The St. Petersburg International United Cultures Forum hosted a panel discussion titled "New Technologies in Culture and Art — Boon or Bane, Advantage or Risk."
Speakers examined the challenges of introducing new technologies into art and culture, the advantages and risks of their use in art-historical and cultural practice, drawing on examples from the Hermitage and other cultural institutions. Participants included Sergey Novikov, Head of the Presidential Directorate for Public Projects; Mikhail Shvydkoy, Special Presidential Representative for International Cultural Cooperation and Ambassador-at-Large; Irina Velikanova, Director General of the State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia; Svetlana Balanova, CEO of National Media Group; Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director General of the State Hermitage Museum; Yulia Golubeva, Deputy CEO of Gazprom-Media Holding; theater director Konstantin Bogomolov, Artistic Director of Moscow’s Theater on Malaya Bronnaya and the Roman Viktyuk Theater; Li Li, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RAE), and General Representative of the Russian Center for the Development of Education, Science and Culture in China; Yu Min Sok, CEO of Art Works; Borislav Volodin, Director of the ANO “National Open Championship of Creative Competencies ‘ArtMasters,’” and others. The discussion was moderated by Roman Karmanov, Director General of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives.
The discussion opened with the latest neural-network practices in cultural work. Mikhail Piotrovsky stressed the need to find the right niche for artificial intelligence and noted that society now lives in a new reality where AI is used, including in the work of cultural institutions.
“We are rethinking [museum practice] when we ‘play with restoration’: we restore, we film, we show artists what restoration is. ... Using the latest technologies, we humanize them — they become humane — and that is probably our main task. It seems we are succeeding so far. That is why we continue our work and are creating the "Heavenly Hermitage," said Mikhail Piotrovsky.
Asked whether his attitude toward modern technologies has changed in recent years, he replied that his attitude toward them is normal — much the same as toward many other modern technologies — but he nevertheless pointed to several dangers arising from their introduction into human activity.
"The first danger is that artificial intelligence is used by the lazy, but the main danger is that it never says 'No.' … Artificial intelligence creates risks both for lazy managers and lazy performers." For lazy managers, everything can supposedly be broken down into numbers, into neat boxes. … But the worst part is that it encourages laziness among subordinates. In reality, it’s very easy to sit and fill in little squares. "In reality, it’s very easy to sit and fill in little squares," added Mikhail Piotrovsky.
Mikhail Shvydkoy agreed with Piotrovsky's idea that artificial intelligence encourages laziness in people. But, in addition to this danger of artificial intelligence, Shvydkoy emphasized another danger—its pursuit of an ideal result that a human can never achieve.
In principle, today it is possible to create a perfect algorithm to teach children music. In one Moscow school, when the teacher fell ill, classes were led by an electronic system, and it conducted them perfectly from the standpoint of mathematical logic. At the same time, I always fear that any ideal pedagogical system ignores the fact that people are imperfect, and that is one of the essential circumstances. If we learn from robots and neural networks, we will change, abandoning our sovereign humanism, and that is no less important than sovereign intelligence," said Shvydkoy.
Mikhail Shvydkoy added that, according to his experience, 60% of university term papers are written by neural networks, and he echoed the danger Piotrovsky highlighted in his speech that neural networks do not know how to say 'No.' He described a situation he observed during the COVID pandemic, when people were almost always at home and watched ideal actors giving ideal performances, but these failed to elicit the proper emotions and impressions.
"We could listen to the greatest musicians and watch the best productions." As soon as the pandemic ended, people went to philharmonic halls to hear living, imperfect, not-necessarily world-class performers, because they wanted to connect with a living person. "That is very important," said Shvydkoy.
Mikhail Shvydkoy emphasized that, for now, artificial intelligence cannot replace humans in acting—and especially not in teaching—yet neural networks do pose new challenges for educators.
When I arrived in 1970 in the city of Ulan-Ude to teach the history of world theater and literature, I brought a suitcase of books that simply didn’t exist there. For an entire year I retold those books to my students, and they were delighted. Today you walk into the classroom and everyone’s sitting with computers, checking you. … If I make a mistake, will they check it and declare the professor an idiot who cannot be trusted? That’s why you have to tell them something they cannot verify with a neural network—you have to talk about life. And that creates a completely different, new challenge," said Shvydkoy.
Konstantin Bogomolov noted that neural networks are causing people to lose the skill of searching for and retaining information.
People relax very quickly. This has already been discussed here: laziness, the atrophy of muscle and brain tissue in terms of collecting and analyzing information. When the collection and analysis of information are entrusted to artificial intelligence, the most important cognitive functions that develop the brain are transferred to it. A person stops acquiring the skill of gathering information, which today is by no means an archaic skill," said Bogomolov.
Konstantin Bogomolov stressed that the current crisis in film language is largely because the pursuit of a cinematic language has been replaced by the mastering of new technologies.
"Cameramen, directors, editors are busy mastering the buttons of various consoles, mastering new and ever-new possibilities of cameras and imagery, and have completely forgotten how to tell a story, how to work with an actor, how to choose a shot." The language of cinema has stopped renewing itself because of this," added Bogomolov.
At the same time, in Bogomolov's opinion, artificial intelligence will never be able to replace a real actor because it cannot simulate the mistake that is characteristic of a human and makes him alive.
"When you watch a scene, you see the actors, and you clearly, the first time you see them, understand who is hamming it up and who is alive, who is human and who is just pretending to be something." You see it even though you've never seen this person. This means that we have, at some biological level, an inherent sense of the living and the non-living. This is a very important feeling that exists in a person. ... If you set up such a scene before artificial intelligence, it will not be able to distinguish the living from the non-living," said Bogomolov.
Irina Velikanova, asked whether artificial intelligence kills a sense of historicism, noted that, on the one hand, a thematic-exposition plan for museum exhibitions can be created using artificial intelligence, but it is important that there be emotion; therefore museum staff do not use artificial intelligence unconsciously.
"The emotion that a live exhibition, made and proposed by real people, can create, which is born in creative disputes, will never be replaced by any artificial intelligence," said Velikanova.
On the other hand, according to Irina Velikanova, history museums work with historical memory that must be passed on to the modern generation, and it is difficult to convey reliable knowledge simply by displaying old objects. For this reason, a museum should use new technologies to present history to young people in new ways, for example, through multimedia exhibitions, interactive comics, and applications that bring exhibits to life.
"We use modern technologies, as virtually every museum does today. ... Tradition begins with innovation. ... Almost every federal museum has the Artefact app, and visitors can no longer imagine a museum visit without it." Likewise with various holograms and tags — the ever-new technologies we use when creating exhibitions. We’ve been working this way for ten years," added Velikanova.
The typical visitor to a history museum is a school student or early-year university student. They live in the digital world; they use it actively. Speaking to them in an ordinary language means they won’t come back tomorrow. And we want them to return again and again. We want to make it so that a visit to the museum stimulates him to learn more about history," said Velikanova.
No exhibition works on a "We held it, and that's it" basis. There is always active online work as well. These are long-reads, 3D tours, various resources we create, satellite websites, and so on. What does this do? It steadily grows the audience orbiting our museum, and we can see what content might interest them. ... Last year, our online projects reached 11.6 million people; in just the first eight months of this year, they have already reached 16.7 million. What does that tell us? That young people are interested. They vote by coming to our satellite sites and to our website, where they can explore all our projects online," Velikanova emphasized.
Sergey Novikov stressed that sovereign intelligence is necessary because artificial intelligence will always answer questions, and if "we" don't ask them, then someone else will.
"Without digital sovereignty, a country cannot be fully secure. Largely not thanks to, but in spite of, state regulation, we have our own social networks, mail services, and a messenger. The MAX messenger has a built-in AI assistant. It already has 31 million users. Just imagine how fast this assistant will learn if we all use MAX! The progress of the GigaChat 2.0 knowledge base will be fantastic, and that will undoubtedly be our competitive advantage," Novikov said.
Roman Karmanov added in conclusion of the section:
"Amid the rapid penetration of artificial intelligence into our culture, an open dialogue on this topic is critically important." We must jointly develop ethical and legal frameworks so that technologies serve the humanization of culture, and do not replace living creativity. For the third year, this topic has been the focus of discussions in a dedicated section that is gradually evolving from a discussion platform into a venue where crucial decisions in this field are generated and proposals are formed, including for possible improvements to the current legislative framework.