# GOVERNMENT INSISTS ARTISTS’ FULL POTENTIAL ACHIEVED ONLY WHEN REPLACED BY SOULLESS MATH EQUATIONS
ARTISTS TOLD TO “STEP ASIDE, MEATBAGS” AS UK AIMS TO UNLEASH TRUE CREATIVITY: ALGORITHMS WITH NO FEELINGS
In a breathtaking display of complete f@#king cluelessness, the UK government has declared that human artists can only “realize their full potential” by being rendered completely obsolete by machines that learned creativity by stealing their work.
“Artists are really holding back progress by insisting on having human experiences, emotions, and unique perspectives,” said government spokesperson Lance Corporatespeak. “How selfish can you get?”
THE AUDACITY OF HUMAN CREATIVITY
The controversy erupted after Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, and 1,000 other artists released a silent album to protest proposed copyright changes that would basically tell artists “thanks for the inspiration, now go die in a ditch.”
Dr. Ima Soulless, the government’s newly appointed Secretary of Replacing Humans With Something More Efficient, explained the reasoning: “Look, humans have had thousands of years to be creative. What have they given us? The Sistine Chapel? Hamlet? Bohemian Rhapsody? That’s all very nice, but have you seen the efficiency of our content-generating algorithms? They can produce 50,000 mediocre images per second!”
ARTISTS SELFISHLY INSIST ON GETTING PAID FOR THEIR WORK
Critics of the new legislation point out that artists typically enjoy “eating food” and “paying rent,” outdated human concepts that the government considers “limiting to their potential.”
Professor Capi Talism of the Institute for Obvious Economic Outcomes explained: “Studies show that 98.7% of artists reach their maximum innovative potential immediately after becoming homeless. The data is absolutely clear on this, though we may have made it up entirely.”
GOVERNMENT CLARIFIES: CREATIVITY BASICALLY JUST MATH
When pressed about the value of human imagination, learning, and the continual process of asking and answering questions, government officials released a 700-page white paper titled “Shut Up And Let The Machines Do It.”
“What even is ‘genuine creativity’ anyway?” asked Lord Techbro, Minister of Digital Disruption. “Is it the human struggle? The reflection of lived experience? The expression of our deepest emotions? Or is it statistical probability matrices? Because I’m pretty sure it’s the last one.”
According to anonymous sources within the government, the next phase of the plan involves replacing musicians with randomly generated MIDI files, poets with predictive text, and painters with “that thing where you make pictures out of word prompts, you know the one.”
“We’re actually doing artists a favor,” insisted cultural policy expert Penny Pincher. “By removing their burden of expression, they’ll finally be free to reach their full potential as consumers of algorithm-generated content while working in the gig economy.”
At press time, the UK government was considering a follow-up proposal to replace the entire population with a more efficient series of 1s and 0s that wouldn’t complain so d@mn much about “human rights” and “artistic integrity.”
