A New Renaissance

People by Ned Axthelm

We are on the cusp of something big. New technologies are on the rise. War is becoming pervasive. Politics are gaining heat. I cannot tell the future, but it is likely that, no matter what happens, AI will be part of it. This could go one of three ways. Either, as I suggested last week, the AI industry sees no profitable return within the next fifteen years and crumbles from the inside. Americans realize how useless it is, stop engaging if they haven't already, and the Altman reign falls. The 51% of Americans who do not use AI continues to rise, and eventually, we will return to a more human-oriented society. 

The second, currently dismal, option is that AI begins to benefit our society, and we rise into a tech-supported utopia. AI cures cancer, or invents a new kind of communism that will actually work, or removes universal corruption. AI achieves a deistic level of power and actually uses it for good. Society is cured of all evils, and we get to live in LeGuin's Omelas. 

Except Omelas always has a catch, and it is unlikely that AI will be the first major power not to eventually fall to corruption. The third option is one that seems far-fetched, but is actually quite plausible. Sam Altman himself has stated that he thinks it is likely that AI, the technology which he so champions and develops, will eventually cause the end of the world as we know it. We allow technology to become increasingly powerful and give it more control over our lives and decisions, until we are walking not in Omelas, but in the post-apocalyptic computer wasteland of Ellison's "I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream." 

And if this third possible reality becomes true, what happens next? When shareholdings fail, when we have no more water with which to cool data centers, when the Dead Internet Theory becomes real, and humanity realizes we have nothing left but the earth God gave us, what happens? 

Art. 

Secondary to survival is art. The very God who designed the Universe provided not only life, but beauty. He instilled in us a desire for beauty, a desire that arises most clearly in the harshest of circumstances. When war stills for a moment, when depression lets in a sliver of light, and when heartbreak gives way to morning, what arises is a vein of creative artistry that can be found nowhere else. In the most desperate of times, we make, pursue, and enjoy art. It is why cave paintings have such an astounding attraction. Even in what we consider some of the lowest points of human history and development, art still withstands and even flourishes. 

We are on the cusp of Lord knows what. But when all is said and done, no matter where in the mess of this world humanity lands, our guarantee is art. We are guaranteed to have poets, painters, and passionate creators. We are guaranteed that even if every renowned artist is crushed under the pressure of modernity, new ones will spring up. In every dark age, in every heartbreak, in every war, famine, death, grief, sin, failure, and fall, something beautiful can be redeemed. Art will prevail. 

Not only will it prevail, but it will restore. A New Renaissance, the rise of art in a world that seems increasingly manufactured, will bind us together. It will remind us of what it means to be human, of what it means to belong, and of why any of this actually matters. Art, when all else fails, will restore some sense of unity. When we have survived hell and back, the very first thing we will crave is art. I guarantee you, there will be someone left standing to make it. 

"And when the war's over, some day, some year, the books can be written again, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know, and we'll set it up in type until another Dark Age, when we might have to do the whole damn thing over again. But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows well it is important and worth the doing." - Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451