AI Love You!

 



For ages in the west, people have contemplated what separates us from the animals.  Human exceptionalism is just one of many ways we have managed to divide ourselves from nature (I'm looking at you, Rene Descartes!) with the result that our flimsy self-esteem would appear to rest on feelings of superiority to nature.  It doesn't take a genius to observe that this has enabled us to exploit our own environment, ultimately setting in motion what will be our own destruction if we don't do something soon. 

 

Yay humans!  Yeah, no other animal has done that!

 

In what's left of our future; however, we may find ourselves wondering what separates us from machines. It seems obvious that the idea is that they somehow serve us and make us better humans and improve our lives. But once we outsource imagination to AI, what's left to feel good about as people?  Oiling the robots?  Oops, did we accidentally just irrelevize ourselves? Or was it on purpose?

 

I'm not here to talk about AI in general--just the slice that affects art. I am fine with AI as a tool.  I love tools. I did 3-d animation for a while, blah blah blah. But supposedly AI will be so good that we will become the tool, and then what?

For centuries, art has explained to “the masses” that it’s a-ok to outsource the labor.  If you feel slightly queasy about the authenticity of art fabricated by someone other than the artist, well, be off, you ignorant philistine!  Never mind the elitism, we artists are wearing long black coats.  So there. But what happens when we outsource the labor AND the idea coming-up-with?  For about a hundred years, we in the arts have gone on and on about the preciousness of concept, locating the value of the artwork, not to mention the prestige of the artist, firmly in the idea.  So, what happens when it’s not a human coming up with the idea? 

 

Secondly why would we even want to outsource our imaginations to a non-human system in the first place? Isn’t that the fun part? Most artists I know really enjoy the brainstorming part of creativity (also known as “Divergent thinking”).  But when people talk about AI affecting art, they are usually not worried about the artists (which is why no one really cares if “AI takes our jobs”), but the art consumers.  We can always round up those silly artists who love thinking up their own ideas for art and retrain them to oil robots.  We already did that with craftspersons! This leaves the question of will AI make better art than people?*

 

But before I tackle that one, there is something else pernicious at work here that pertains to the matters at hand (pun intended). AI is obviously able and vastly more efficient at generating a kajillion possibilities than a human.  It doesn’t appear to cost very much or at least its easily available.  Avoiding the inevitable tide of technology has never worked, has it?  So why not just close our eyes and think of England?

 

I read somewhere that humans are biologically engineered to avoid any extra effort.  To escape the gravitational pull of easy and available shortcuts is almost impossible.  Most people, even art students just aren’t passionate or, perhaps, crazy enough.  As a long time teacher I know that temptations that save time and (appear to) cost little can be too much to resist.  For example, in the past 15 years or so, the following scenario has happened at least once per semester, sometimes more often.  I would see the student using their telephones as tiny light tables being used to copy pictures found on google image search (the more enterprising ones actually print them out).  When I asked why they weren’t drawing it themselves instead of tracing, they would say “I can’t draw”.  To which I would reply, “And sadly, you will never learn”.  (Never mind how crazy it is that this is happening in an ART SCHOOL!  For god’s sakes people, get a grip!)

 

But I do have sympathy.  The learning curve for drawing (and creating, for that matter) isn’t as steep as it may look, but it does extend basically forEVER into the future.  Ditto for using your own imagination. It’s not as simple as pushing a button or opening a door and there this glorious thing is, voila!  Right there on your eyelids waiting to be transcribed. No, coaxing imagination into being is more challenging than that.

 

There was a critical juncture when I was in art school, when our painting professor said those infamous words: “From now on you can paint what you want!” and we all cheered and celebrated and then fell into a huge existential crisis.  We had NO IDEA what to do.  I remember thinking I wanted to work from my imagination—and I had the impression that would be super easy, because, hey! I had been doing it my whole life right up until a year and a half ago when my art professors demanded I paint observationally from models and still life set ups.  In a mere year and half, access to my imagination had been eradicated!  Or maybe more accurately, it had been overwritten.  And when I tried to work from it now, it seemed idiotic, like trivial teenage album-cover-art surrealism.  EW!  I had to reinvent it from scratch and that, dear reader, is what I have been working on for the past 40 years.  It hasn’t been easy or simple, I can tell you that.  It’s so easy to coopt someone else’s imagination.  I have done that many times and was convinced it was my own until I realized, oopsy, it’s not.

But why bother?  Why not let AI do it for me? Or you.

 

For a while I have had a hunch that to express one’s actual individual imagination is a radical (and political) act. Mainly because that’s what authoritarianism and conformism really doesn’t want you to do.  It must be done with great belief that it imagination has some intrinsic value. 

 

Alongside imagination, there is also handwork.

I spent years defending Craft at the now defunct University of the Arts.  Two main arguments arose as a response to industrialization. They feel old as the hills and have obviously not changed anyone’s mind. The first was Ruskin’s moral defense which basically said that handwork is good for the soul of the individual as well as society at large.  Second is Walter Benjamin’s essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” which described "aura" as the unique presence and authenticity of a work of art.  The first argument makes me want to get dressed up in a historic milkmaid costume and lug water buckets with a shoulder yoke. The second makes me want to consult crystals.  We need to do better, people!  I will say, although many agree with those reasons for preserving handwork, no one will actually do what it takes to ensure its preservation or value. Bummer.

 

I think a good question to ask is: what purpose does art serve that demands a human presence (as maker, as viewer)?  Maybe ask Marina Abramovic!  Imagine “The Artist is Present” without the artist present!

 

If we go to art to feel connection, to feel understood etc--what does it mean when we are willing to experience that with something that is a simulation?  it reminds me of the emerging artificial intelligence applications that allow people to interact with a digital representation of a deceased person.

There’s plenty of evidence these AI models are really good at handling our big feelings and making us feel all smooshy with simulated empathy.  But since when is connection a one way street? Our sense of feeling understood, connected, loved is often predicated on being able to return the favor.  In art as well.   We feel a work of art speaks for us, maybe in a deeply personal way, and we love it back and maybe pay it forward.   And we can love AI generated art too.  But what does it mean if AI doesn’t care about our love?

 

Another thing we go to art for is that undefinable, ephemeral thing called “inspiration”.  We want our art to be inspired so it can inspire us.  Inspire of course means “breath of life” or even “breath of the divine”. Unless we define AI as a life-form it cannot bequeath a breath of life.

I am convinced that compared to cost effectiveness and efficiency, this reason will also get a lot of nods, but little action.

 

So, here’s my ace in the hole. Warning: it’s probably pathetic

 

AI doesn’t suffer.   

Because of that it involves no risk. 

 

AI offers a type of perfection and what could be drearier than that? Perfection demands admiration not empathy. Yawn.  Maybe it can convince us it is showing us empathy, but if we empathize back it is meaningless.  MEANINGLESS.

 

In  these days of positive psychology, the stereotype of the suffering artist is no longer considered some kind of romantic ideal.  And for good reason, who wants to inculcate someone’s suffering (other than certain religions)? But there’s suffering and then there’s suffering. External circumstances like war and internal situations like major depression have a very negative effect on creativity, that needs to be made clear. But there are also little everyday types of suffering.

 

As a long-time college art instructor, I have seen the suffering of my students. I have repeatedly witnessed them being willing to risk embarrassment by or even worse, indifference to, a project they have poured their heart and souls into. They are willing to risk that a gambit might utterly flop, that it might be a stupid idea that they have sunk their last dollar and the entire semester into. They suffer the pain of making hard choices, for example “killing your darlings” .  I'm sure I could come up with more, but I am little pressed for time.

 

The problem of devaluing everything but the idea, (thanks Descartes!) is so utterly entrenched in the art of the 20th and 21tt c. that it makes it really hard to rehabilitate the value in anything else.  I really do think its time to stop demeaning the idea of labor and skill in art.  And to at least have a vague sense that maybe it doesn't matter exactly who the fabricator and what their skill level  is, but these things have a tremendous influence on the outcome: i.e. what you are looking at and relating to (or not).  Its time to remember that inspiration exists at the nexus of our physical bodies and our consciousness, they are beautiful inter-dependencies.  (The sooner we can prove that, neurologists, the better!)

 

Spending of time is worth something unto itself.  Maybe it represents a sacrifice of precious resources, a willingness to be inconvenienced to create something.  A way of showing love?  A way of showing UP.

While I don’t want to condone suffering, willingness to do so may be the secret sauce to what makes this all important empathic connection happen in art. How can I feel understood by something that has never suffered? Where is the value in that? The suffering, that is the willingness to do it, sometimes the hardest way possible, that turns it into a sacrifice.

 

But you might say “don’t sacrifice on my behalf, that just makes me feel guilty!! Who asked you?” But it’s not a major sacrifice. It’s not major suffering. It’s just a little stuff and stuff that shows that you’re willing to go that extra mile that you care enough to do that imperfection as a sign of that struggle is important.  This is the stuff that makes us proud to be human—that we can show up for each other and care.  So hey, let’s not outsource that, OK?

 

 *And remember, people, Soylent Green is people so there’s at least one use for us! 

 

Many thanks to Anjan Chatterjee for his thoughts on AI (Here)