Thoughts - AI has no place in art 1

“Let's hope that nations which have and represent art will never cease to exist, no matter how small they are. You must excuse me, but I simply wanted to tell you that an artist also has his country, a homeland in which he has to have unshakable faith and for which he has a fervent heart.” - Antonin Dvorak

Art and culture are distinctly human creations and experiences. Before modernism turned art inward to the individual and abstraction, a lot of art's purpose was to reflect beauty and character of certain peoples as a whole. Orchestral music specifically was written to capture moods of entire nations or of lands and nature. "Ode to Joy" was said to be written about brotherhood and joining of peoples. As Mr. Dvorak says above, an artist has his country/homeland, in which he must have faith and a fervent heart. So therefore it seems that art and culture, created by humans and for human experience, may also have been grounded in this faith and heart.

Where is the heart in AI? The heart is nonexistent. It's purpose is offloaded to a standard measure.

AI at this point is quite literally the sum/normalization of inputs from aggregate data. It is not reflective of a culture. It has no culture. It is not a nation or a people. As a matter of fact, it is interesting to consider in the future if we will have AIs unique to various countries and peoples. We already have China-built AI that reflects inherently communist values and biases. Many other countries do not seem to have ambitions to build their own general intelligence machines. The US is striving and forcing it into use. Funny that the one nation whose identity and culture seems these days to be most fluid (citing the ol' 'melting pot' analogy) is leading the foray into Artificial General Intelligence.

Even as I try to type this blog post from my own heart and mind without any tech assistance at all, I am bombarded with corrections and with symbols asking if I want to use it. The website blog features flag my "mistakes" in writing and suggest other words. As I end a sentence for some reason it often attaches a link to the next word, as if I wanted to do that. All it does is get between my heart and my canvas: this soulless digital space.

That is what AI does to art. It interferes. I have absolutely no interest in looking at art whose creation remotely grazes the use of AI. To me, using AI implies the artist fails to understand the point of their art to begin with. I look at art for genuine human expression: whether it be of an individual or a peoples. I am burdened daily by the expression of corporate entities and marketing; by the forces of government and politics. I seek genuine human expression and creativity. I seek the views of actual cultures of people, group cohesion and belief. I seek strength in faith of humanity, not the efficient offloading of a task. Art is not efficient, nor should it be, and AI has no heart or culture. Therefore, there exist two grounded reasons why I will avoid AI in art for as long as I can muster.

You know what medium does not interefere with art creation at all and allows for the avoidance of AI entirely? A single piece of paper and pencil or charcoal, or a single musical instrument and a brain of ideas/moods to explore....