Will Big Tech ‘Crush’ the Arts?
Digital technology and the future of the arts
Last summer Apple released a commercial for their new iPad Pro entitled “Crush!” that provoked ire from the artistic community. In it, a hydraulic press slowly clamps down on a collection of artistic instruments—books, a piano, a trumpet, tubes of paint, as well as older electronic devices—crushing parts, pinions, and paints in a fantastic display of destruction. When the hydraulic press falls flat and lifts again, lo and behold, a new iPad Pro is lying in the center of the press, implying that the iPad Pro contains every capability of all these instruments compressed into one.
The reaction this commercial elicited is notable, and I think it gets at the heart of what many artists fear most: that digital tech will displace our need for the arts and, by extension, for artists themselves. When AI was introduced, there was a proliferation of articles considering whether this meant the end of the human writer. Hollywood actors were among the first to boycott to protect their jobs from this new digital threat. It is a question well worth considering: Does innovative digital technology threaten the future of the arts? If so, how and in what way? And what can artists do about it?
The relationship between art and tech is a fascinating one. On one hand, new digital technology equips artists like filmmakers and graphic designers to make their work more realistic, effective, and immersive. I studied film, so I understand the value of a high-quality camera, or the difference great lighting equipment makes, or the “magic” of good editing software. New technology provides some artists with powerful tools to engage their craft; it would be simplistic to overlook that fact.
On the other hand, while great technology might improve technical aspects of artistic crafts (especially for those whose medium is digital), it cannot improve qualities that are arguably more fundamental to the work of an artist. I love how Wendell Berry responds to the insistence that a computer will help him write “faster, easier, and more.” He exclaims: “Do I want to write faster, easier, and more? No. My standards are not speed, ease, and quantity… I would like to be a better writer, and for that I need help from other humans, not a machine.”1 Innovations like artificial intelligence are incapable of exploring the depths of the human condition, the nuances of human love, the novelties of human life, because AI is not human and therefore it will never be able to produce truly great art.
Innovative digital technologies thrive where amplification, immersion, and automation are concerned. But these do not necessarily improve the quality of a piece of art. On the contrary, they usually diminish their value. There is only one Starry Night; its exclusivity and unique features, even the very limitations and demands it makes on viewers to behold it, set it apart. That said, the outcome of digital technology venturing into the arts will be the proliferation of “art” that is most easily amplified, immersive, and effectively replicated — art, in other words, that fails to plumb the depths of the human experience and flattens human life to something that is most conducive to the digital world.
The threat, then, that digital innovation poses is not to art itself, but rather to a society that is willing to surrender itself to artificial alternatives to true art because these are faster, cheaper, more available, reliable, and easier to create and digest. Why attend a live concert when you can listen to the same music from your car without the discomfort, hiccups and mistakes, and long lines that inevitably characterize attending even the most professionally produced performances? Why exert the effort needed to write a book when AI can produce the ideas and even write it for you? Why travel to visit a beautiful cathedral when you can visit the same cathedral from the comfort of your own home?
And because of innovative tech’s unprecedented capacity to amplify and automate, Big Tech threatens to inundate our society with artificially manufactured “art.” What will the cultural implications be? In one essay, Yuval Noah Harari, Aza Raskin, and Tristan Harris put it this way: “For thousands of years, we humans have lived inside the dreams of other humans…” but soon, “we will also find ourselves living inside the hallucinations of nonhuman intelligence.” If we are not careful, digital technology will undermine our cultural imagination. We will lose our ability to recognize good art and our ability to create it as well.
Perhaps most concerning about the way our technological revolution has taken shape in recent years is the way Big Tech seeks to encroach upon activities that are most fundamental to being human. We do not need machines to create art for us. We create and enjoy art as an expression of our humanity, to commune with one another, to encounter the divine; these are experiences that a machine will never understand, regardless of how effectively it manages to replicate it.
There is a writing principle important for understanding how I believe artists should respond to the challenge new tech poses: Show, don’t tell. Artists need to show the world why true art is better than anything a computer could ever produce. For that, we’ll need to create truly great art.
From Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer: Essays, p. 54.