FESTIVALS WITHOUT BORDERS

WITH ROBERT BAIRD

PROS AND CONS OF AI (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE)

If you ask an Artificial Intelligence (AI) to tell you its pros and cons, you get this: Artificial intelligence (AI) has many potential benefits, but it also presents some challenges:

Pros

• Efficiency: AI can make work more efficient and productive and can automate repetitive tasks.

• Convenience: AI can improve everyday life and standard of living.

• Accessibility: AI can help marginalized groups by making things more accessible for people with disabilities.

• Safety: AI can improve workplace safety.

• Unbiased decisions: AI can make unbiased decisions.

• 24/7 uptime: AI can run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without needing a break.

Cons

• Job displacement: AI could cause mass unemployment as robots replace people.

• Privacy risks: AI poses dangerous privacy risks.

• Disinformation: AI can be easily politicized, spurring disinformation and opinions masquerading as facts.

• Racism: AI can hurt racial minorities by repeating and exacerbating human racism.

• Lack of emotion and creativity: AI lacks emotion and creativity.

• Ethical concerns: AI may use questionable data collection practices.

• Too good to be true: AI can produce information that is “too good to be true”.

To ensure that AI serves the greater good, it’s important to strike a balance between its potential benefits and drawbacks.

Now, me: As attractive as AI might be to help us function more efficiently, we must remember that it is simply a tool and, as a tool, requires attention to its use, lest we suffer injury. So, how can we use it at festivals?

• Sustainability: AI can analyze on-site waste management and energy consumption and help improve both.

• Crowd Management: AI can analyze visitor behavior and location to identify overcrowding and potential safety issues. AI can also help reduce wait times and guide attendees to less crowded areas.

• Security: AI can identify potential threats and can alert security to ensure crowd safety.

• Box Office and Ticket Pricing: AI can provide instant sales data and even set event pricing according to desirable algorithms set by the festival.

• Inventory: AI can track sales across the board, adjust inventory levels and automatically replenish low items.

• Scheduling: AI can create complex work schedules using information on the availability and responsibilities of staff and volunteers

• Website Creation: AI can be used to create festival websites.

So, what’s the downside?

Well. An AI might schedule jobs so efficiently that people end up losing their jobs. Efficiency has a place but there may be other considerations which an AI cannot entertain. The fact is that an AI is not a human being. And for all our faults and foibles, we can exercise human judgement and consider a wide range of factors that simply cannot be programmed into an AI. Since an AI is not human, it cannot, by definition, exercise humanity. So, there is no empathy or sympathy or compassionate consideration when needed.

And, given that an AI can possibly access a multitude of data and then utilize that data in ways we cannot even imagine, there is a real possibility of security being breached and that sensitive information will be exposed, and violations of privacy may occur which will, in turn, jeopardize the reputation of your organization and render it liable for any such breach.

In the end, this tool must be judiciously used, and specific guidelines and parameters must be set to control AI and make best use of it. AI is here to stay, and we should enthusiastically embrace what it can do, guard against any negative consequences and reap the benefits of this enhanced and amazing technology.

Robert Baird is President of BAM! Baird Artists Management Consulting in Toronto, Canada and an acknowledged expert in international touring including visas, withholding and taxation. He offers free advice to artists, agents, managers and venues and has an international clientele. He served for many years on the Executive Board of Festivals and Events Ontario (FEO) and is a former Vice-President of that organization. He can be reached at: P: 1-800-867-3281 E: robert@bairdartists.com or for more information go to: www.bairdartists.com