Society Should Treat Artists The Same as Athletes

Over the last month I have been alternating between the outstanding Stanley Cup playoffs and the outstanding NBA playoffs.  I know ratings are down because, like every aspect of American life except for what Donald Trump or Tik Tok tells us, we are far too busy with nothing to pay attention to anything.  But in addition to the incredible athleticism and high drama that both sets of playoffs have provided, I am also noticing that sports seems to be one of the last A.I. free holdouts in our culture.

This is not really shocking of course. I think some of the things that make sports so compelling still are the relative purity of sports as a meritocracy, and also seeing human beings pushing themselves and being pushed to their physical capacities.  I could never shoot like Steph Curry or jump like Anthony Edwards or skate like anyone because I cannot skate, but I am a human being and when we watch athletes, it is like watching someone take what we have to its capacity.  We have not yet started buying tickets to see a robot jump and flip like Simone Biles and I hope we never do.  But when it comes to art, I naively hoped the same feelings would permeate, but the exact opposite is happening.

It came to my attention a little less than a year ago that a YouTube channel called Dark Brandon was using my audio, upgrading it with A.I. and setting it to A.I. animation.  The person or people behind the channel gave me attribution and I occasionally see small upticks in my subscriber count as a result. In the last 5 years, thanks to constant production and some talent I have added 93,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel. The Dark Brandon channel, in a year or so, has amassed a subscriber count double that.  And because my audio was used a few times on the site, a random, disgruntled comedian accused me of hiding behind A.I. animation to attack him because a video on the site that I had nothing to do with  (and still have no idea what it is) apparently insulted him. He assumed I was the Wizard behind this A.I. driven Oz (if only that worked in a positive way and led to a massive surge in subscribers).

I don’t really care about them using my audio as long as they do so with attribution, but I keep learning that an increasing percentage of society does not care about comedy and art the way I do.  When I see a person do an impersonation or sing a song or write a good book I feel the same connection that I do with great athletes.  I cannot do that (or do it as well), but I can connect to their greatness because I share humanity with them and am seeing what we are capable of through their brilliance.  But it seems more and more people, rapidly, are falling in love with the ability to computer generate content and do not care how the sausage is made. For me, art is all about connecting how the sausage is made to the finished product.  But I think we are at a tragic inflection point where the finished product is all people care about.   We scroll, we consume, we move on. Like we are factory farming our own brains to separate the work and humanity from the content.

Art connects us. Content will divide us (further).  Followers on social media have been sending me more and more A.I. generated pictures, which in a vacuum are humorous, but I don’t live or create in a vacuum.  I don’t find it particularly interesting to punch some keys in a chatbot and it generates something for you.  But I fear that mine will be a mentality that will be extinct very soon.  John Keating, in Dead Poets Society said something to the effect of “Math, Science these are the building blocks of life, but poetry is why we live.”  Now it feels like we are rapidly approaching a “consuming content is why we live” mindset. The Matrix pods, but we are wide awake and glazing over voluntarily.

Like so many things from smart phones to lip syncing, I am sure I am going to lose this battle and we will lose another important and divine connection to one and other through creation of art.  But as I wrote in my last blog, creating art is often an act based on a desire to create something bigger than yourself and/or that outlives you, but I am watching in real time the degradation of not just art, but the very act of creation.

I wish that art could be considered the same way sports still are, but I think it is only a matter of when, at this point, before everyone is a content creator and consumer and no one is an artist.  We will lose something that may or may not be inherent in our DNA, but is one of the great things that humanity has ever developed.  And after that is gone, perhaps we will see a robot win Gold at an Olympics.