“AI isn’t going anywhere. You interact with it many times a day whether you know it or not. You don’t need to fear it and I encourage you to embrace it. But you should also challenge it, and those who are developing it. Keep an open mind, balance optimism with scepticism and use creativity to get the most out of AI.”
Culture
AI, creativity and humanity (2): Obstacles
“As a creative producer, my team and I are able to do more, better, faster; we’re expanding and experimenting with techniques we weren’t previously able to do. Ideas I’ve never had the time, headspace or resources to realise are now coming to life.”
AI, creativity and humanity (1)
‘“I resisted ChatGPT for so long because I felt it was wrong to use it. But then I caved in and now I can’t stop!” one arts organisation CEO told me. She’s hooked, having discovered the joy of drafting policy documents and analysing big data sets rapidly.”‘
Demarco’s gauntlet of truth to authoritarianism
“Trump, Rubio, Putin and their fellow travellers in the UK, Europe and across the globe are not the friends of European civilisation. They are the destroyers of freedom. One way to see them defeated is to support writers, artists and performers, whether folk band, local landscape painter, avant garde author, jazz virtuoso or classical orchestra. Free expression in the Arts is freedom for us all.”
Make it happen: Fred the Shred goes head to head with Adam Smith
Two Scottish financial journalists go to the Festival Theatre to review James Graham’s Make it happen and emerge three hours later deeply unimpressed…
Reclaim the Enlightenment
“History is never a sure guide to the future but one thing that we can be certain of is that empires rise and fall. That has been true of the British, French and Russian empires, though in all three cases we are suffering from the long-term hangovers from imperial eras. It will also be true of the newer American empire. It is also true that dictators always fall.”
Lives of the massacred MacDonalds of Glen Coe
“Just as stories in the past offered lessons to those who would listen, there is a place for stories today to help us adjust to life in a changing world, inspiring resilience in the present through understanding how communities adapted to challenges in the past.”
A failure of leadership over Glasgow’s “Mack”
“A full restoration of the Mack can and must be done – and within years not decades. It will take political will. If leadership is there, the money can be found. Restoring the Mack is a chance to put money and commitment behind a project involving skilled work and training opportunities for the people of greater Glasgow and beyond.”
Snobbery at Edinburgh Uni: what a surprise!
“Scottish students at Scottish universities pay no tuition fees! It’s great! The Scottish Government pays them! Except of course, the Scottish Government DOESN’T pay anything like the real amount per head, leaving universities like Edinburgh and St Andrews to recruit the vast majority of their students from the rest of the UK and from abroad.”
Being a woman writer/leader in Scotland – the imposter syndrome
“No matter the topic, in Scotland all roads lead back to the constitution and Scotland’s relationship with England. Of course, politics matters but not to the exclusion of seeing other important things that are also going on. The dominant political analysis excludes so much of life – the way we feel about ourselves, how we relate to others, our values, the dynamic within families and most importantly how we raise children.”