05/01/2023

An Art Professor Says A.I. Is the Future

It’s the students who need convincing

Lance Weiler is preparing his students at Columbia University for the unknown. "What I'm going to show you might disturb you," he warned the class in January, at the beginning of his graduate course on digital storytelling.

A filmmaker who made his reputation on the frontiers of entertainment technology by inventing a popular augmented reality game around his film, "Head Trauma," Weiler parlayed his experiments into a job at the School of the Arts, where he shows how computers might become creative partners instead of professional dead ends. His classes have combined augmented reality with Edgar Allan Poe, virtual reality with Sherlock Holmes and machine learning with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Now, Weiler wants his students ready for an art world that is gradually embracing the latest digital tools. The widespread availability of artificial intelligence programs that serve as image and text generators is upending the rules of cultural production — and changing how students learn what it means to be an artist.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The New York Times.