(Still thinking…)
In last month’s blog, I spoke of a personal journey with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it had proved to be a great time saver in my creative process. In essence, AI is the science of making machines that can think like humans. One thing is for certain: AI is here to stay…and stay…and stay, ever-evolving, despite our fears of and resistance to its mushrooming expansion. Of course, this is just one tiny facet of a vast, exponentially growing behemoth of our technological age, and I could not hope to explore it fully, even in a series of articles, nevermind with my pea-brained grasp of the subject.
So what’s to be done? We are unable to impede its happening. Are we to embrace and perhaps harness it in some way? The Clone Troopers are a way off yet, so let’s educate ourselves before slipping into fear of the unknown. I have a favourite life motto that has served me well over the years — everything that we know has brought us to where we are, right now, in this moment — yet where we need to be lies in what we don’t know, that we don’t know!
Everything exists because of its opposite, so if we’re seeing AI through the eyes of Scarcity, then surely there is an opposite perspective in that of Abundance. Let’s explore this burgeoning entity, seeking not only to learn more about it, but as to how we might utilise it towards our own positive growth, in a manner that serves us in Abundance.
Here we are as artists, striving to be authentic and real, islands in an ocean, where the rising waters of technology seek to overwhelm us. So, as we begin to fathom this unknown world ahead of us, we should remember that as artists and creatives, we reside on the frontier of what we don’t know that we don’t know. All is new, unexplored possibility — into realms of conscious thought, where no machine, however advanced and self-manifested it may be, cannot supplant us.
Whilst AI might be able to think like us, it will always lack soul-essence and wisdom. And it is here, in the mix of Life’s palette, where we are untouchable, beyond the reach of technology — safe in our mistakes. So let’s seek to explore within, to develop and blossom with the essence of our unique form of expression. Let’s learn from one another without mimicking, let’s strive to depict beauty from our own creative reservoir, rather than through competition; helping one another all the way to blossom and thrive.
Guy McGowan
WASA representative in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal
& Chairperson of North Coast Artists, KwaZulu-Natal.