By Ken Shulman

Few technologies have shown as much potential to shape our future as artificial intelligence. Specialists in fields ranging from medicine to microfinance to the military are evaluating AI tools, exploring how these might transform their work and worlds. For creative professionals, AI poses a unique set of challenges and opportunities—particularly generative AI, the use of algorithms to transform vast amounts of data into new content. The future of generative AI and its impact on art and design was the subject of a sold-out panel discussion on October 26, 2023 at the MIT Bartos Theater. It was part of the annual meeting for the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT), a group of alumni and other supporters of the arts at MIT, and was co-presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), a cross-school initiative for artist residencies and cross-disciplinary projects. Introduced by Andrea Volpe, Director of CAMIT and moderated by Onur Yüce Gün, SM ’06, PhD’16, the panel featured multimedia artist and social science researcher Ziv Epstein, SM’19, PhD’23, MIT Professor of Architecture and Director of the SMArchS and SMArchS AD programs Ana Miljački, and artist and roboticist Alex Reben, MAS ’10.