Come Back Home
Artificial Intelligence in the Arts.
When they all want to turn you down
Like the sound on their TV set
There's one place that you're welcome to
Where everything you say, well, it's all up to you
Songwriters: Donald Mcglashan / Harry Sinclair.
Think of Kiwis you admire in the arts, like Don McGlashan, Dick Frizzell, or Sam Neill, who, in addition to being experts in their craft, also serve as elder statespeople in their industries.
On my list is Jennifer Ward-Lealand, an actor, director, and unionist who has been appearing on our screens since the late 70s.
My family has had a small involvement with Ward-Lealand, as she was the intimacy coach on a production my youngest son was in, during which Jennifer, who is pakeha but has learned Te Reo, offered to help my wife rehearse her pepeha for a course she was taking.
If you’d like to read more about Jennifer’s Te Reo journey, click here.
You might have seen an item on 1 News last night about her efforts to protect actors and others from being replaced by AI, or by those flown in to do work a Kiwi could do.
I don’t much care if AI takes over monotonous office jobs, and it may help by providing deep access to a knowledge base for tasks such as the diagnosis of medical tests. But our theatre, music, and the arts are what make us who we are. If we remove the humanity from such work, we’ll be left with mass-produced dross from America, with all the quirkiness that makes us Kiwis stripped away.
