This is the third and final piece in a series on art, technology, and the world we could build. Parts one and two make the economic case and interrogate who gets to define art — this piece asks what it would look like if we actually acted on the answers.

Hot take, hot cakes.

Am I starting to rant? Probs. It’s 3am on a Sunday.

The Romanticised Struggle: Bohemia, Starvation, and Myth

There’s something deeply perverse about how we collectively romanticise the “starving artist” while ensuring artists actually do starve.

The bohemian artist archetype — living in a draughty garret, surviving on coffee and cigarettes, creating masterpieces while battling poverty — is one of our most persistent cultural myths. We love tales of Van Gogh selling just one painting in his lifetime, or Mozart being buried in a pauper’s grave. These stories reinforce the toxic notion that true artistic genius requires suffering. It’s passed from one generation to another and no one stops to question its root or impact.

Albert Racinet’s L’Ornement Polychrome (1869–73)

The data tells a different story. A 2024 survey by the Design & Artists Copyright Society and the University of Glasgow found that visual artists in the UK take home a median annual salary of just £12,500 — a 40% decrease since 2010 (The Art Newspaper, 2024). An independent review of Arts Council England found that 73% of creative and cultural freelancers — many of whom hold high qualifications — earn less than £25,000 a year from their freelance work (Baroness Hodge / Arts Council England, 2025). This is the sector that contributes £145.8 billion to the UK economy. Let that sit for a moment.

This myth serves a crucial economic function: it justifies our systematic underfunding of the arts. After all, if “real artists” are supposed to suffer for their craft, then decent wages, healthcare, and housing security might actually damage their creative output, right?

What GARBAGE.

The reality is that for every artistic genius who created despite poverty, countless others had their voices silenced by it. We never got to experience the novels that weren’t written because their potential authors were working three jobs to make rent. We never heard the symphonies unwritten because their composers couldn’t afford childcare.

I mean, seriously: in what other field do we insist that economic precarity is a prerequisite for excellence? “Sorry, can’t pay these engineers a living wage — it might compromise the integrity of that bridge they’re designing. Better keep them hungry so they’re really motivated to calculate those load-bearing requirements correctly.”

The romanticisation of artistic poverty isn’t just wrong; it’s a convenient fiction that allows us to avoid confronting the systemic inequalities that determine who gets to make art in the first place.

The AI Revolution: Creative Partner or Artistic Plagiarist?

Now we come to AI — perhaps the most divisive technological development in the creative world since the camera made painters question their purpose. I was low-key dreading writing this; the discourse on generative AI can get quite exhausting. Sometimes it feels like you’re screaming into the void.

Most generative AI systems are trained on vast datasets of human-created work without proper attribution or compensation. They’re essentially sophisticated copying machines that remix existing art in ways that obscure their sources, and are mostly soulless.

When a company or person claims their AI “creates” art, what they often mean is that it’s reprocessing the work of thousands of uncredited human artists whose labour built the dataset. But this doesn’t mean the technology itself is inherently evil. Like any tool, its ethics depend entirely on its application.

A 2022 GitHub Research study found that when AI tools handle routine, repetitive cognitive tasks, between 60–75% of workers reported greater job satisfaction and more time for meaningful, creative work (GitHub Research, 2022). That’s the version of AI worth building toward: one that handles the grind so humans can focus on the parts that actually require a soul.

AI that acknowledges its sources, compensates artists, and serves as a collaborative tool rather than a replacement creates fascinating new possibilities. Used thoughtfully, it can be another instrument in the creative orchestra rather than a cover band playing cheaper versions of the classics. For sure, regulation needs to be developed with artists at the table, helping to shape ethical use for the general public.

If Basic Needs Were Met: The Art of Being Human

What would happen if we actually achieved universal basic income? If everyone’s fundamental needs — food, shelter, healthcare, education — were guaranteed?

Illustration from Californian Donut Economics Association

I’d wager we’d see an explosion of creative activity unlike anything in human history.

Think about it. What do people do when freed from survival anxiety? They make things. They learn instruments. They write stories. They dance. They draw. They build community spaces. They preserve cultural traditions. They imagine new possibilities.

This isn’t speculation — we see glimpses of it everywhere. Retirement communities overflow with art classes. Children naturally create before we train them to be “productive.” Even in the grimmest circumstances, humans make art: prisoners create from whatever materials they can find; refugees preserve cultural expressions against all odds.

During pandemic lockdowns, what did people do when suddenly given time (though admittedly under stressful circumstances)? They baked bread. They learned TikTok dances. They started podcasts. They wrote songs. They redesigned their spaces. They created community rituals through Zoom. Millions of people, when given a brief respite from the hamster wheel of capitalist production, immediately turned to creative expression.

What does that tell us? That perhaps the “real” version of humanity isn’t Homo economicus — the rational, utility-maximising producer-consumer — but Homo creator: a being that instinctively makes meaning through creative expression.

As Guy Standing argues in Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen, guaranteeing people’s material needs doesn’t make them passive — it liberates them to pursue the work that actually matters to them, creative or otherwise (Standing, G., 2017, Penguin Books).

Yet our entire economic system is designed as if the former were true and the latter a luxury we can’t afford. We’ve constructed a society that systematically suppresses the very quality that makes us most distinctly human — our creative capacity — and then wonders why there’s so much alienation, depression, and disconnection.

Art as Resistance in a Productivity-Obsessed World

In our hyper-capitalist reality, where human worth is increasingly measured by productivity and economic output, making art can be a radical act of resistance.

To create something with no clear market purpose is to assert that some things matter beyond their ability to generate profit. To take time for creative expression is to reject the notion that every minute must be “productive” in the narrow economic sense.

This is why art makes technocrats and authoritarians so deeply uncomfortable. It asserts values beyond efficiency and control. It creates spaces where alternative futures can be imagined. It serves as a reminder that humans contain depths that cannot be quantified, optimised, or exploited.

The paradox of art in our technological age is that we have more tools than ever to create and access it, while simultaneously devaluing the human dimensions that give it meaning. Resolving this tension will require more than just increased funding or better algorithms — it will require fundamentally rethinking what we value and why.

In the words of Ernst Fischer: “Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognise and change the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it.”

That magic isn’t a luxury. It’s essential. And no algorithm or balance sheet can ever capture its true value.

Is art an act of resistance, a birthright, or both? Drop your thoughts below. Looking forward to the debate.

Sources & Further Reading

Arts & Economics

Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 (AEP6). Americans for the Arts, 2023. aep6.americansforthearts.org

Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account, U.S. and States, 2023. Bureau of Economic Analysis & National Endowment for the Arts, 2025. bea.gov

DCMS Economic Estimates: Creative Industries GVA 2024. The Creative Industries, 2026. thecreativeindustries.co.uk

Creative UK. Cultural and Creative Industries Stats Q1 2025–26. wearecreative.uk

"Priority Export Family: Cultural and Creative Industries." Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, France. diplomatie.gouv.fr

Creative Economy Outlook 2022. UNCTAD, 2022. unctad.org

Bille, T., & Schulze, G. G. (2006). “Culture in urban and regional development.” In Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, Vol. 1. Elsevier.

Korea / Hallyu

Martin Roll. “Korean Wave (Hallyu): The Rise of Korea’s Cultural Economy & Pop Culture.” martinroll.com

Artist Precarity

DACS / University of Glasgow. UK Visual Artists’ Earnings and Contracts Report 2024. The Art Newspaper

Baroness Margaret Hodge. Arts Council England: An Independent Review, 2025. gov.uk

Pentagon / Hollywood

Mirrlees, T. “The Militarization of Movies and Television.” Costs of War project, Brown University. Via Responsible Statecraft. responsiblestatecraft.org

AI & Work

GitHub Research. “Quantifying GitHub Copilot’s Impact on Developer Productivity and Happiness.” 2022. github.blog

Digital Culture & Gatekeeping

Johnson, A. “Copyrighting TikTok Dances: Choreography in the Internet Age.” Washington Law Review, 96(3), 2021. digitalcommons.law.uw.edu

NPR. “Black TikTok Creators Are On Strike To Protest A Lack Of Credit For Their Work.” 2021. npr.org

Books

Fischer, E. (1963). The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach. Penguin Books.

Florida, R. (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class. Basic Books.

Hesmondhalgh, D. (2018). The Cultural Industries (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.

Standing, G. (2017). Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen. Penguin Books.