Perspectives on AI: The Shark, The Spy and The Slop
Creative Sector adoption of AI is at a deceptively comfortable stage. While disputes around copyright continue, most businesses have adopted some of the widely available plethora of tools, Chatbots and Copilots.
AI is saving time and money that can be directed towards more creative work. It is generally fulfilling tasks that we once paid human beings to do.
The revolution is moving so fast that there is little time to stop and reflect on progress. But we are entering a new phase that will make much bigger impact on everyone in the Creative Sector.
There are plenty of voices, laying out visions of imminent change:
THE SHARK
“Creators should LOVE AI,” says Texan billionaire and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban.
In an X post this month, he writes: “AI doesn’t make uncreative people creative. It allows creators to become exponentially more creative.”
Cuban may register at the lower end of the Musk scale of Tech Brosity, but he is selling the same over-confident, the future-is-rad schtick. And he is all-in on the AI Revolution.
And he makes a compelling case for a creative ‘fail-fast’ meritocracy where AI tech will allow ideas and vision to be realised at a fraction of existing costs.
It is an argument for diversity. Creative people outside the existing industrial structures will be able to bring visions to life without prohibitive costs or establishment expectations.
Cuban believes it will be a death blow to institutional control: “The number of gatekeepers drops every day and will eventually hit zero.”
For Cuban, gatekeeper means “those that try to control distribution and the creative process because they are the ones that control platforms and tools.”
Gatekeeper is an oddly ecumenical bogeyman, targeted by both leftists and libertarians. Most prominently today, the populist right is on a crusade against a supposed secret cabal of elite gatekeepers telling real people what they can say and think. Public service broadcasting, arts institutions and universities are all currently on the hit list.
The democratising potential of AI is a story we’ve all heard before. Every disruptive stage of the Digital Revolution has come with this power-to-the-people promise.
Will it be different this time. Well, there are other perspectives.
THE SPY
For Blaise Metreweli, chief of the UK’s Special Intelligence Service, shadowy gatekeeper is pretty much the job description.
While Cuban was sharing his thoughts on X, Metreweli was giving a speech on what she sees as a looming threat from a new elite of unprecedentedly powerful tech giants.
“Power itself is becoming more diffuse, more unpredictable as control over these technologies is shifting from states to corporations, and sometimes to individuals.”
AI-enhanced algorithms and rogue bots have the power to rip apart cultural bonds and shared truths. States are using those tools as weapons of war.
But she is clearly also pointing to the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny group of mega-rich tech bros.
Creative industries have played an unheralded role in the rise of these personal superpowers. Sci-fi, games and films have inspired big dreams: homes on Mars, eternal life, robot armies (and lovers), etc.
Metreweli names no names but she will no doubt be thinking about tech corporations that start with benign missions (‘do no evil’) but slide into what Cory Doctorow calls ‘enshittification.’
But she too envisages a world in which AI can “augment, not replace” human endeavour.
From different perspectives, the shark and the spy both make powerful cases that we are speeding towards an inevitable AI revolution, with little chance to get off the grid.
THE SLOP
Their visions are both promising and alarming, just as every other stage of digital disruption.
There is an additional dimension in the debate, encapsulated in a single word. The Merriam-Webster dictionary has made ‘slop’ its word of the year.
Slop describes the avalanche of third-rate, meaningless nonsense that AI will enable. Cuban may be right in saying that AI won’t make creative people creative, but the ability to flood cultural and social spaces is free to all.
An already overcrowded market for creative work is already bracing itself for a tsunami of content.
Some of that content will be exciting, perhaps opening up a new world of diverse talent without the baggage of tradition or expectation.
Content generated by AI cannot be easily discounted in the mix. The cliché that AI will never match the ingenuity and creative ideas of humans is questionable, not least because Large Language Models have been trained on vast stores of human creative output.
But what will dictate which content rises above the slop? That is a question that needs debating now.
Diverse new talent finding a voice is exciting but is there a model that will allow them to reach audiences and create viable, sustainable businesses.
Cuban seems to imagine a world in which the cream will rise to the top by the ‘unseen hand’ of the free market.
In practice, the ‘free’ market is already dominated by a small and (as the Warner Bros merger story illustrates) shrinking number of global giants – the Gatekeeping Titans.
CREATIVE POWER
It is a strange world when a secret service chief makes a more compelling case for the role of the Creative Sector in this world than the sector itself.
“We all have choices to make about how we deal with the undercurrents shaping our world,” says Metreweli.
“In our new, faster, more dangerous and technology-mediated world, it will be our rediscovery of our shared humanity, our ability to listen, and our courage that will determine how our future unfolds.”
Shared humanity might be the mission statement for the Creative Sector but for that mission to be fulfilled, the sector needs to have confidence in its agency.
There needs to be a serious rethink.
We need new approaches and new models. The answers will not lie in listening to the dominant voices speaking with certainty. There are no AI experts who can predict the future. We are moving into uncharted territory as machines gain more autonomy.
We need to rethink. The courage to question ourselves is a good starting point.
