There’s an ethical question posed when artificial intelligence is programmed to create art. Yes, they do have the ability. Yes, various experiments have been conducted on audiences asking whether they can distinguish AI generated art from human generated art, usually through a form of the Turing test, and the consensus being that it’s hard to determine. Yes, (though subjective) people find that AI generated art is just as relevant, important, or aesthetically pleasing as art created by humans. But the question that arises is that is it possible for artificial intelligence to replace all humans in developing every form of art?
AI can be programmed to create paintings based off of images of art throughout multiple centuries, and can even develop music when fed information about famous composers. The team that designed Aiva, an AI classical composer, described how they taught the algorithm to compose music, “We have taught a deep neural network to understand the art of music composition by reading through a large database of classical partitions written by the most famous composers (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc). Aiva is capable of capturing concepts of music theory just by doing this acquisition of existing musical works.” AI has been proved to be able to create aesthetic products from analyzing and identifying patterns from preexisting material, however, there are things that AI might be isolated from that have a huge influence on humans. Ahmed Elgammel, director of the Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab at Rutgers University, has been experimenting with CAN, another AI visual art creator. Elgammel even says about his own experiments that art boiled down to its essence, creation, is achievable by AI and perhaps even in some cases the product can be better than human creation. However, he describes variables that do not influence AI the same way it impacts humans, “But if you define art more broadly as an attempt to say something about the wider world, to express one’s own sensibilities and anxieties and feelings, then AI art must fall short, because no machine mind can have that urge — and perhaps never will.” Humans simply have a will to create art that AI does not.
Another area where AI falls short is the ability to create in space. Artificial intelligence has the ability to create music, paintings, poetry, and even choreography, however these merely exist in time, only in the digital world, not in the physical. Art is more than the ability to create and develop a product based off patterns and variations of those patterns; humans have more than the ability to create and develop a product, they also have the ability to perform their own works. While some art forms don’t necessarily need a body to be created, the act of performance in the physical world needs a body. AI generated choreography has been achieved, and it uses footage of movement to recognize patterns to create movement in a virtual simulation. However the AI will never be able to perform the work the same way a human would be able to. Unless our technology advances enough to give AI a body that has the exact same motor functions and capabilities as humans, AI will never reach the wholistic realization of an artist.
Artificial intelligence lacks the mind-body connection that humans have, and their ability to use their sensorimotor engagements to absorb new information from engaging with the world. When computer scientists feed information to AI, such as famous paintings, composers and their music, words from books, movies, articles, and poems, the AI are using preexisting material to create a product. This is a singular variable in the human experience of art making. The presence of the mind and it’s complexities (consciousness, the ability to make decisions, the ability to have intersubjective realities or to imagine, etc.), are biologically and physiologically tied to our bodies. Mark Johnson, a philosopher and professor at the University of Oregon, confirms this theory, “What we call ‘mind’ and what we call ‘body’ are not two things, but rather aspects of one organic process, so that all our meaning, thought, and language emerge from the aesthetic dimensions of this embodied activity. Chief among those dimensions are qualities, images, patterns of sensorimotor processes, and emotions.” AI being given the ability to create, just as the human mind, doesn’t also give it the ability to have consciousness, make decisions, and have imagination, which are variables tied to the human mind in the act of creating art.
While there are some things that AI generated art can achieve, an aesthetic product for example, there are some things that it also fails to achieve: an urge to create art stemming from emotional afflictions in an imperfect world, influences from sensorimotor engagements developed from a body that interacts with the world, capability to perform in some art forms. AI can create an aesthetically pleasing product, but it can’t create art. At least, not in the sense that humans make art. We can program AI to create an aesthetically pleasing product in various forms, but human art is born out of an imperfect world, one where humans are emotionally and even mentally affected by it, and are urged to use art to define it through various lenses, make commentary on the world, and connect others through a shared experience. Unless AI can be given the same capabilities that humans have, such as having a fully functional body with sensory devices, and a mind that experiences consciousness, imagination, emotions, without being programmed to create, there will never be an AI that can replace humans in developing art.
Works Cited:
Kaleagasi, Bartu. “A New AI Can Write Music as Well as a Human Composer.” Futurism, 9 Mar. 2017, https://futurism.com/a-new-ai-can-write-music-as-well-as-a-human-composer.
“Is Artificial Intelligence Set to Become Art’s Next Medium?” Christie’s, 12 Dec. 2018, https://www.christies.com/features/A-collaboration-between-two-artists-one-human-one-a-machine-9332-1.aspx.
Robitzski, Dan. “Artificial Intelligence Writes Bad Poems Just Like An Angsty Teen.” Futurism, 26 Apr. 2018, https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence-bad-poems.
Stahl, Jennifer. “Is AI Choreography the Next Big Thing?” Dance Magazine, 11 Jan. 2019, https://www.dancemagazine.com/is-google-the-worlds-next-great-choreographer-2625652667.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3.
Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body, Aesthetic of Human Understanding. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Data/Society/Decision-making Spring 2019 