Artificial ‘creativity’ is unstoppable. Grappling with its ethics is up to us

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.