Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing, and it’s changing everything around it. Media, culture, connections, perceptions, and other fundamentals of being human—AI will find a place beside them. How this will unfold, we are only now finding out. Some people take advantage of what these autonomous tools offer, freeing themselves from the tedious labor taxed onto artistic output. Others view these algorithms as a segue into a deceitful future absent of human creativity. In each case lies truth and uncertainty, allure and discomfort, and ultimately the question of what to do about AI now.
Now more than ever, unbiased curiosity has a pivotal role in the effort to understand the implications —now and in the future — of AI in the arts. Undoubtedly, there will be more questions than answers, but who better to provide these answers than the creative individuals at the fore? With me here is Marc-Anthony Macon, a multimedia artist with a professional edge over AI software and the experience to give tremendous insights into the matter.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Smile Politely: I understand that, among other mediums, AI has a place in your practices. For what purposes do you turn to AI as opposed to another medium or doing it by hand?
Marc-Anthony Macon: My practices have evolved a lot since I first started using AI As with any kind of artistic medium that I’m playing with, I want to use AI as jokingly as I possibly can; it was very flippant when I first started using AI Lately, I’ve been trying to use it to counter the bad that some AI is doing, which means like trying to replicate some of those terrible Facebook memes that everyone of a certain age is just spellbound by. Someone will try to convince us of one thing, but we recognize that AI did that in 30 seconds—we all know it. So really, I’m addressing AI’s ability to trick people into believing things that aren’t true and with very little effort put into it.
SP: The people most ‘harmed’ by rising AI — would these people be those who directly engage with it or who don’t know of it?
Macon: I think it will be the people who don’t know when what they’re looking at is AI-generated. Whether it’s a text, an image, or even a video, something that people believe is true or has actually happened can really be just some gimmick quickly generated by someone with a potentially dubious moral compass. People can always web search the specific words and see if others are commenting on it and saying whether or not this is true. A little bit of Googling can go a long way. But at the same time, I think we just need to be very skeptical of any claim these days: it is very easy to assert things with imagery, and to have an audience go along with it.
SP: I like to ask this question and hear what comes up: with AI getting deeper into the arts, what are the biggest trade-offs you predict artists will make?
Macon: If we can properly use and adapt to AI, what this dilemma should be is a situation where we automate as many things as we can—especially the things that we don’t like doing: the kind of jobs that are just monotonous and unpalatable to the soul. If we can get AI to organize and take care of those, we really wouldn’t have that much to do anymore as a people. And I know that sounds terrifying, but It also sounds liberating. For AI, we would really need to maintain that system and help it evolve into what we want it to be. Then, we can enjoy our lives and not have to slave away to survival, and life can be for aesthetics. That’s my utopian and naive ideal of how this could go.
SP: How, then, can we as a collective make sure AI stays in that field and reserves the more creative and exciting things for human artists?
Macon: So here is an analogy. I can go to Aldi and get a rug for like 15 bucks, and it will be an okay rug. Alternatively, I can go to someone who has learned to make handcrafted rugs with love and tradition, and that rug will be absolutely beautiful and will have a story to it. Both of those rugs—and both are pieces of art—might have a place in your life. Ultimately, I think that people are always going to appreciate the art made by hand, by a particular person with a particular point of view in a particular style. That is always going to be interesting, and I think people recognize if, say, a company employs actual artists in what they’re doing. In those cases, we appreciate the output more because of the human artistry present.
SP: Say a machine does a certain artwork you could not do yourself. Would you consider this to be a reduction in the artistic value if there was a machine involved?
Macon: Definitely not. Look at classical art artists like Salvador Dali: for many of his paintings, he barely painted—it was all the work of his assistants under his direction. The artistic value of something is only meaningful to the people who are appraising whether or not they like that specific art. On another note, several people I know have commutes and conversations with ChatGBT, asking for advice about various things. It is a reliance that I think we need to be cautious of. Being Gen X, I still know 75 phone numbers in my head that I had to memorize when I was a kid. Now that information is now useless, but it was a skill that wasn’t hard at the time. If I try and think about memorizing 75 phone numbers right now, it absolutely would not happen, and one reason for that is because technology has taken care of it. I no longer need to do that, but it also means that my mind doesn’t have the same skills it once had. So really, I’m concerned about skill loss that comes from leaning on these crutches, per say.
SP: Is it worth considering the new skills that we could gain to almost compensate for that?
Macon: Yes, definitely. For a comparison, think of astronauts on a space station for an extended period of time: they have to constantly exercise so that their muscles don’t shrivel up, or else their whole body collapses. If AI, mechanization, automation relieves our need to do anything, then we need to keep physically and intellectually exercising. We need to get out and do things, whether it be gardening or word puzzles. We just need to keep our minds and bodies active while recognizing that these things are still for pleasure and not for survival. Machines can now do it. That said, I think we could use AI to develop some kind of gaming system, and we would use it to keep our physical and mental strength fresh. But really, it’s better to do this with each other. Maybe we need to reconnect our humanity now that we don’t have to necessarily work to survive.
Explore the rest of Marc-Anthony’s impressive collection here.