This evening I have been reading about artists whose work was used to train AI, often against their express wishes, and sometimes in the guise of being an homage. There is a long list of them. Here is a link to one of the articles I read. My conclusion is that as long as we don’t teach art in our schools, there will be no appreciation for the work of artists. There is a human need for expression. We are the animal of stories and art. If this expression is not guided and trained and shown a path of practice and growth, then people will resort to technology to express themselves, whether that’s by creating AI facsimiles of art, or otherwise finding ways to do what they have not been taught.
I ha ve always said that art AND music, including piano lessons,
should be taught as major academic subjects right from first grade – not electives. What a wonderful cultured society that would create!
Based upon what I have seen for the past 4 years (definitely during the SARS-CoV2 era), I am not sure what is actually being taught in secondary school(s). It sure isn’t science and maths (nor statistics), not to mention arts and music.
Do you think we can recover our society?
Everything is cyclical. Fascism is never defeated once and for all, only for the moment. It’s an endless cycle that one can only hope is actually a spiral, which would imply that there is an upward motion. Today art is an investment that bears bigger returns than the stock market. There are so many painters today whose work is ignored, like Van Gogh’s in his lifetime, because people buy for investment, not because a painting captivates them. I imagine the type of people, and their politicians, who don’t see the value of art and music have always been the same, now or hundreds/thousands of years ago. I am positive that here were people like us in Athens and Rome who complained of the same short-sightedness of their culture.