Actress Natasha Lyonne is helping to shape the future of AI

But she also expressed deep concern, as she explained to a Fortune Brainstorm AI audience Monday in San Francisco: With all these limitless possibilities, why would AI focus on replacing screenwriters instead of, say, figuring out a solution to fix the plastic bottles that pollute the oceans? “I don’t think this is an accident,” said Leon, 46. “It’s about cutting costs.”

What the co-founder of media production company Animal Pictures would like to see is people paying for their expertise, work and creative ideas, democratizing filmmaking so that more people can get involved in businesses that have traditionally had high barriers to entry.

Her rallying cry to C-suite officials and AI leaders — delivered in her signature sarcastic New York City accent — is to think seriously about what it means to be human in this age of pervasive AI, and act accordingly. “We are the ones who decide what that use will be and how we choose to use it,” Lyon said. “I really want this to mean a seat at the table for more people to do more extraordinary things.”

Leon, whose name was one of time’She joked that she appointed herself CEO of Animal Pictures and updated her LinkedIn with the title because it “sounds like a lively vibe.” So, Lyon now technically shares the title with others in the C-suite, and she sees a widening gap between the world’s top executives who decide how AI is implemented in companies, and the employees who could see their jobs and opportunities dry up. Although this moment in the evolution of AI includes external factors such as competition with China and meeting Wall Street expectations, she believes the industry must remember that there are serious decisions to be made that will go down in history.

Lyonne, who has been in the film industry since she was a child, noted that it takes an enormous human effort — from cast and crew and everyone from drivers to the creatives who bring ideas to screens — to keep film and television moving forward. She said that AI companies that extract content without permission or payment are neglecting the entire ecosystem. “So, I don’t think it’s completely unacceptable for the theft to take place freely under the auspices of Acceleration or China, right?”

the Russian doll and poker face Starr is also a co-founder of Asteria Film Co., an AI-powered film and animation production studio. Asteria describes itself as being powered by the “first clean AI model” – “clean” refers to AI trained on models with authorized or licensed creative works, rather than content used without payment or permission. She is also directing an upcoming film titled Uncanny Valley Using an AI video model called Marey which is created based on licensed and copyrighted data. The film will reportedly not include AI actors, but will blend generative AI filmmaking techniques with traditional human-driven filmmaking.

She said that as a child, she studied Talmudic texts and interpretations in Aramaic, the ancient language used in Talmudic writings. She said the complexity of exploring layers of meaning and iterations of theory now informs her approach to artificial intelligence in filmmaking.

Leone said she left New York University to pursue her self-education in film at the Independent Film Forum. When asked what advice she would give to her teenage self, Lyonne suggested mastering the genre that takes 10,000 hours of work to develop. “Really, really learn these tools,” she said. “It’s really about technique, and that takes a long time…and that’s how you learn how to write and all that.”

The beauty of mastering a skill and knowing how to think and create is that you can then break those rules, Leon said. “I’m not very interested in rage against the machine,” she said. “I’m interested in building new homes, new seats at the table.”