I've just been reading an article in the Guardian about art created by Artificial Intelligence, in which art experts are challenged to spot the differences between works created by real artists and works created by computers. Okay, it was probably written as a bit of fun but, nevertheless, I think it really missed the point.
The big question the article asks is, 'could a computer ever hope to reproduce the emotional depth that gives great art its charm and meaning?' It might be a big question, but it's nothing like big enough. It betrays a shallow perception of what art is and what it does. The fact that a computer can create a convincing, fake impressionist painting does not mean a computer can create a work of art. It may be impossible to tell it from a real impressionist painting, but that's not the point. In any case, if I were to set out to create a fake impressionist painting, it wouldn't be a work of art either. Doing anything of the kind would be beyond me but, even if it wasn't, the result would be merely a curiosity. I might be able to make a few bob selling it, but the fact that it may be indistinguishable from the work of a real impressionist painter would not make it a great work of art.
Walter Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, dealt with the problems associated with the production of mass-produced copies of art-works, films and so on. One can quite easily extend the things he says to the creation of machines which reproduce the skills and some of the creative choices made by artists themselves. Benjamin says:
That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition.
Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
The connection with some sort of 'domain of tradition' is crucial to the work of art. This not just about the creative traditions of artists, through which 'classical' might evolve into the 'romantic', say, but the whole cultural tradition of the society in which the work of art exis
ts. As Benjamin says:
An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura.
Ibid.
Obviously then, although they're important, there's a great deal more to a work of art than 'the emotional depth' that gives [it] its charm and meaning.' Art has a cultural context that helps us make sense of it and the world we live in. The real question, the one the Guardian doesn't ask, is, how can art made by a machine ever be part of a cultural tradition? The answer is, it can't. It can only imitate work done in the past. It could, conceivably, generate new ways of making material, but since cultural traditions are, by definition, made by people, such material could not serve the same function as art. There are exceptions to all this. Firstly, some artists – John Cage and Brian Eno, for example, have sometimes consciously decided to delegate creative choices to machines. The crucial difference is, they have delegated rather than abrogated their responsibilities as creators. Secondly, if machines could be created that are truly conscious, and not merely creating the impression of consciousness, one would have to look at all this again. It may be that conscious machines might create cultural traditions of their own. That would be intriguing.
People often ask if the rise of AI will lead to machines 'taking over'. Thinking about the role of machines in the creation of art makes one wonder, will we notice if they do? Cultural traditions change, but the changes have to be made by people. If we're surrounded by machine-generated art, cultural tradition has passed out of our hands. We may be charmed by and find intriguing meanings in the images we see, but that can never be enough for the 'art' to be meaningful to us. It may even – to use Benjamin's word – have an 'aura', But that aura is not that of a work of art: it's generated by the sense of wonder we feel on realising that a machine can create something so like a work of art.
Of course, it's not just about visual art: what I've been saying applies to the other arts, too. In 1984, Orwell imagined a world in which novels were written by machine. The generation of art, literature, etc., in this way reduces it to the level of entertainment and diversion. Before we realise it, we might find ourselves drifting from day-to-day though a sanitised, cultureless world, distracted by charming (there's that Guardian word again) sounds, words and images that signify nothing. Sound familiar? Are the machines taking over? Perhaps they have already.
The end product of such machine-creativity is merely a commodity 'that [has] to be produced, like jam or bootlaces', as Orwell put it. It strips it of any deeper, cultural meaning. Since art and literature produced in this way is unlikely to tell anyone anything meaningful they didn't already know, it's unlikely to encourage members of its audience to think for themselves. In the eyes of some, this might be thought of as a good thing. Art – especially original art – can be dangerous. As Aldous Huxley said:
By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms -- elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest -- will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial [...]. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World.
Perhaps we have to see past the computer. Much of the creative work we're surrounded by today endlessly harks back to the past. One only has to wander round a modern housing estate with its hotch-potch of nineteenth and early twentieth century styles of architecture to see this. If our culture has become merely imitative, it's only a small step to transfer all responsibility for creative work to the computer. We worry about computers taking over the world, but perhaps they've already taken over our minds. Perhaps, armed with computers and aware of the ways in which they can be useful to us, we've begun to think like computers ourselves. If an otherwise good idea doesn't lend itself to development by new technology, does it get rejected in favour of one that does? One thing is certain: computers that are capable of creating imitations of art, literature and music – along with a whole lot else – are already making the job of Huxley's 'thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators' a whole lot easier.
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