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desecretsNic Cage on AI and creativity (x), nicked from FFA:
I'm just putting this on my journal because I had a conversation about AI art with my tech bro-y flatmate maybe a week ago which frustrated me no end, and which I've been thinking about with irritation ever since.
He essentially argued that AI could create art that was just as good as that made by a person, because his only criteria for 'good' were, "It's nice to look at, and it elicits an emotion". (This was made especially infuriating by the fact that this is a guy who is a decent visual artist and enjoys playing the guitar.) I wasn't immediately able to make a succinct rebuttal, because for me, the list of ways in which AI art is completely inadequate compared to human-made art is so long I didn't even know where to begin. When I brought up, as just one example, that an AI cannot comprehend contexts, or art periods, and that while you can ask it to make something that looks, say, 19th century, it will never get it right, he responded by saying that he would simply never notice this, because as he knew nothing about art history, it would never occur to him to even consider it.
I think he thought I was just being pedantic -- that my argument was along the lines of "An AI would use the wrong brush technique for the period" -- which clearly made no dent in his conviction that in all the ways that matter (i.e., "Looking good and making you feel something"), AI art was perfectly adequate. Just the memory of it has been making me grumpy, so I wanted to save this quotation on here because it articulates so much better what I was trying to say, namely that a robot is not trying to say anything with its art; its art expresses nothing because the robot thinks nothing and feels nothing; robot art has no cultural context because a robot does not participate in culture. Robot art does not express or create meaning, and if art doesn't express or create meaning, then what is there left in it to be called art?
Art is a human response to life. Thanks, Nic Cage. 🙏
I am a big believer in not letting robots dream for us. Robots cannot reflect the human condition for us. That is a dead end if an actor lets one AI robot manipulate his or her performance even a little bit, an inch will eventually become a mile and all integrity, purity and truth of art will be replaced by financial interests only. We can’t let that happen. The job of all art in my view, film performance included, is to hold a mirror to the external and internal stories of the human condition through the very human thoughtful and emotional process of recreation. A robot can’t do that. If we let robots do that, it will lack all heart and eventually lose edge and turn to mush. There will be no human response to life as we know it. It will be life as robots tell us to know it. I say, protect yourselves from AI interfering with your authentic and honest expressions.
I'm just putting this on my journal because I had a conversation about AI art with my tech bro-y flatmate maybe a week ago which frustrated me no end, and which I've been thinking about with irritation ever since.
He essentially argued that AI could create art that was just as good as that made by a person, because his only criteria for 'good' were, "It's nice to look at, and it elicits an emotion". (This was made especially infuriating by the fact that this is a guy who is a decent visual artist and enjoys playing the guitar.) I wasn't immediately able to make a succinct rebuttal, because for me, the list of ways in which AI art is completely inadequate compared to human-made art is so long I didn't even know where to begin. When I brought up, as just one example, that an AI cannot comprehend contexts, or art periods, and that while you can ask it to make something that looks, say, 19th century, it will never get it right, he responded by saying that he would simply never notice this, because as he knew nothing about art history, it would never occur to him to even consider it.
I think he thought I was just being pedantic -- that my argument was along the lines of "An AI would use the wrong brush technique for the period" -- which clearly made no dent in his conviction that in all the ways that matter (i.e., "Looking good and making you feel something"), AI art was perfectly adequate. Just the memory of it has been making me grumpy, so I wanted to save this quotation on here because it articulates so much better what I was trying to say, namely that a robot is not trying to say anything with its art; its art expresses nothing because the robot thinks nothing and feels nothing; robot art has no cultural context because a robot does not participate in culture. Robot art does not express or create meaning, and if art doesn't express or create meaning, then what is there left in it to be called art?
Art is a human response to life. Thanks, Nic Cage. 🙏
