I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the AI and Creative Innovation Ringling College of Art and Design: Advocating for Artists and Designers Symposium. It wasn’t the typical conference about technology instead, it focused on a gathering about humanity and meaning-making. The symposium was oriented toward discovering what happens when art, design, and AI collide and how we, as creators, educators, and society, navigating technological change, can keep the human spark alive in the age of AI.

The questions rippling through the crowd were universal: 

How do we protect artistic voice and creative sovereignty in an algorithmic age? 

Where does human creativity still hold irreplaceable value,  and how do we amplify it? 

And perhaps most urgently, what new structures of ethics, education, and practice must we build to ensure artists and designers not only survive but thrive in this new landscape?

A Legacy of Visionaries — Dr. Tiffany Holmes

Tiffany Holmes opened with the kind of message that lingers. She invited us to look backward before leaping forward, tracing the lineage of creative disruptors from the invention of the car to the dawn of the computer and the digital age. Each innovation, she reminded us, was met with resistance and yet each expanded the canvas of human potential.

It was fitting that her speech fell on Ada Lovelace Day, honoring the woman who wrote the first algorithm and imagined the power of numbers to create beauty long before computers existed. Lovelace, Holmes said, didn’t just calculate, she envisioned. That, Holmes argued, is our inheritance and our responsibility: to use AI with integrity, to stand for inclusion, and to remember that our advantage is creativity itself.

She posed a simple, resonant question: When jobs shift and tools disrupt, what remains? 

The Rebundled Future — Rick Dakan

Rick Dakan took the stage next, framing AI as both threat and invitation. His four verbs captured it perfectly: AI disrupts, threatens, affords, and absorbs.

He described the creative paradox playing out in classrooms and studios everywhere: we love AI when it makes tedious work disappear, and we resent it when it encroaches on the work we love. The paradigm of cost, time, and quality, he argued, has shifted. Creative labor is being “rebundled”, tasks reassembled in new configurations, and with them, the identity of what it means to be an artist, designer, or storyteller.

Rick left us with a challenge: What makes human creativity valuable in a world where outputs are abundant? 

The Ethics of Expression — Dr. Moiya McTier

If Holmes gave us vision and Dakan gave us urgency, Dr. Moiya M. McTier gave us grounding. A scientist, folklorist, and Chief Storyteller for the Campaign for Human Artistry, McTier reminded us that the story of AI is also the story of humanity’s search for self-expression.

She traced the history of imagination itself, from ancient myths that credited the muses with divine inspiration, to modernity’s celebration of the “genius” artist, to our current collaborative remix culture. “Creativity doesn’t have to be completely new,” she said, “but it must be unmistakably you.”

Then, she unpacked the DNA of AI from the first neural networks of 1943 to today’s generative models to remind us of a simple truth: AI predicts; it does not express. It can imitate style, but it cannot transmit lived experience. It can replicate language, but not meaning.

Her call was ethical and urgent: AI must remain a tool, not a tyrant. Artists deserve consent, credit, and compensation. 

Augmented Imagination — The Dalí Museum Team

From philosophy to practice, the team from the The Dalí Museum, Jennifer Cohen, Beth Harrison, and Kimberly Macuare, offered a vision of how technology can deepen, rather than dilute, artistic experience. Their projects from Dalí Lives to Ask Dalí to the immersive Dream Tapestry reimagine how visitors interact with art through AI.

But their approach isn’t about spectacle; it’s about meaning-making. Technology, they said, must always be in service to the story. Dr. Macuare offered one of the most poignant truths of the day: when audiences learn something was created by AI, they often perceive it as less authentic. The reason? Because authenticity is rooted in human choice. Art isn’t just the outcome, it’s the decisions, doubts, and desires that shape it.

The Return to Craft — Peter Mohrbacher, Angelarium

If the morning spoke of systems, the afternoon turned intimate with Peter Mohrbacher the indie artist behind Angelarium. His talk was a confession and a warning. At first, AI felt exhilarating, a creative co-conspirator that could visualize entire worlds at the speed of thought. But over time, he realized something profound: his own creative muscles were weakening.

He described how he rediscovered the joy of the process of painting, of error, of friction. “My value,” he said, “comes from the relationship with my community, the people who trust that what I make is mine.”

His response was beautifully human: to share more of his making, not less. To turn his process into a narrative. To remind us that people are and always will be interested in people.

Nature, Compassion, and Connection — Amelia Winger-Bearskin

Amelia Winger-Bearskin, from the University of Florida’s Digital Worlds Institute, offered a different kind of wisdom, one rooted in empathy and the natural world. She sees AI not as an opponent of sustainability, but as a mirror for reflection. Her immersive works, from VR performances to interactive dreamscapes, use data and design to reconnect us to nature, community, and self.

Her “dream machine” project was both poetic and practical: in virtual space, avatars sing, dance, and reflect not to escape the human experience, but to expand it. “Imagination,” she said, “is the capacity to feel beyond ourselves.” Through compassion and reflection, her work showed that even as we digitize the world, the truest act of creation may be learning to see one another anew.

The Mutating Studio — Kurt Paulsen, Sapiendra.ai

Kurt Paulsen reminded us that artists have always adapted to new mediums. His view? AI isn’t replacing creativity, it’s mutating it. He mapped the creative process from ideation to delivery and showed how AI can augment every stage if guided intentionally.

His mantra was both pragmatic and inspiring: “Make things that would be impossible without AI and equally impossible without you.” It’s not the prompt that matters; it’s the presence of the maker in the loop. His call for multimodal thinking, combining liberal arts insight with digital craft. The future, he suggested, belongs to those who stay curious, adaptable, and grounded in story.

How Things Act — Robert Cooksey

The day ended with Robert Cooksey, whose talk felt like philosophy disguised as design. He asked us to consider: What does it mean to design for behavior, not just form?

He explored “agentic design,” the study of how systems (from humans to AIs) act, react, and adapt. By linking AI “hallucinations” to human bias, he urged humility: intelligence is not singular, but plural. His message landed as both caution and hope that we can design better when we acknowledge our own limitations, and when we treat technology not as a rival but as a reflection.

If Day 1 was about awareness, Day 2 is about activation.