过去半个世纪里，凯瑟琳·肯尼迪塑造了好莱坞，也塑造了大众文化。她最初是《星球大战》《夺宝奇兵》和《侏罗纪公园》等开创性大片的制片人，过去14年则担任卢卡斯影业总裁，也是乔治·卢卡斯亲手选定的接班人，在沃尔特·迪士尼公司旗下掌管这一系列。
Over the past half-century, Kathleen Kennedy has shaped Hollywood and molded mass culture, first as a producer of seminal blockbusters including , , and , and, for the last 14 years, as president of Lucasfilm and George Lucas’ handpicked heir, shepherding the franchise under Walt Disney Co.
肯尼迪在经历近年一系列动荡影片后，于今年1月从卢卡斯影业卸任，并为自己打造了一个新角色：在人工智能这一令人望而生畏的新世界里，充当好莱坞的引路人。过去五年里，她私下召集了一批轮流参与的导演、制片厂高管和硅谷领袖，讨论人工智能以及它对创造力、劳动和娱乐业基本经济结构所构成的生存性挑战。
Kennedy, who stepped down at Lucasfilm in January after a turbulent run of recent movies, has fashioned a new role for herself: Hollywood’s chaperone in the daunting new world of artificial intelligence. Over the past five years, she’s been privately convening a rotating cast of filmmakers, studio executives and Silicon Valley chieftains to talk about AI and the existential challenges it poses to creativity, labor and the underlying economics of the entertainment business.
“我们并不是刻意要保密。只是当时任何人公开谈论这件事，都会引发很多焦虑，”肯尼迪周三晚在洛杉矶彭博“Screentime”大会接受采访时说。“人们正在意识到，这个行业眼下存在一定的领导力真空。大家都在寻找指引，想知道我们该如何使用这些工具。”去年8月，她的这些会议最终发展为在美国电影学会举行的一场规模更大、持续一整天的聚会，肯尼迪是该学会董事会主席。
“We weren’t trying to necessarily be secret. It’s just that there was a lot of anxiety around anybody talking about this very publicly,” Kennedy said on Wednesday night in an interview at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference in Los Angeles. “People are recognizing that we have a bit of a leadership void in the industry right now. Everybody’s looking for guidance as to how we’re going to go about using these tools.”In August her meetings culminated with a larger, daylong gathering at the American Film Institute, where Kennedy chairs the board of trustees.
在这场活动中，包括人工智能演示以及对这项技术的普遍焦虑情绪，150位业界知名人士思考了一个关键问题：电影人如何才能使用人工智能，而不至于取代处于行业核心的创意工作者。根据通讯《Puck》上的一篇文章，该团体的观点——而且这仍是一种观点，尚未成为行业标准——是，这类工作流程应被理解为现有数字制作方式的演进，而不是机器对人类创作主体的替代。该文章还重新刊发了该团体编写的一份文件，详细说明了其研究结果。
In the session, which included AI demos and a general airing of anxieties about the technology, 150 industry luminaries considered the critical question of how filmmakers can use AI without displacing the creative people at the heart of the industry. “The group’s argument — and it is an argument, not yet an industry standard — is that such workflows should be understood as an evolution of existing digital production rather than as machine substitution for human authorship,” according to an article in the newsletter, which republished a document created by the group detailing its findings.
肯尼迪在《Scentime》节目中表示：“目前[人工智能]是特效的演变，但它正在迅速发展到超越特效的程度。”“我认为我们中的许多人现在正在努力做的是找到一种更加积极主动的方法，而不是接受这个事实。”
“Right now [AI] is kind of an evolution from special effects, but it’s moving very rapidly into more than that,” Kennedy said at Screentime. “Rather than just accepting the fact that this is going to happen to us inside the industry, I think what many of us are trying to do now is to find a way to be more proactive.”
他们试图积极主动的方法之一是准确量化人工智能如何影响好莱坞。肯尼迪表示，该组织正在与哈佛大学合作，衡量人工智能如何在娱乐中使用，以及它在多大程度上取代了工人或创造了新的就业机会。她怀疑这可能是自动化的特殊效果业务，也许取代入门级的工作。“这是电影业的问题，也是我们作为电影制片人的问题，我们要与进入电影业的下一代合作，努力阐明我们为年轻人创造的道路。”
One way they’re trying to be proactive is to quantify exactly how AI is affecting Hollywood. Kennedy said the group is working with Harvard University to measure how AI is being used in entertainment and to what extent it’s either displacing workers or creating new jobs. She suspects it’s probably automating the special effects business and perhaps replacing entry-level work. “It’s on the industry, and it’s on us as filmmakers, to then work with the next generation that’s coming into the business to try to articulate what are those paths that we’re creating for younger people.”
肯尼迪长期以来一直利用数字技术来推动她的电影制作。在史蒂芬·斯皮尔伯格的电影中，计算机生成的图像取代了好莱坞以前用来描绘恐龙的实际效果和定格动画;在最近的几部电影中，卢卡斯电影公司称之为“体积”的LED屏幕墙取代了外景拍摄和绿色屏幕。
Kennedy has long harnessed digital technologies to advance filmmaking in her productions. In Steven Spielberg’s , computer-generated imagery replaced the practical effects and stop-motion animation that Hollywood had previously used to portray dinosaurs; in recent installments like , a wall of LED screens that Lucasfilm calls “the Volume” supplanted on-location shoots and green screens.
肯尼迪表示，她的经验促使她愿意拥抱人工智能，并且她一直对技术持乐观态度。她说：“过去十五到二十年里，我制作的每一部电影都在推动技术迈向新的高度。利用这些新工具，人们以前所未有的方式获得了接触和创作的机会。”她表示，人工智能在电影和电视剧的前期制作阶段尤其具有价值。“它让你能够先搭建起一个雏形，在投入巨额资金、时间和人力之前，先对想要创作的内容有个大致概念。我认为这些是巨大的优势，而我们才刚刚开始意识到这将如何影响我们的工作。”
Kennedy said experience has informed her willingness to embrace AI and that she’s always been optimistic about technology. “Every single movie I’ve made in the last 15 or 20 years has been pushing technology to the next level,” she said. “There’s an opportunity using these new tools that give people access in a way that they haven’t had before.”AI can be particularly valuable in the pre-production phase of movies and TV shows, she said. “It allows you to be able to put something on its feet, get an idea of what it is you’re trying to create before you have to commit massive amounts of money, time and people. I think those are enormous benefits, and we’re just starting to get a sense of how that’s going to affect what we do.”
尽管肯尼迪对娱乐行业的整体状况普遍持乐观态度，但她表示，自己正密切关注派拉蒙天舞公司收购这家拥有百年历史的标志性制片厂华纳兄弟的进程，尤其是派拉蒙首席执行官大卫·埃利森关于维持华纳电影产量的承诺。她说：“大家都对此感到担忧，担心一家制片厂消失，导致电影产量减少。我们拭目以待。”肯尼迪本人在大型企业内部运营制片厂的经历也并非一帆风顺。
While Kennedy was generally sanguine about the overall state of the entertainment business, she said she’s closely watching the acquisition of the iconic, century-old Warner Bros. studio by Paramount Skydance Corp., and in particular Paramount chief David Ellison’s promise to maintain Warner’s cinematic output. “We’re all worried about that, to have a studio disappear and fewer movies get made,” she said. “We’ll see.”Kennedy’s own experience running a studio inside of a big company hasn’t been entirely smooth.
2015年，她凭借J·J·艾布拉姆斯执导的《星球大战：原力觉醒》成功开启了一个电影新时代，但此后制片厂接连推出几部口碑和票房双输的作品，最近的就是今年上映的《星球大战：亡命之徒》和《曼达洛人》衍生剧集，其中《亡命之徒》的首映票房是该系列中最差的——尽管它目前仍是迪士尼流媒体平台上观看量最高的电影。
After successfully launching a new era of movies in 2015 with JJ Abrams’ , the studio produced several critical and commercial flops, most recently this year’s and , which opened to one of the franchise’s worst box-office debuts — though it’s currently Disney’s most streamed movie.
今年早些时候，肯尼迪将工作重心从迪士尼园区内的卢卡斯影业办公室，搬回了她与丈夫、电影制作人弗兰克·马歇尔共同创立的肯尼迪/马歇尔公司办公室。她仍在制作电影，包括即将上映、由瑞恩·高斯林主演的《特技狂人》。但她也在学习、倾听，并试图为好莱坞即将到来的变革做好准备。
Earlier this year, Kennedy moved her base of operations from the Lucasfilm offices in the Disney lot back to the offices of Kennedy/Marshall Co., which she founded with her husband, filmmaker Frank Marshall. She’s still producing films, including the forthcoming , starring Ryan Gosling. But she’s also learning and listening and trying to prepare Hollywood for what’s coming.
“过去几个月里，我一直抱着开放的心态去观察周围的一切，努力弄清楚我们正朝着什么方向前进，”她说。“眼下发生的一切真的太不可思议了。因此，我并没有急于形成什么定论或判断，只是尽量去吸收这些信息，并结识更多涉足这项新技术的人士。同时，我也试图重新联系那些一度失去联系的人，毕竟从事这类工作很容易让自己陷入一个封闭的小圈子里。”
“I have spent the last several months really just being very open-minded to looking around and trying to better understand where we’re headed,” she said. “It’s just absolutely extraordinary what is going on right now. And so, rather than form any real opinion or judgment about it, I’m just trying to absorb, and meet as many people that are involved in the new technology. I’m also trying to get reacquainted with people that I kind of lost track of, because you get a bit of a bubble when you’re doing something like .”