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Indeed. The fallacy here is assuming that if a computer can create works that humans cannot distinguish from those created by other humans, then that computer i

• gnomewrecker 4y ago
  I don’t know, I’m more concerned with the effect that art has on me than the motivations of the artist (though those can be interesting of course). For instance I read The Fountainhead as a youth and was moved by it for purely personal (non-political) reasons, and with regards to that experience it doesn’t matter to me what Ayn Rand was on about.
• busyant 4y ago
  > Indeed. The fallacy here is assuming that if a computer can create works that humans cannot distinguish from those created by other humans, then that computer is creating art. But art is inseparable from the artist. I hope you and the parent comment are correct, but this argument seems a little facile. There is some art that I like because there is a story that connects the art to the artist. But there are also novels that I have enjoyed simply because they tell a great story and I know nothing about the author. There are paintings and photos that I like simply because they seem beautiful to me and I know nothing about any suffering that went into their creation. Does that make these works "not art"? If so, then I'm not sure what the difference is, and I'm not sure most people will care about the distinction.
  • p-e-w 4y ago
    Do the experiment: Take one of those novels for which you think you don't care who wrote it. Now imagine you found out that novel was actually generated by a computer program. It's the same text, but you now know that there is no human behind it, just an algorithm. Would that make a difference for how you view the story? It certainly would to me. If it makes even a tiny difference to you as well, it demonstrates that you do care about the artist, even in cases where you don't notice it under normal circumstances.
    • PurpleRamen 4y ago
      You don't even need an algorithm, just research what the human authors say about their work and specific points which the reader values high in them. Quite often you will figure out that it's just random s** they wrote together to get something done, without any deeper meaning. But people make up some meaning because that how it works for them, makes it better. The art is on the perception, not the intention. Though, if they overlap, it's more satisfying.
      • p-e-w 4y ago
        Human creative works are art not because they have "deeper meaning", but because they reflect the humanity of their creators. Whether an author writes a multi-layered novel built around a complex philosophical idea, or just light reading for entertainment, has no impact on that fundamental essence which makes art what it is. Not all art is great, but all art is human.
        • CuriouslyC 4y ago
          That's a tautology. Human creative works by definition reflect the humanity of their creators. AI creative works reflect the humanity of its training set, which eventually may be indistinguishable. As for all art being human, there are a lot of birds who make art to attract a mate in nature, and at least one captive elephant that can paint.
          • freejazz 4y ago
            Rolling around in dogshit doesn't make me a dog. Same if I eat it.
    • busyant 4y ago
      You made me think about this a little more, but I still don't quite agree. I thought of two novels that I enjoyed: First, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I have no recollection of who the author is, but if I learned that the story had been computer generated, it would bother me a little. So... "point to you." Second, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. I know it was written by Stephen King, but the plot is so elegant that if you told me it had been computer generated, I don't think I would care. It's simply a great enjoyable story. In the next 10 years, if the world is flooded with computer-generated novels that are hugely popular and the vast majority of people enjoy them without knowing their provenance, do you think those people will care that they are enjoying something that doesn't meet your definition of art? edit: to be clear, this is not a position that I enjoy taking. There's something "Brave New Worldish" about it. Or it's a depressing version of the Turing Test.
  • techno_tsar 4y ago
    This reminds me of the concept of semantic internalism vs. externalism, which most comments here seem to be misunderstanding. Most of the critiques of the view that AI art is still meaningful is based on either a hypothesis or empirical testimony of being moved by art without knowledge of the artists. Thus, because the artwork was causally responsible for engineering a mental state of aesthetic satisfaction, the artwork qualifies as being a piece of art. If that is the crux of the discussion then the conclusion is trivial. However, I think the AI art as pseudoart view is trying to make a statement on the external (i.e. ‘real world’) status of the artwork, regardless of whether viewers experience the (internal) mental state of aesthetic satisfaction. The line of thinking is that there is a difference between semantics (actual aboutness) and syntax (mere structure). The classic example is watching a colony of ants crawl in the sand, and noticing that their trails have created an image that resembles Winston Churchill. Have the ants actually drawn Winston Churchill? The intuition for externalists is no. A more illustrative example is a concussed non-Japanese person muttering syllables that are identical to an actual, grammatically correct and appropriate Japanese sentence. Has the person actually spoken Japanese? The intuition for externalists is that they have not. Not everyone is in agreement about this, although surveys have shown that most people agree with the externalist point of view, that meaningfulness does not just come from the head of the observer — the speaker creates meaning since meaning comes from aboutness (semantics). The most famous argument for semantic externalism was put forward by Hillary Putnam, I think, in the 60s. Roughly, on a hypothetical Twin Earth which was qualitatively identical to Earth, except which water was not composed of H2O but some other substance XYZ, an earthlings visit to Twin Earth and looking at a pool of what appears to be qualitatively identical to water on earth and stating “That’s water” is false, since the meaning of water (in our language) is H2O, not XYZ. To externalists, the meaning of water = H2O is a truth even before we’ve discovered that water = H2O. I think the argument for AI art being pseudoart follows a similar line of thinking. Even though the AI produces, say, qualitatively indistinguishable text from what would be composed by a great novelist, the artwork itself is still meaningless since meaning is “about” things. The AI, lacking embodiment, and actual contact with the objects in its writing, or involvement in the linguistic or cultural community that has named certain iconography, could never make (externally) truly meaningful statements, and thus “meaningful” art, even if (internally) one is moved by it. If one is to maintain the internalist position, that any entity that creates aesthetic mental states qualifies as art, then it seems trivial, since literally anyone can find anything aesthetic. Externalist intuition effectively raises the stakes for what we consider art, not necessarily as a privileged status available only to human creations, but by arguing that meaning, and perhaps beauty, does not only exist when we experience it.
  • skor 4y ago
    I think this example you present places you as a “simple spectator”, we generally observe and tend to like or dislike experiences by some subliminal connections we already possess (given experience). However, when something really interests a human, the natural reaction is to try find out more about the origins.
• PurpleRamen 4y ago
  > An atom-for-atom copy of the Mona Lisa wouldn't be great art So no photo of the Mona Lisa is art, just the original painting is? I'm not sure if I understand your reasoning here correctly.
  • p-e-w 4y ago
    My point is that art comes from emotion, experience, and expression – not from arranging matter into a certain geometry. A photo of the Mona Lisa, taken by a human, can be art. A photo of the Mona Lisa, taken by an automated security system, can't be.
    • PurpleRamen 4y ago
      If the human made picture is evaluated by an AI, is it still art? If the security cam-picture is indistinguishable from the human-made, how could you evaluate it as non-art?
      • p-e-w 4y ago
        It doesn't matter whether you are able to distinguish human-made from computer-made "art". The distinction exists by definition, irrespective of whether you can actually tell the difference in practice. Just like many past events are now lost to time and will never be remembered, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen.
        • gilleain 4y ago
          One possibly interesting sidenote are the fake Vermeers made by Han van Meegeren (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren) So accurate were these fakes - not copies, but new paintings in Vermeer's style - that several experts verified them as real, and then tried to sue to save their reputations. These fakes were certainly made by a human, but are somewhat mechanical in the sense that they were copying someone else, much like an AI copy of existing artists.
• eternalban 4y ago
  I’ve been doing art (drawing, painting, clay sculpture, etc.) since childhood. “And lord only knows” that I have indeed ‘suffered’ /g > “Art is inseparable from the artist” That is pure sentiment and really a modern take on the function of art in the personal and social sense. As an artist, I derive joy from the creative act. As an appreciator of works of art I generally do -not- care about the artist. Of course, the lives of influential humans (artist or not) can be interesting and certainly enrich one’s experience of the artist’s work, but it is not a fundamental requirement. Two days ago, the National Gallery of Art closed its Sargent in Spain exhibition. (I almost feel sad for those who didn’t get to see it.) Sargent was never really on my radar beyond the famous portraits. I still really don’t know much about the man besides the fact that he visited Spain frequently, with friend and family in tow. But I am now, completely a Sargent admirer. Those works, on their own sans curation copy, are magnificent. And I am certain, that even if I had walked into an anonymous exhibit, I would walk out completely transported (which I was dear reader, I pity those who missed this exhibit).
  • coldcode 4y ago
    As an artist my favorite definition of art has always been "An expression by an artist in a medium". You can't separate art from the artist without it being artifice. AI can simulate art but not the artist who created it. Sadly we may soon live in a world where art, music, literature—in fact all creative arts—wind up just as machine generated simulations of creativity.
    • eternalban 4y ago
      I am reminded of a scene (from a film*) depicting dear Ludwig van debuting a composition in a salon. Haydn was present. He sat through the performance and at the end, prompted by another, simply said ~“he puts too much of himself in his music”. * Eroica : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369400/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369400/
• mwigdahl 4y ago
  I don't agree with this. The Lascaux cave paintings, for example, are moving pieces of art and yet we know nothing about the artist or artists. How many artists were there? What was the intent of each individual drawing? Were the artists homo sapiens or Neanderthals? What makes them art is that we, the perceivers, make an imagined connection to the artist through the work. But that connection is entirely one-sided and based on our perceptions and knowledge and our _model_ of the artist and his or her intent. Humans have no problem reifying an artist where none exists and being just as moved as if the art were "authentically human-sourced".
  • beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
    The entire import of the Lascaux paintings is that they are made by humans 10000s of years ago and seem to serve something more than mere marks. We know humans (or at least individuals with agency) created them and so there is something awe-inspiring and fascinating about the connections between ourselves and these prehistoric works, and yet they are ultimately still something of a mystery for precisely the reasons you say. > But that connection is entirely one-sided and based on our perceptions and knowledge and our _model_ of the artist and his or her intent. Humans have no problem reifying an artist where none exists and being just as moved as if the art were "authentically human-sourced". You're over-emphasizing how one-sided looking at something like the Lascaux paintings are. Their value is not the same as beautiful natural phenomenon, like a fascinating stalagmite like seems to be a sculpture, it is precisely the human agency we understand in them (even if we cannot explicitly understand the use of them, that is, their meaning) and connect with that makes them so important and profound as a means of connecting --- tenuous it might seem --- to prehistory. We've been making "stick people" and finger painting for 10s of thousands of years. You're right that we don't know who the artists were in any explicit sense, but we do understand that they were human, and in quite fundamental ways, us as well. Generative AI art is really more like a beautiful natural landscape. Lacking agency, it nonetheless appeals to our aesthetic sensibilities without being misconceived as art from an artist. It is output, not imaginative creation.
    • mwigdahl 4y ago
      If artistic value is not one-sided and tied to the transformations in the observer's mind, you get into situations where you invalidate the experiences of thousands of people because the "authentic human art" they were inspired by turns out to be a mechanical forgery, or the aboriginal sculpture some archaeologist discovered, admired and wrote articles interpreting is discovered to be unworked stone. Your position allows a dead person to have their experiences retroactively cheapened because of carbon dating and microstructural analysis. "How sad, it wasn't _really_ art though." You can define art that way, but you end up with an immaterial, axiomatic essentialism that seems practically useful only to in drawing a circle and placing certain desirable artifacts inside and other indistinguishable artifacts outside.
• iainmerrick 4y ago
  But in that scenario, how do you find the real art in the first place?