Algorithms, artificial intelligence and the arts

The thing about artificial intelligence is that it is all too easy to start looking it up online and going down a rabbit hole that will very quickly leave one very, very depressed. AI is causing and will cause privacy violations, market volatility, job losses, increased socioeconomic inequalities and criminal activity. It’s as if certain people want to blame everything on AI like they used to blame everything on Brexit. So it was pleasing that an AI webinar hosted by the Critics’ Circle recently sought to bring some clarity to some of the fears about AI – and, as with a lot of things, it transpires some people think it is Very, Very Good, others think it is Very, Very Bad, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

That’s not to take anything away from the fact that, for example, Grok has been used to post non-consensual images of women and even children. I didn’t see any of it myself but there were plenty of complaints about it. According to the Financial Times, “A Jewish woman found that an AI image had been created showing her in a bikini standing outside Auschwitz.” You’d have to be pretty depraved to be turned on by that sort of thing. A show I saw recently at Royal & Derngate, Northampton, called Top Gs Like Me, explored the matter of youngsters, seemingly sophisticated and streetwise, being groomed online – AI and algorithms had their part to play.

It does seem, at least for now, that jobs as theatre critics is secure, though I take the point that a guest speaker, even one well-versed in the benefits and pitfalls of AI, is hardly going to be invited to a meeting of the Critics’ Circle to tell them they’re all fucked and they may as well abandon hope now, and go forth and do something else with their lives. AI, by default, has no empathy, no curiosity, no sense of humour, and none of the characteristics that a human critic can bring to an assessment, good, bad or indifferent, of a theatre production – or indeed a book, a music album, or a motion picture. Already, people are increasingly discerning as to what is AI-generated content riddled with errors.

There’s much about algorithms and artificial intelligence that I don’t yet understand. Recently, a gala concert was held to mark the eightieth birthday of the American musical theatre composer and lyricist Maury Yeston, at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. The event, for what it was worth, went very smoothly, thanks to the combined efforts of Tarento Productions, the London Musical Theatre Orchestra (LMTO to its fans and followers), musical theatre students at the Royal Academy of Music and half a dozen star names as soloists. Filling the 2,000 seat theatre was more challenging than the producer thought it would be, and she took to social media to ask, with genuine intrigue: why?

The answers were, to me, surprising. I thought people would blame the economy, the cost of living, even the dreaded rail replacement bus services that make a Sunday evening visit to central London a logistical nightmare for some. There were, perhaps inevitably, some people who hadn’t heard of Maury Yeston. Even a press invitation, I’m told, incorrectly labelled the gala concert To Mary, With Love, to which I could only respond that the West End did not need a third Mary Todd Lincoln (to accompany the ones being portrayed in productions of Mrs President and Oh, Mary!). Perhaps Tarento Productions should have, as a couple of people pointed out to me, called it Oh, Maury!

A common reason for not booking to see the show was that people hadn’t heard of it – the algorithms, they said, had worked against the show, as they could see adverts for other shows on social media, but not that one. There is still a place, then, for those of us who don’t work from home, for old school print advertising (by which I mean posters at major railway stations and thoroughfares – even I am coming around to the idea that print newspapers are dying a slow death). I still say there are just so many events in London, most of which are priced quite highly, that they are sometimes effectively competing with one another. A Greek singer called Antonis Remos did a concert at the London Palladium on the same night as To Maury, With Love.

A week later, as I write this, Love Beyond will be at Cadogan Hall on the same night as Sea Witch at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. The comedian Sara Pascoe performs at the London Palladium. The Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith hosts something the HoYoFair Fan Concert (I don’t claim to know anything about that one). And so on and so forth. Something will have to give, and as someone who attends hundreds of live entertainment events a year, I wouldn’t mind having the occasional night off. Perhaps the real reason as to ‘why’ we aren’t booking to see a particular show is that our calendars are already full to bursting – which doesn’t have anything to do with algorithms and AI after all.