How to Stay Calm and Carry On with Doing Your Art

In a recent Guardian article, Rudy Zygadio wondered if A.I. would soon make writers and artists obsolete, just as so much machinery and automation has taken away other occupations during the past 300 years. What’s different now is that the machinery may be credited with, and celebrated for, creative thoughts. Whereas once we heralded the great artistic masters as being touched by God, will we be awestruck when a machine does the work, or will we grow numb to the novelty, and lose part of our humanity in the process?

His takeaway was that we’re all going to have to figure out how to adapt and live with it, perhaps using A.I. as a tool, and curating the work produced. (Here’s the link to the article.)

I agree. And I also think it’s imperative that we develop our artistic gifts and strengthen our creativity so that we know when and how to use A.I. as a tool, and make reasonable decisions when curating.

At some point, somebody will arrange a competition between an artist or writer and an A.I. machine. Kind of like the chess matches pitting humans against IBM’s Deep Blue.

To make it interesting, it’ll be more like the competition between John Henry, the steel-driving man, and a machine which bore holes through the mountain. I’ll remind you that John Henry beat the machine, but dropped dead of exhaustion at the end.

John Henry is considered a folk hero, but he’s emblematic of what happens if you try to prove to your employer you can work harder than a machine. The employer doesn’t really care if you live or die. The company is designed to replace fallen workers with fresh meat. You can work yourself to death if you want, but I don’t recommend it.

Now, if we could somehow arrange things so that, if the human beats the machine, humans get a decent, living wage, universal health care, and affordable housing, it might be worth someone risking their life to take that challenge.

That will never happen. Companies have the upper hand and the A.I. genie is out of the bottle.

If we want a living wage, health car, and affordable housing, we’re going to have to fight corporate america the old-fashioned way.

Meanwhile, you should do your art. This week, I wrote a few articles you may find helpful:

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