on AI…

| i have thought endlessly about Artificial Intelligence for the last several months now - it really is easy to do with the constant push from the advertisement agents coming out of OpeCertainly, please provide the text you would like me to check for spelling errors.nAI and all of the other leading AI development companies that are racing towards the cash cow of their dreams— a world that wants needs AI in every facet of their daily lives - we aren’t just talking about the obsoletion of software engineers or middle management positions, but instead of a radically different reality where everything from your vacuum to your HR department is replaced with an AI agent that is better, faster, and cheaper than any sort of reasonable employee could ever afford to be - this world where people exchange their money and their purpose for the time and freedom to do whatever they please while AI takes care of the work to be done for the day; a utopia to some, a death sentence for others - this strange new future has been thought about by some of the greatest minds on the planet right now and again a dichotomy is drawn between the tech optimists who would champion the generation where information explodes out of control and the technological progress of century compressed into the span of less than a decade (MacAskill, 80,000 Hours) which could fuel a Neo-Renaissance of knowledge and progress never before seen at this scale and scope - on the other side of the aisle, you have alarmists that recognize the importance and the urgency of putting safeguards around Big Tech and AI development - left unchecked we could easily find ourselves in a new cold war for not just new weapons but systems that can revitalize and revolutionize warfare, economics, exploration, mathematics, physics…. any scope and scale becomes possible with AI and machine learning - for a really sobering read on this please look to AI 2027 for an honest look at the current trajectory of AI research and the potential outcomes that we are faced with in our very near future - where i find myself in relation to these two camps has been stirring in my head for the past few months - on the one hand, with clever investment and foresight one can make a pretty penny off the back of the AI revolution - on the other hand, my life, my identity as an artist is challenged by this technology and the implications it has for artists everywhere |

| just a few days ago from this writing Google recently unveiled their Veo 3 which has virtually life-like representations of people and actions in video form, and editing these scenes together is now nothing more than a chat prompt - thinking of myself as a film-maker makes me wonder immediately if i will have a future in this world where anyone can create something without even needing to hire actors - what’s more, i imagine that if things stay as they are in the legislature, one could potentially use the likeness of their favorite actor for their short Veo film, particularly if no money is made in distributing that media - if technology for this already exists for a form of art that is inherently multi-disciplinary, what hopes do those who create art that act like building blocks for these films - music, visual design, cinematography, writing, theatre are all cheapened by this amalgam of generic sources - and what happens when consumers get a taste for the AI art; when it becomes so seamless that the normal person, or even the trained professional cannot differentiate between generated art and art that is created - moreover, whose to say that generated art isn’t created… |

| so many questions arise from the advent of AI for the artist - but i think there are a few challenges in particular artists will face going into this next part of human history - the first challenge in my mind is the use of these new tools - how do we use AI as a tool for creation while retaining a certain amount of artistic integrity - when the art is generated by the AI when does the human prompt stop and the creative freedoms of the program start - this will need to be reckoned with like any new technological component that comes into artistic practice— the rise of computer music, the transition to digital animation, the transition between traditional film and digital all had major ramifications for the art practices of their time, now it has become commonplace and is almost archaic to consider going back to “traditional” methods - this too will be the case with AI going forward - the second challenge i want to address is the ethical considerations of using AI - is it fair to use the AI if it was trained on the work of all the artists that came before you - once this was just a conceptual appropriation of ideas, a stealing of style or aesthetic, now is a truly ethical dilemma of “do you build on the work of your predecessors without their express permission” or do you resign from using AI entirely and stay an artist ensconced in traditional methods - if you do use AI how do you ensure your art isn’t directly stealing profit from other’s work - this brings to light the third challenge for artists, activism and legislature - we can’t expect to be treated fairly in this cannabalistic capatilist society, not without a fight - as artists i think it is our duty to make our voices heard louder and louder still to those who make the decisions and the rules around copyright and artist protections - this can be done in several ways but most importantly is making art that challenges the current limitations and pushing the boundaries of what is “right”, protest via artistic expression - finally, i find the greatest challenge faced by artists is the transition from live performance to a new format altogether - live performance runs the risk of becoming a novelty when audiences are so used to the digital space and unfamiliar with the expectations that come with a real live performance - we have already been experiencing the beginning stages of the mass migration of audiences away from the concert hall and the theatre stage in favor of the world’s music library in their pocket or the world’s best acting on Netflix (debatable) but when the content is a replica or even levels beyond that of live performance, how can we hope to compete - i simply hope that the novelty and the pursuit of great art is strong enough for audiences to yearn for a human experience, but in absence of that, i hope that artists find an ethical way of integrating new and exciting technologies with AI into the concert hall in hopes of trying to find a place for art in the new digital age |