Representative image (Photo | AFP)
Considering how ubiquitous AI has become in the way we access and derive from the internet, I started thinking about whether we even need it at all. And no matter how open-minded I try to be, it's how much I hate AI in art that refuses to change.
I hate the glitchy videos it produces. I hate perfect but soulless photo captions and the Ghibliization of photos (which goes against everything Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki wanted from his exemplary art). The PDF of the book I'm reading is a long document, and I hate it when the AI tries to summarize it.
Let me also be clear: I am not anti-technology. The internet can be great if you use your time wisely. And AI is making great advances in science, medicine, and other vital fields. Perhaps we all benefit from its use in more ways than we realize.
But I also wonder how we got to the point where the AI turns against its creators in horror shows like Frankenstein and Black Mirror. OpenAI recently announced a vacancy for a “head of preparedness,” who is responsible for anticipating and guarding against actions that AI may take that could endanger humanity.
In the great film Dead Poets' Society, Robin Williams' character says that engineering, law, business, etc. are noble professions and essential, but goes on to say, “But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are the things that keep us alive.''
“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?
For a long time we have been thinking about the purpose of art. Herzog also questions this point in the documentary. After all, why would early humans, trying to survive in the harshest possible terrain, paint on inaccessible walls? I don't understand. Perhaps we will never know. Whether art needs to have utility value is another way of thinking. Art is never political.
I remember Gobind Nihalani's Party (1984), which was based on a play by Mahesh Elkunchwar. The whole movie is like a party where a group of liberal elites discuss art and politics over whiskey, cigarettes, and dinner. Final opinions such as whether art and artists can or should be separated, whether aesthetics are more important, or whether social responsibility is more important, are still essential studies for those of us in the field of cultural influence.
For me, the most powerful idea is that the characters express two possible moral obligations at the same time. In other words, one may stand up against something as a human being, but not necessarily as an artist in making art. For me, such a complex issue, and the rationality required to have two opposing arguments at the same time in a debate, political or otherwise (not in the narrow scope of electoral politics, mind you), is a space in which artistic possibilities are ideally created.
I have yet to see a machine learning model that can intentionally include spirit beads or manipulate complex thought processes. Also, I've never seen anyone have long, open-ended discussions about seemingly random music and movie books without any prompting. Naive? perhaps. But humanity has survived wars greater than capitalist-driven assaults on our common sense and decency. It's okay. Finally. Or, from what I hear, some people are hoping that 2026 will be the year of analog greatness.
