One of the strangest intellectual conceits of the moment is the idea that equality must trump excellence. Although equality sounds like an unquestionable good, it is often used nowadays not to mean equality of opportunity (a noble ambition) but equality of outcomes, a far more problematic and often unrealistic proposition. Since not everyone is capable of achieving meaningful excellence in whatever particular sphere might be up for debate, excellence must, we are told, no longer be used as a marker of value. Increasingly, it is frowned upon as ‘elitist’, a term that is flung indiscriminately at anything serious, uncommercial, or that demands sustained concentration.

We can observe widespread manifestations of this new mentality in today’s arts world. Take, for instance, Arts Council England’s (ACE) mission statement, ‘Let’s Create’. The Arts Council of Great Britain, as it was formerly known, was established after the Second World War to disseminate the highest forms of artistic endeavour to the largest number of people. It prioritised the ‘high arts’, generously funding opera, ballet and serious drama, and was later criticised for doing so as theories of cultural relativism began to gain currency. ACE now states in ‘Let’s Create’ that it will eschew the words ‘arts’ and ‘artists’, as they make people feel ‘uncomfortable’, and it places a premium on participation rather than spectatorship as the way to foster creative engagement.

Participation in the arts undoubtedly enriches lives, though it tends to flourish best in contexts where it is not bureaucratised. Tellingly, ‘Let’s Create’ uses the word ‘excellence’ only once, and then to argue that it can be found in church halls as much as in concert halls. Such apparent embarrassment goes hand in hand with broader nervousness in the arts world about concepts such as ‘greatness’, ‘genius’ and ‘civilisation’. Such sceptical attitudes emanate from postmodern theories that have long circulated in higher education (most notably Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas about ‘cultural capital’), and have been embraced by an arts world that is now too nervous to stand up for its own ‘product’.

Though one hesitates to sound Cassandra-like, it is easy to foresee how Artificial Intelligence is likely to be weaponised to downgrade the criterion of artistic excellence further on spurious equality grounds. Although AI has the potential to have beneficial applications in health, science and defence, its use in artistic or educational fields is significantly more contentious.

It would not be too strong to say that AI poses an existential threat to creativity and originality. Though the so-called ‘slop’ it churns out at a high environmental cost is currently laughably low-grade, it will no doubt soon improve sufficiently to tempt arts commissioners and media outlets to use it rather than pay a human. AI ‘learns’ from real books and articles (for which authors are neither acknowledged nor compensated), and it is encouraging and normalising cheating among university students on an industrial scale.

This should be regarded as bad news by anyone who cares about the arts or education. And yet we are seeing managers in these sectors indulging and endorsing the use of AI. A 2024 survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute found that 53 per cent of British students were using it for assessments. Universities could take a hard line, treating it as plagiarism and therefore a disciplinary matter. And yet, perhaps overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the challenge of detecting the ubiquitous hand of ChatGPT, many have adopted a limp-wristed attitude, arguing that, since AI is a phenomenon of the modern world, nothing can be done. As a consequence, traditional methods of distinguishing between good and bad work have been rendered redundant.

The publishing world, likewise, seems unwilling to criticise the use of AI, even though it threatens the very people on whom the sector depends: authors. Nigel Newton, the founder and chief executive of Bloomsbury Publishing, bafflingly told The Guardian that he was comfortable with the idea of authors using AI to write the first paragraph or chapter, arguing that AI could ‘enable the eight billion people on the planet to get started on some creative area where they might have hesitated to take the first step’.

Here we return to the equality issue. Already, we are seeing the use of AI, with all its negative ramifications for writers, painters, photographers, and musicians, being endorsed because it means that ‘everyone can be an artist’, or, as ACE would have it, a ‘creative practitioner’. This is likely to converge in future with another recent intellectual position, which contends that meritocracy – hitherto regarded as the only way of championing fairness – is itself unfair.

This flips on its head the very thing that most of us look for in the arts. Much of its value and pleasure comes from admiring levels of talent that far surpass our own amateur capabilities. We marvel at the dancer who can perform stratospheric leaps, gasp as Mozart’s Queen of the Night hits her top Fs, and the fact that we cannot achieve these things is what makes them special. Excellence is the point, not the problem. Machine-made art will never have soul; its lack of humanity means it will never prompt wonder, and perhaps the world doesn’t need eight billion ‘creatives’ in any case.

It is worth noting that AI gives ammunition to those who despise the arts at both ends of the political spectrum. The right-wing populist who reckons that artistic types need bringing down a peg or two laughs at the fact that they have lost their cachet; now, anyone can ‘do what they do’. The self-flagellating left-wing progressive who reviles the Western Canon can now argue that AI is ‘inclusive’ and ‘empowering’. We are a hop, a skip and a jump away from innate artistic talent being rebranded as elitist. If ever there were a moment for the arts world to remind itself what its core purpose is and stand up for it, that moment is surely now.