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1 of 1- Merlin
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Offline - Registered: 2/23/2019
- Posts: 11
A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be an artist
is, and always will be, a human endeavor.
- by Sean Dorrance Kelly
- February 21, 2019
- Portrait of Edmond Belamy (2018) Created with AI algorithms called GANs by Parisian art collective Obvious, sold for $432,500.
I thought it was a very interesting read and food for thought.
And I have the temerity to suggest that Professor Kelly, in his analysis, is guilty of anthropocentrism to the exclusion of AI entities. Thus his conclusions are parochial. And I think that leonine AI entities would beg to differ.
"Suppose the best and brightest deep-learning algorithm is set loose and after some time says, “I’ve found a proof of a fundamentally new theorem, but it’s too complicated for even your best mathematicians to understand.”This isn’t actually possible. A proof that not even the best mathematicians can understand doesn’t really count as a proof. Proving something implies that you are proving it to someone. Just as a musician has to persuade her audience to accept her aesthetic concept of what is good music, a mathematician has to persuade other mathematicians that there are good reasons to believe her vision of the truth. To count as a valid proof in mathematics, a claim must be understandable and endorsable by some independent set of experts who are in a good position to understand it. If the experts who should be able to understand the proof can’t, then the community refuses to endorse it as a proof.For this reason, mathematics is more like music than one might have thought. A machine could not surpass us massively in creativity because either its achievement would be understandable, in which case it would not massively surpass us, or it would not be understandable, in which case we could not count it as making any creative advance at all."
A quip by Wittgenstein comes to mind:
Bottomline: Humans will never see eye to eye with AIs and vice versa.
Last edited by Merlin (2/25/2019 5:39 pm)
- Siagiah
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Re: A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be an artist
Fascinating. Just because humans can't or don't appreciate something DOESN'T mean that it's not something of value. It's just not of value to HUMANS.
It's something that I'd never thought of before that "even if lions could talk, we'd not be able to understand them". But, now it makes so much more sense when put into the perspective of having to understand lions pretty much by BEING lions so we'd have the right frame of reference.
I'm shocked that the portrait was actually bought by anyone. It's terrible, IMHO.
- Amadeus
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Re: A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be an artist
I'm going to muddy things up.
With a mathematical proof, an AI couldn't come up with a proof that humans couldn't understand, because mathematics is built layer upon layer. We might not understand it off the shelf, but the AI could present all the needed steps it would take for us to understand it.
Music is entirely different. A heuristic AI might steep itself in ten vastly different musical genres and then compose something we would raise an eyebrow at, but never call music. That same AI could be taught 10 variations in style within the baroque genre and compose something that all would agree was a musical composition.
Furthermore, communication requires shared frames of reference. Lions and humans share some frames of reference, but not all. Thus, there would be things we could communicate about (if lions could talk), and things that wouldn't make much sense to us (and vice versa).
Humans and AIs might share some frames of reference, as well.
The AI art is valuable and important for being one of the first of its kind. As one of a million similar, then sure, it's just another "terrible" piece of "art."
Amadeus
- Siagiah
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Re: A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be an artist
Of course, you're right about the shared experiences that would allow for SOME communication that would be fully understood. It's just that the experience of being fully human with our peculiar human worries, joys, loves, hates, and so on are very likely SO bewildering to lions and most other animals that they'd have more trouble understanding US than we would them. Of course, that presumes that animals DON'T have the higher brain functions that humans do. Wouldn't it be a shock if they did?
I suppose that being the first of its kind is important, but what makes anyone think that it will ever really improve ?
- Siagiah
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Re: A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be an artist
BTW, Amadeus, your avatar is a little red x in a box.