“Thinking about AI and its impact on us is thinking seriously about what it means to be human.”
When we turn to a song, a book, a funny clip, turn our faces to the night sky and look for the stars, feel the breeze on a mid-summer afternoon, smile at a puppy, watch the leaves move and hear the birds chirping, or stumble across an old memory, these thousands of small daily breaks are when we are within reach of something bigger and broader than the scope of our normal lives. We are human because we make mistakes. Indigenous beaders intentionally add the wrong colored spirit beads to their creations to recognize that no creation is meant to be perfect, and that it is meant to be. It is also meant as a reminder of humility, without which art-making is nothing but an affront to form.
Thinking about AI and how it affects us is like thinking seriously about what it means to be human. It's about remembering why we make things, why there is very good art, mediocre art, and awfully bad art in the world, and why all of this is equally important.
The AI will probably tell you that Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) is a documentary about some of the world's at least 20,000-year-old cave paintings in France. However, what this work does not convey is that Herzog stands there enchanted, awestruck by the fact that he has access to his work, and that we, the viewers, feel the same sense of overwhelm that he felt upon encountering art created without any purpose.
AI tells us that AR Rahman rose to fame by scoring Mani Ratnam's Roha (1992). But you won't be reminded that there is a moment in the song “Pudhu Vellai Mazhai/Yeh Haseen Vadiyan” when the music soars, the beat drops, and it sounds like a thousand crystals smashing across a marble floor. Something breaks inside the listener and it feels as if the world has changed. Just like the music landscape in India actually was because of ARR.
How can art be art without the weight of the artist's experience? Being told that AI-generated art is good art presses a wild trigger, like a thumb on a fresh wound.
Art is something that has to be made from life, from sadness and joy, from the monotony of everyday experiences, from everyday things. What can a machine know about a heartbreak that leaves every cell shattering on the floor, or the joy of being reborn? Can a machine feel? Can it have sentience?
