What is art? A fundamental question one often asks oneself when looking at contemporary art. The answer seems to lie in the communication of ideas and emotions that extend beyond the medium of choice, the content being more than the sum total of its parts.
Robots and AI have already created many pieces of art autonomously across many different mediums. Some of these pieces have fetched huge sums of money at auction, but one wondered if this the art is that of the AI or that of the developer who created the AI?
Many of the creative jobs people assumed to be safe from automation look set to be automated but this does raise the question do you think AI could ever create meaningful Art?
Art is nothing but making nice symmetrical patterns that our brains recognize and like. As AI will be much better at recognizing patterns it should also be much better at creating patterns that our brains like.
Art can also become personalized because your AI companion will know you and your preferences perfectly.
Good timing, today a painting by an AI was sold for almost USD500k. Meaning via value?
I disagree with the ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, beauty comes from the hands of the creator.
Anything that comes from the interaction between beholder and art is secondary and simply distorts an existing beauty
I thought about how would the personalized art done by AI look like
First of all, the AI companion will have huge amount of data about its human. Not just data Google or Facebook are collecting right now (what I search for, what I like, etc.) but also, thanks to things like bio sensors, what my heart rate, facial expressions and mood or attention level are while watching or listening to content -> which scenes I liked the most, when I was bored or disgusted, etc.
I believe the AI will be able to craft songs, movies or write books based on individual preferences very effectively.
For example I love The Lord of the Rings books / movies… Maybe I would like to see more movies about Gandalf when he was younger or a series about Angmar and the Witch king. Or perhaps AI can remake my favourite movie with my and my friends’ faces or add a little more blood / romance… That would be fun and the possibilities are endless
Art is very similar to science. The artist has a problem to solve and uses art to present a solution. The art object is the solution to the artist problem, it can be an artistic problem, a social problem, a personal problem, etc.
That’s quite a reductionist view of art, i.e. art-as-dopamine
Much or most art is asymmetrical, not symmetrical.
Aesthetics are personal as you mention, but at least one key function of art will not be served by generalizing based on your past patterns of Likes and Dislikes. Art has the ability to surprise and jar and, ideally, disrupt past patterns of thought. So the AGI would hopefully also either produce random art works, or ones that do Not mesh with your established stream of upvotes.
