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
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Physics
A song of ice, fire and jelly – exploring the physics and history of the trumpet
9 minutes
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Architecture
Tour the European architecture that dreamed of a wondrous, fictitious China
16 minutes
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Spirituality
Trek alongside spiritual pilgrims on a treacherous journey across Pakistan
6 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Photographs offer a colonialist window to the past – one that must be challenged
14 minutes
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Animals and humans
An artist and ants collaborate on an exhibit of ‘tiny Abstract Expressionist paintings’
5 minutes
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Mathematics
How a curious question about colouring maps changed mathematics forever
9 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
The world turns vivid, strange and philosophical for one plane crash survivor
16 minutes
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Cities
The rise and fall of Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong’s infamous urban monolith
18 minutes
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Art
Inside the unique creative space where ‘outsider’ artists find their form
14 minutes