Luddites of the world unite!

HERE WE GO AGAIN! Same old/new subject: artificial intelligence.

For several issues now we have been banging on about the iniquities of AI’s shameless raiding of intellectual property, particularly that of artist creators of all shades.

By the indiscriminate ‘scraping’ of virtually any creative work they have amassed an enormous bank of stolen copyright material which, in their charming way, they are prepared to use as part of their universal money grubbing tactics.

In the hope of sharing some of these ill-gotten gains governments – particularly our own – have grovelled at the feet of Big Tech pleading, in an embarassingly Third World manner, for some technological crusts to be thrown our way.

Rip up any greenfield site you fancy and dump one of your gigantic data centres down on it. Help yourself to any amount of power and water you need. Thank you very much.

Belatedly – far, far too late in the day – there have been some feeble efforts to rein in the copyright thieves.

While these issues are of particular concern to the creative community, far worse is to come.

More and more of those who have been at the forefront of the development of artifical intelligence are expressing deep concern at the what the future may hold.

One former Google executive, Mo Gawdat, has recorded his concerns on film. Chasing Utopia is being released in Everyman cinemas during May.

Many other prominent AI developers are warning of the potentially disastrous consequences their offspring might cause.

We should listen to them. Nothing wrong with being a modern day Luddite!

Making a living from the arts

IT SEEMED a wise precaution to check the date on the newspaper cutting, given the somewhat improbable heading on the story:

“Labour promises £130m to fund living wage for,Scottish artists”

Not possibly April 1 – All Fools Day, was it?

Though little has been heard of it since, it seems to have been a serious plan put forward by Scottish Labour's Mr Sarwar, but that of course, was before those rather unhappy May 7th elections.

The plan, as outlined, was to spend some £30m to give Scottish artists and musicians a ‘living wage’, rather along the lines of a similar Irish scheme.

The plan was supposed to start with a pilot project aiming to ‘top up’ the incomes of some 1,000 artists with the intention of affording them a living wage.

Mr Sarwar is said to have drawn paralells with Ireland's scheme and was projected to cost £30m over two years.

Mr Sarwar elaborated by explaining that Ireland’s scheme was for a basic income for 2,000 artists, who would receive E325 (£283) a week in three-year cycles.

The Irish scheme –, net cost E72M – is claimed to have recouped more than it cost through increases in “arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other welfare payments”.

The Irish scheme was made permanent in February.

Labour’s plan envisaged artists enjoyung an annual income of ‘about £14,000.’

Since those heady pre-election days, little has been heard of the scheme.

Labour has had rather more weighty issues to consider. Maybe time politicians were guaranteed a ‘living wage.’

A big thank you to all our printers

OVER THE more than 40 years that this paper has been in existence it has been a central part of our belief that print has a bright future.

In this context, the remarkable rise in popularity of vinyl recordings in recent years is particulary encouraging. People more and more want to actually have something to hold in their hands rather than a somewhat sad ‘share’ of data out there somewhere in the ether.

The job of producing this ‘something’ to be held in the hands has fallen to many dedicated craft workers over the years.

First somewhat transient issues, in uncompromising black and white , were cobbled together in-house at some personal cost in time and patience.

Over the years the task has been delegated to a number of highly professional teams the length of the country.

Sadly, our most recent printers, Reach in Watford , are ending production.

Thank you, guys. A great job which we have really appreciated.