But her existence raises obvious concerns about displacement, authenticity, and labor

Tilly’s own limitations

In the interview, Tilly effectively admits:

  • She has no lived human experience
  • She understands grief, love, and emotion conceptually, not bodily
  • She cannot fully replicate human feeling
  • Her strength is flexibility, scale, and novelty, not humanity

The controversial promise

Her creator argues that AI production can:

  • Cut time and costs significantly
  • Reduce carbon footprint
  • Make ambitious projects financially possible

But critics argue this comes at the expense of actors and creative labor.

Central Questions Raised by the Episode

  • If AI can generate art, what is left for human creators?
  • Should people have rights over their voice, image, and likeness in an AI era?
  • Is AI lowering barriers to creativity or flooding culture with disposable content?
  • Can an AI performance ever be emotionally equivalent to a human one?
  • Will humans still value art made by other humans, even if machine-made content becomes abundant?

Key Takeaways

  • AI is forcing a redefinition of creativity, authorship, and performance.
  • The legal system is behind the technology, especially around deepfakes and synthetic likenesses.
  • Human emotion and lived experience remain the strongest argument for human artists.
  • AI may expand creative access, but it may also overwhelm audiences with mediocre output.
  • The future may not be about choosing between humans and AI, but about deciding what role each should play.

Bottom Line

The episode’s final stance is not that Tilly Norwood or AI creativity will disappear, but that the bigger question is how humans will respond. AI may become a powerful creative partner, but the show argues that audiences still crave something unmistakably human. The future of art may depend less on what AI can do and more on what people still want from one another.