From the fire of Prometheus to the renegade neural network of The Terminator (1984), technology anxiety spans the history of human civilisation. But only recently has the notion that we could soon be usurped by our machines as artists and storytellers started to take hold. By now, you almost certainly know the broad strokes – first AIs started beating us at our most sophisticated board games, and now, from illustration to writing, every creative endeavour seems to be primed for the computer-generated picking.
In the latest and final instalment of the influential Everything Is a Remix series, in which the US video essayist Kirby Ferguson analyses how all creativity is built from borrowing, Ferguson tackles the history, ethics and unknowable future of artificial intelligence. In particular, he focuses on what the AI revolution means for the future of storytelling. Putting today’s AI panics around creative work, artists’ rights and even the future of the human species into perspective, Ferguson argues that, while the continued evolution of AI is inevitable, the history and future of creativity inevitably, inescapably, belongs to us.
Director: Kirby Ferguson
Producer: Nora Ryan
video
Consciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
video
Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
video
Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
video
History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
video
Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Leading 1950s thinkers on the search for happiness in trying times
29 minutes
video
Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes