Festivals are about care, good old fashioned human creativity and connection. They’re run on intuition which is practiced, learned and felt.
Here’s why, after 25 years of building a creative community, we’re not about to embrace Ai:
1. We exist to protect a creative and cultural ecosystem
Our festival exists because human beings choose to make music, art and silliness, steward land, host strangers, build joy and take responsibility for each other. If we don’t support this community, it wont exist. Art reflects our hopes and fears, gives us heart-felt joy, challenges power, and connects us. We need it.
2. Community isn’t a ‘user experience’
The most important decisions aren’t technical – they’re human. In moments of pressure, care and nuance matter more than perfect logic as defined by an algorithm.
3. Magic comes from heart, diversity and imperfection
We’re not replacing people with AI – because people are the festival. The smiles, the patience, the creativity, the art, the music, the judgement calls, the care. That’s the magic.
All this is notwithstanding the nefarious political funding, immense data gathering and huge environmental resources behind big AI.
We’re not luddites. We embrace cutting edge technology where it helps us with festival delivery and sustainability initiatives,.. but we must not sleepwalk, lured by convenience and cost-cutting, into a future controlled by fascist tech bros. The future we need is donut economics, transition towns and human mycelium networks. We’re planning some wicked talks on these topics, including one from from Transition movement co-founder, Rob Hopkins. Keep your eyes peeled for more line-up announcements coming soon and come and be inspired.
Let’s QuitGPT
We call upon our community to join us here at HQ in boycotting ChatGPT.
This chat bot isn’t your therapist, your efficient colleague, or your cheerful, meal planning co-chef. Instead, the executives of its parent company, OpenAI, are MAGA’s largest donors – and that’s the tip of the grotty iceberg, from mass surveillance to killer robots.
Find out more (including some open-source alternatives to ChatGPT) – and join the boycott, here.
Let’s log off, come together and have a proper human party.
Big love x