Art, AI and Intention

 

 

Question: can we accept the products of AI as art? 

Let's assume that we're talking about very advanced AI, which can produce really interesting novels with a unique style - 3-dimensional characters, consistent plots, interesting stories. Or masterful paintings able to create emotion in the viewer, again with a unique style. Whether AI will ever be able to create these is not the question - let's assume it can. One thing AI should not be able to do, however, is to create these things with the intention to raise said emotions - or to want to express, or communicate something.

I'll focus on literature. Would I really be able to enjoy a masterful novel created with no intention? We know that the intention of the author is not everything, but can we really do completely without it?

My idea is that we do need intention. We're looking for it, we're trying to decipher it everywhere, even in places where it doesn't exist - sometimes, even when we are aware that it doesn't exist.

I'll take two examples for this - conspiracy theories and old myths and legends. Both are attempts to insert intention into something that is intrinsically devoid of intention. In the case of myths, it's the natural world. In the case of conspiracy theories, it's usually some social reality. One conclusion is that humans need intention, and desperately so, because intention brings meaning.

The other conclusion is that we are able to invent intention and persuade ourselves that it is real.

So, even though we shouldn't be able enjoy works of art created by AI, since there is no intention behind them - we might just manage to persuade ourselves that there is intention in the mindless creations of AI. Just like we did when we first interpreted the universe with myths, when we developed rules of behavior using religion, and when we deal with weird, uncomfortable social realities by adopting conspiracy theories...

STORY: There

 

 

It was a hidden triangular world, isolated from the rest of the universe by a lid of blue, red and white clouds, two long patches of forest that met at one end, and at the other end a smelly swamp with green shrubbery, green grass, muddy dark earth, brown worms and emerald snakes, golden frogs and red crayfish, small silver crocodiles and gray rabbits. Most of the triangle housed a lake, which reflected the blueness, redness and whiteness of the clouds. Between the lake and the swamp there was a very old stone dam, which stood 5 meters tall on the side of the swamp and sloped lazily into the lake on the other side. Its surface was cracked and uneven, with patches of smooth concrete next to patches of pebbles or sand.

This world was always at dusk, and there was always a reddish spot of light coming from the clouds above the tip of the triangle. There were many birds and insects darting through the air, there were otters and dogs bathing in the lake, cats observing them suspiciously from the high end of the dam, and large animals, even people, forever relaxing on the reclining dam, or fishing, or hunting, or just wandering through the woods. Nobody seemed worried that the world they lived in was finite, hermetic and small, that the flow of time was undefinable. That a moment might come when there would be no more insects, because the frogs will have eaten them. And no more frogs, because the birds will have eaten them. No more cats, no more dogs, no more large animals. No more people, because the forest will have swallowed them, and no lake because the forest will have drowned it. And the swamp would sprawl over the dam and drink the lake, then it would dry out. And all that would be left would be an empty triangle under a lid of dark clouds.

They were all unperturbed by such notions, there was no straying from one’s business, no mind paid to anything else.

And maybe they were right to be so.