“Keep AI out of theatre.” “Keep AI out of music.” “Keep AI out of social work.” We read comments like these online all the time – and as a studio that openly uses AI in culture and the social sector, they matter to us in particular. They often come from people who work in exactly these fields and are afraid: of change and of losing their jobs. We take that concern seriously. But simply keeping AI out is, in our view, completely the wrong way to go.
The question of “whether” is settled
Whether we use AI or not will soon no longer be a question – the development can’t be reversed. What matters is how we deal with AI. That’s why we shouldn’t demonise it, but engage with it. Because only those who understand AI and know how to work with it can shape how it is used in the future.
Refuse, and you hand the wheel to others
Anyone who refuses the development entirely and wants everything to stay the way it always was is running out of time. The direction will then be set by those who have engaged with it and know their way around. From our point of view, that’s the biggest mistake you can make right now.
For companies, cultural institutions, social organisations and cities, it’s therefore not about deciding yes or no, but about the question: how do we do it?
- In which areas do we want to use AI?
- How do we communicate that to the outside world?
- And above all: what will our system and our structures look like in five years – in municipalities, in theatres, in the music business?
Only if we have a vision and understand where the journey is heading can we make sure that we all still have jobs in five years. Because there will definitely be a restructuring of work. Even so, there will still be a need for human intelligence, for human know-how – and above all for human taste.
What AI can’t do: decide what’s good
AI can't decide what is good or bad – nor what matches the wishes of an artist. Anyone working artistically makes the final call themselves: what gets generated, which generated song is used, which generated object goes into the work. It has to match your own artistic vision.
AI has no artistic vision – unless you give it one.
Open, not secret
It is just as important for companies, municipalities, cities and our society as a whole to think about where and how we use AI. And to do so openly: it helps no one if employees set up a private ChatGPT account and use AI secretly, behind their employer’s back. We need to deal with it as proactively and openly as possible – now.
That includes training people – young, old and everyone in between. So that we really learn how to use AI, recognise what was generated with AI and what wasn’t, and decide together where we draw the lines in the future.
AI is not the last big change
We need to become self-determined in how we deal with artificial intelligence – and with all the other technologies still coming our way. Because AI will be far from the last. Anyone who belongs to Gen X, Gen Z or a generation in between has seen mobile phones, the internet, smartphones and now AI arrive since the mid-nineties. Hardly any generation before us has experienced such upheavals within a single lifetime.
And it will continue. Future generations will have to adapt to technological development getting ever faster – or tipping over at some point. We should consider that scenario too, and perhaps prepare for it.
Shape it, don’t write it off
So there’s no point in simply writing AI off as negative and bad. We have to deal with the situation as it is and help shape it as much as we can. That’s exactly what we want to do with Eliah GOGO. And we help our clients shape their own use of AI – so they can keep running their businesses and crafts in the future.
What this looks like in a theatre, a festival or a cultural venue, we show under AI in the cultural sector.
If you want to know where AI makes sense in your own organisation and how to talk about it openly: our AI Check is the easiest way to start.
