In brief
- An AI bot “replaced” T.J. Miller as host of the ETH Denver opening ceremony, he joked.
- Miller said he is not afraid that AI will actually take his job as a performer.
- Some industries, however, are under real threat from AI automation.
Artificial intelligence is already reshaping numerous industries, impacting everything from crypto trading and security to Hollywood productions—and even live events (supposedly).
At this week’s ETH Denver conference for Ethereum developers, actor and comedian T.J. Miller riffed on that anxiety, joking that an AI bot “replaced” him for a hosting gig during the event.
Jokes aside, in an interview with Decrypt, Miller said he isn’t too worried about losing his job to the AI uprising anytime soon.
“I’m not super scared that AI can take my job,” he said. “As far as hosting and being very funny and getting the energy up, I am not afraid of losing.”
Miller, known for his role on HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” said the pace of AI development has outstripped most people’s ability to process it: “It’s happening so fast and in front of our faces.”
Miller’s comments come as a renewed conversation around generative AI is gripping the entertainment industry after an unauthorized AI-generated video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting went viral last week. While AI tools may bring efficiency benefits to productions large and small, there’s real fear about massive job losses in their wake.
Concerns about AI replacing human workers in white-collar jobs have also intensified over the past year as more and more companies experiment with automation. Last week, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman warned that most professional white-collar tasks could be fully automated within the next two years.
Miller, though, dismissed the idea that AI poses an existential threat to his work as a performer. A more pressing concern, he said, is people turning over their lives to AI, letting automation replace participation.
“A lot of us—really all of us—are uncomfortable with the idea of handing your life over to artificial intelligence,” he said, “and saying, ‘You handle everything.’”
At this year’s ETH Denver, developers are increasingly pitching blockchain infrastructure as a way to support AI agents to automate trading, identity, and wallet management. Against that backdrop, Miller’s riff on being replaced by a bot mirrors the plot of an episode of “Silicon Valley” from years back.
When asked whether Silicon Valley anticipated today’s AI boom, Miller credited creator Mike Judge—also of “Beavis and Butt-Head” fame—with accurately forecasting cultural shifts.
“It was prophetic because it was Mike Judge,” Miller said. “He called the Trump presidential election, and he called the death of the American office space.”
However, he said the current AI wave, with its potential transformational impacts on nearly all facets of modern life, goes beyond anything depicted on television.
“None of us can imagine what is happening right now,” he said.
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