The Digital Schism: Why We Fear AI for Art but Embrace it for Memes
As the Telegraph Hill Festival kicks off this week, the contrast couldn’t be sharper. On one hand, we have the beautiful, grassroots energy of a community coming together through traditional, almost analogue communication. On the other, we see the wider world gripped by a strange “digital schism.”
There is a palpable anxiety surrounding the rise of Artificial Intelligence in the “serious” spheres of culture, art, and heritage. Mention AI in a community arts meeting, and you might be met with the kind of suspicion usually reserved for something demonic. People fear it will strip the “soul” from our projects, replacing human touch with cold, algorithmic precision.
The Great Paradox But here is the irony: while we treat AI with a “holy water” distance in professional and cultural planning, we surrender to it completely in our pockets.
The same “common people” who fear AI-driven community mapping are often the ones spending hours on TikTok, using sophisticated AI filters and algorithms to produce and consume a relentless stream of vacuous content. We see a surge in what I call “digital noise”—often questionable, low-effort videos that leverage the most advanced technology on earth just to make a meme go viral.
Why is it that we trust AI to distort our faces for a laugh, but distrust it to help us preserve the heritage of a place like Sardinia?
A Third Way: Technology as a Guardian In my work with Cool Sardinia Guide, I’ve encountered this resistance first-hand. Yet, our mission is exactly the opposite of the “demonic” takeover people fear. We aren’t using technology to replace the human experience; we are using it to protect it.
By empowering local youth with digital tools, we are mapping the authentic, the off-grid, and the traditional. We are using the “future” to ensure the “past” isn’t erased by the very mass tourism that those TikTok memes often fuel.
It’s time we stop fearing the tool and start questioning the intent. If we can use AI to make “crap” go viral, we can surely use it to make culture sustainable. The technology isn’t the enemy—our choice of how to use it is.