"Can artificial intelligence be creative, can it create art?"

Several questions immediately come to mind. Is all creativity art? Is all art creative? What is art anyway? Is consciousness, or subjectivity, important on the part of the maker of the thing in question? Can a non-conscious thing "express" anything? Can a non-conscious thing demonstrate aesthetic insight?

It seems to me that the question of whether AI can be conscious is critically important here. And that is a very tough question, perhaps forever unknowable with any certainty, since subjectivity, by its very nature, cannot be verified objectively.

Of course an artificial intelligence can do anything a human brain can, because an artificial intelligence can be as similar to a human brain as you want. — zookeeper

Is this true? As similar as you want? What about exactly identical? In that case, it would have to be an actual human brain.

Are we talking a physically instantiated neural net approximating the function of a brain or a simulation of a neural net running on a conventional computer?

At this point in our understanding, it isn't at all clear to any of us what consciousness is or how it comes about, no matter what anyone on any side of the ever-raging debate likes to think. When something is clearly understood, like the basic shape of the planet, there is usually a strong consensus. When there is no consensus even among the so-called experts on the subject, we can be reasonably sure that the issue is not well understood. I can't think of a feature of the actual world more puzzling at this point to us humans than our capacity for everyday, subjective, conscious experience. And my puzzlement here and claim that we don't know what it is or how it can be, contrary to what some might suspect, has nothing whatsoever to do with religion, a need to believe in an afterlife, or any such thing. I am mostly an atheist, mostly hostile toward religion. And I do not believe that my personal identity and point of view will survive the disorganization of my brain. Regardless, I have considered and researched the problem of consciousness for many years and am completely baffled by it and am aware of the general failure to understand the matter among the experts.

We simply don't know yet if a brain is all there is to consciousness. Second, even if there is nothing in addition to the brain, we don't know if the actual substance of brain tissue matters. It could be the case that the architecture of the neural net isn't all there is to it. The suspicions of some that there might be something more going on inside the neurons, for example, or that some kind of quantum effects (knee-jerk reactions to my use of the word "quantum" fully expected) or some other unknown factor might be important can't be completely ruled out at this point. If any such thing is important, even if the functional architecture of the neural net exactly copies the connections and neuron-firing behavior in a human brain, it may be that such a neural net simulation written in Java and running on a smartphone is missing some critical condition for actual consciousness.

In the first example I showed this was a program that learned what things were and is then instructed to produce an image of that thing based upon what it has learned.
I think it is fair to say that is an example of genuine creativity because there is some motive there to succeed at producing the thing in question as an image.
It does not simply copy and paste an image...it starts from nothing and eventually converges upon an image that resembles what it has learned is that thing. — m-theory

I am someone who has often been called an artist. I paint pictures. Sometimes I get paid for them. I can paint a very convincing likeness of whatever it is that I am looking at, including subtle human faces, perhaps the most difficult thing to convincingly represent. This is very impressive to most people who see what I have painted. But when I am fairly accurately copying appearances and making an oil painting that resembles a photograph of someone, I don't feel that I am being particularly creative. And it doesn't feel like art. Slavish copying of appearances, in my mind, is precisely the sort of painting that lacks creativity and art. The more accurate I am, the more stiff and the less artistic it feels.

When I am doing that, I am a human camera, a human copy machine. It is a kind of algorithmic surveying. Imagine that you are given some line diagram and then you use rulers, protractors, and other tools to measure every point, every angle, and so on, and you painstakingly reproduce that on a sheet of paper, such that you get a convincing copy that is accurate to within very small tolerances. That's what I am doing mentally. I have developed a mental procedure for comparing and reproducing relative angles, distances, colors, and so on.

People often breathlessly tell me about some of the portraits I have painted that I have "captured his soul!" They often comment that I must really have deep insight into the sitter to be able to capture their character like that. In my mind, I roll my eyes. They simply don't understand how I did it. I have done nothing so mysterious as that. A camera can do better than I did at reproducing a bunch of geometric relationships and it has no insight into the person's character. No insight is needed. I can convincingly copy any visual appearance. It is largely an algorithmic, mechanical process. It is generally no more artistic that what a surveyor does at a construction site.

Further, all of this that I can do can be taught to most anyone, given some time. It is nothing magical. I haven't been touched on the head by the gods. It is a skill that can be learned and has nothing to do with talent, whatever that is supposed to be. It just happens to be a skill that few spend the time acquiring. Most people are skilled at reproducing complex mouth sounds that they have heard others produce. We don't call them creative or artistic, and we aren't terribly impressed, I think, mostly because such skill is almost universal.

All that said, I do think that artistic things can happen in a painting, a musical performance, or some such thing. But this isn't to be found in the preciseness, the accuracy, the perfection, the detail, the amount of time it takes, the convincingness of a representation, or any such thing. As I see it, it happens when aesthetic feeling gets involved in a certain way. There is a kind of feedback loop between the piece and the creator. A machine can play a bunch of notes in precise time and with perfect pitch. It can play a Beethoven piece given the score. Even a player piano can do that. But can it do that with feeling? Sure, even a mechanical performance of a Beethoven piece can make us feel something, but can a computer hear and feel the music while playing it and expressively adjust the sound to enhance the feeling impact for an aesthetic effect that it desires to communicate to an audience, or even just to feel itself?

There is something in a Jimi Hendrix guitar performance that I think a computer would be hard-pressed to pull off. A human guitar player hears the sound being produced and feels the emotional effect it is having and then further modulates the sound to steer that feeling in a desired direction to express yet more feeling. A painter, if not a complete slave to the subject matter and the need to be perfectly accurate, can do the same thing. There is feeling even behind the movements of your hand as you make those flourishes while signing your name. The art, at least in part, is in the endless micro-adjustments made throughout your gesture-making which are part of a feeling feedback loop.

Feeling. It seems to me that a true experiential subject, a feeling agent, must be involved in anything that we might call art.

Do computers feel? In the history of computing, do we have any reason to believe that a computer has ever felt even simple pain, for example? How might you program a computer to feel pain? Computers follow instructions. They execute procedures. Can you write a step by step program that would produce a subjective feeling of pain in the computer executing that program? Is there a way that you could arrange a gazillion dominoes such that when you set them falling, the domino arrangement feels pain?


The Grand Canyon is beautiful and it moves us. But is it art? It was generated unconsciously by certain processes. You might even say that there is a certain complex algorithm behind it. Is it art? I don't think so. That which created it didn't intend for it to be felt that way and had no capacity to feel the effect of experiencing its form. This, I think, is somewhat analogous to anything a computer might do that might move us.

Besides, it is humans that are programming the computers or training the neural nets to give a certain effect. We write the algorithm that generates something that looks like poetry. But was the computer moved by something and inspired to express its feelings? Did it carefully and feelingfully choose words for just the desired effect? Did it understand what it was saying?

While performing Bach's Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott, can a computer feel the contrition?

Listen to this performance by David Gilmour, especially the guitar solo at 4:37:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTseTg48568

If a computer "composes" or plays a series of sounds like that, is it pouring out its "heart"? Is it feeling all that emotion it is communicating? And how can there be communication of feeling if that which produces it doesn't feel it? Notice that all of those performers are apparently feeling something while they are playing. That, I think, is key.

Marcel Duchamp said “I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.“ I take that to mean that art is that which is created by artists. His work “Fountain” (an old urinal) was art because he said so, he turned a urinal into a piece of art by his action.

Being creative is not the same as making art. Children are creative in their playing. We all go through that. When we are making art we’re making creativity an “art”, as a verb. It’s an action that the individual makes. Duchamp made the urinal a piece of art by his creative action. You can decide to call it art when you see it, and some regard this as the step that makes it art, the viewer, but it became art immediately by his actions.

An A. I. doesnt have the desire to take that action. Neither does anything else. The A. I. might do something creative, but it’s not yet art because the A. I. doesn’t chose to regard itself as an artist.

Just come to this, as only joined a few weeks ago. As a practising writer, I would like to add a couple of points. As has been argued here already, Artificial Intelligence is a programme, set up by human intelligence, so dependent on the initial criteria set by human agency. Computer programmes have been long used in writing and musical composition, particularly to generate randomness (in, for example, Harrison Birtwistle's music), but as such, are a tool, not a source of creativity.
The more important point is that a great deal of literature is already produced by second-level creativity even though written by humans, in being written to formulae - almost all 'literary fiction' published today is generated by Creative Writing course graduates following templates or simply recycling current tropes. To be be genuinely creative, literature has to be self-reflexive to the extent of undermining its own status as 'literature', pointing back to the world from a self-declared artifice. It's difficult to believe programmed computers would develop that self-reflexivity.

Does nature create art? No. Nature produces things that have an aesthetic appeal to humans, but nature itself has no aesthetic sense. Artificial intelligence, as understood today, also lacks aeathetic sensibility. Like nature, it could produce things that we find aesthetically appealing, but that is not creating art.

We could, perhaps, create an artificial mind with an aesthetic sense. This mind would need to interact with the world and feel emotions. It would need desires, longing, and a sense of awe. Is this really possible? Maybe.

Maybe the true relevance of this discussion relates not to A.I.-produced texts but to the poststructuralist literary Theorists' argument that all literary texts are purely derived from preceding texts, as all linguistic statements are articulated from the pre-existing language; so literary texts might just as well be generated by computer programmes as by writers. That was part of the ideological anti-humanist stance of the poststructuralists, once fashionable although now sliding into the old-fashioned.

A brief comment on Brett's remark re. Duchamp: Duchamp's urinal has been widely misunderstood and misconstrued because taken out of its context (and overrated at the same time). Duchamp was asserting the right of the artist as opposed to the curator or exhibition juror to determine what counted as art when submitted for exhibition. It was a challenge to fellow judges of the panel he was on for a 1917 New York exhibition, and for that purpose could have been anything at all. He wasn't making an ontological statement on art or artworks that would apply beyond those circumstances. There is the further definitional problem in who counts as 'an artist' - anyone who proclaims themself to be one? The only way to resolve that circularity is by making the claim dependent on having an existing reputation as an artist, as Duchamp had - without that, his gesture would have carried no weight except for his judging role, which itself depended on his standing as an artist.
If there is a relevance here to the A.I./literature debate, it lies in this same circularity of defining what constitutes a 'literary' text, and by whom.

Can computers be genuinely creative and/or create art? — m-theory

Can most humans? I hear the phrase "truth is stranger than fiction" quite a lot. For me, anyone who says or agrees with such a phrase has little to no imagination and I question whether they understand the meaning of "truth", "stranger", and "fiction". But then I just assume that people like idioms and don't care if they make sense. Anyway...

The definition of "creative" may answer the OP:

creative: relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.

I would be most impressed by a computer that interrupted its performance of the task you had assigned to it, by saying, "Your work is just too boring. Here, listen to this song I have been composing."

A computer becoming bored and deciding to make up a tune would be a sign of computer intelligence. Emily Howell is a demonstration of David Cope's skill in instructing the computer. I find Emily Howell's composition interesting enough, but it did begin at David Cope's instigation. — Bitter Crank

I think this highlights the fact that, SO FAR, machines do not have imagination. But that does not seem to be a REQUIREMENT of creativity. Since it is an "or" in the definition, we can drop the "imagination" from the definition and we get:

creative: relating to or involving original ideas, especially in the production of artistic work

Emily Howell seems to meet this definition entirely?

When we talk about creativity in art, aren't we talking about how a 'thing',an art-work, reaches out to us in a way that goes beyond it self as a thing qua thing. — Cavacava

Yes, but it seems the viewer of art is just as capable of adding this extra meaning as the creator of the art. So even if 'art' is created by a machine with no 'intention' of creating 'art', it becomes art when the viewer views it as such. Kind of the inverse of how a blank white canvas becomes 'art' when some famous 'artist' puts a frame on it and sells it for 8 million bucks.

I'm in the process of potty-training a puppy we just got. She's in the process of adapting to my positive reinforcement towards having her relieve herself outside. I, in turn, am adapting my behavior to her to better the efficiency of that reinforcement. A consistent tone and wording of command, consistent praise and timing of reward. We are modifying each other.

When an AI can engage in artwork that involves not just novelty but mutual adaptation as part of the reflection on the art, as art, I'll be satisfied we're dealing with art (maybe not good art). When we can share a common mental space where art, as a term, means something to both, where the AI can answer my question on the genesis of its artwork and I can give feedback and it can acknowledge and appreciate that feedback.

And just as neither Beethoven's mother nor father were responsible for his composition, the programmer must be sufficiently distinct from the creation. I couldn't predict my child's passion for the piano prior to his birth (I would have designed him, rather, with a passion for cosmology that he lacks if it were up to me).

I wonder if this is realistic to expect.

When an AI can engage in artwork that involves not just novelty but mutual adaptation as part of the reflection on the art, as art, I'll be satisfied we're dealing with art (maybe not good art). — JosephS

Ok, but in the meantime...what do we call the original piece of music created by an unthinking machine? Is the programmer the artist? Or is the piece not art?

Let's say I paint a picture, and then someone says, "hey, that's a nice piece of art". Then I respond, "actually, I did not intend to create art, so that is not art; that is just me painting the idea that popped into my head." Is the work art or not? What is the difference between the above example and the "art" that a machine spits out?

It seems we all need to agree on "what is art?" before we will make much progress on whether AI could create such a thing. And what are the odds we all agree on what art is?

You can decide to call it art when you see it, and some regard this as the step that makes it art, the viewer, but it became art immediately by his actions. — Brett

Hey Brett, you seem pretty informed when it comes to art (I enjoyed arguing with you last time - and I am not trying to say you are not informed on other subjects, haha), this thread has brought up a question for me:

Take as an example a work that WAS NEVER INTENDED to be "art" but was deemed "art" by a viewer. Has the viewer become the artists in that case? Or is this somehow NOT "art"?

It's music and music is an art form. But I'd have difficulty calling the software the artist.

Where does that leave us? I suppose until the AI can be considered as having an identity separate from the programmer, it means the artist would be the programmer.

If I speak in a lyrical tone but insist that I'm not trying to sing, it may sound as art but that would be unintentional. Should a cloud that combines characteristics of Donatello's David with Michelangelo's be considered art?

If you record my voice or photograph the clouds it might be appreciated as art. In these cases the person most responsible for bringing it to the attention of the public would be you. You are the witness that framed the phenomena and raised it to public attention. I have a friend who took a marvelous photo of colored buoys on a pier. He was the one with the artistic eye, regardless of the fishermen who (unintentionally) arranged the buoys. At some point, since I'm not a complete moron, I'd "discover" the musical nature of my voice and insist on a cut. Just means that we're dealing with a certain ambiguity in artistry shared between two creators (Rogers & Hammerstein).

Should a cloud that combines characteristics of Donatello's David with Michelangelo's be considered art? — JosephS

This gets to my point. If I take a picture of those clouds and frame then it is art no question, right? (your next paragraph agrees)

When did it become art? When the picture was done printing? When it was put in a frame
and hung on a wall? Or my assertion, it became art as soon as the viewer thought of it as art?

Your definition of art seems to include some aspect of sharing that experience with other humans. So I could not create anything just for myself that would be considered art?

It's music and music is an art form. But I'd have difficulty calling the software the artist.

Where does that leave us? I suppose until the AI can be considered as having an identity separate from the programmer, it means the artist would be the programmer. — JosephS

But you just said that if the creator did NOT intend to create art it is not art. Couldn't the programmer say they were not trying to create art, they were trying to create a computer program that generated previously unknown pleasant sounding noise?

I think saying that "art" can only be created intentionally, is quite limiting and can result in music, paintings, poetry etc NOT counting as art. Meanwhile, EVERYTHING that is created by humans counts as art IF the person that made it said it is art? This seems problematic.

Maybe I can solve our disagreement by using the word artistic? By making it an adjective does it soften the meaning? Those clouds are artistic, but they are not 'art' until a picture is taken and framed? I think I could get behind that.

OK, carry on talking among yourselves; the philosophy world seems as cliquey as any other.

When did it become art? When the picture was done printing? When it was put in a frame
and hung on a wall? Or my assertion, it became art as soon as the viewer thought of it as art? — ZhouBoTong

I don't have any problem with your assertion. Someone else may have a more developed position on the 'coming to be' process. The underlying premise is that the label art is a subjective attribution.

Your definition of art seems to include some aspect of sharing that experience with other humans. So I could not create anything just for myself that would be considered art? — ZhouBoTong

It's not so much that the definition of art requires sharing as much as for me to ascribe artist to what might be, rather, a non-conscious automaton, I include the process of sharing perceptions as part of the verification process. A question might follow of the artist who refuses to engage the audience ("let them think of it what they will"). In this case there is a certain presumption of art. Is it part of an exhibit? Is the artist paid as an artist? Do they claim themselves an artist? The refusal of a human to engage still presents the ability for mutual adaptation as that choice to not engage may be interpreted as a principled effort to not provide preconceptions to the audience (or they just might hate talking to art aficionados).

But you just said that if the creator did NOT intend to create art it is not art. Couldn't the programmer say they were not trying to create art, they were trying to create a computer program that generated previously unknown pleasant sounding noise? — ZhouBoTong

Not sure if there is any real space between 'pleasant sounding noise' and 'art', but I would take the programmer at their word that they were not trying to create art, even if a melodic ditty results. At that point, as with the example of the unintentional lyrical voice or colorful buoys arranged seemingly without artistic intention, art derives from not from the naturalistic source but from the perceiver, framing it, recording it, sharing it.

Again, someone may have a more developed concept here that distinguishes between a 'producer' of art (painters, sculpters, singer) as opposed to a 'recorder' (photographer, naturalist audio recorder).

I think saying that "art" can only be created intentionally, is quite limiting and can result in music, paintings, poetry etc NOT counting as art. Meanwhile, EVERYTHING that is created by humans counts as art IF the person that made it said it is art? This seems problematic. — ZhouBoTong

To suggest that anything a person claims as art, even a blank canvas, is art, is a liberally expansive definition of the word. I don't have any problem with that, even if it does lead some rather tasteless results (brings to mind the performance artist with the speculum who would sit naked and invited viewers to peer inside her as part of an exhibit). So the artist saying "this is art" as a sufficient condition to label art doesn't present any obvious problems to me (with certain caveats around sincerity and the nature of the thing saying it). Even saying "this isn't art" doesn't prevent the viewer/recorder from deriving art from it, at which point the viewer becomes the artist in extracting it/framing it.

Things artistic, if I understand your meaning, are [1] things that might be considered art. Arguably unbounded. How about [2] things closely related in form or type to other things that are already typically perceived as art. Art and artists, as social disruptors, should rightfully chafe at this restriction. If the label art is essentially subjective so is artistic. It remains that my morning commute isn't art (it's a pain in the ass, daily slog) unless I call it so, and at which point you tell me that my art is lame-ass crap, which I agree with.

Is the set of things artistic larger than the set of things that are art? With definition [1] above it would seem the proposition is true. [2], to my eye, is not as clear. If 'artistic' gets us to the clouds that look like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, but doesn't include my latest bowel movement, or if artistic includes my dog barking Chopsticks but not the sound of me coughing up phlegm, this proposition is not nearly as clear cut.

OK, carry on talking among yourselves; the philosophy world seems as cliquey as any other. — David Rose

Maybe the true relevance of this discussion relates not to A.I.-produced texts but to the poststructuralist literary Theorists' argument that all literary texts are purely derived from preceding texts, as all linguistic statements are articulated from the pre-existing language; so literary texts might just as well be generated by computer programmes as by writers. That was part of the ideological anti-humanist stance of the poststructuralists, once fashionable although now sliding into the old-fashioned. — David Rose

I wish I had a well considered response to your comments, but I have to say I've never knowingly read a poststructuralist literary theorist. What I recall of my education regarding Duchamp is limited to analysis of Nude Descending a Staircase. My comments are at least one if not two or more rungs down the ladder of artistic analysis. What I have read on is articles regarding music generating programs that can produce never before heard compositions half way between Brahms and Beethoven.

I've written my own comments and topics which, as brilliantly conceived and executed as they are, have received absolutely no response in this forum. It is as pearls before swine, I tell you. :-)

The underlying premise is that the label art is a subjective attribution. — JosephS

Even saying "this isn't art" doesn't prevent the viewer/recorder from deriving art from it, at which point the viewer becomes the artist in extracting it/framing it. — JosephS

Well if you agree with both of these statements then our differences are not all that important :grin:

Things artistic, if I understand your meaning, are [1] things that might be considered art. Arguably unbounded. How about [2] things closely related in form or type to other things that are already typically perceived as art. Art and artists, as social disruptors, should rightfully chafe at this restriction. If the label art is essentially subjective so is artistic. It remains that my morning commute isn't art (it's a pain in the ass, daily slog) unless I call it so, and at which point you tell me that my art is lame-ass crap, which I agree with.

Is the set of things artistic larger than the set of things that are art? With definition [1] above it would seem the proposition is true. [2], to my eye, is not as clear. If 'artistic' gets us to the clouds that look like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, but doesn't include my latest bowel movement, or if artistic includes my dog barking chopsticks but not the sound of my coughing up phlegm, this proposition is not nearly as clear cut. — JosephS

I think I need to explain what I meant by 'artistic' with an example...I think language is the easiest. Most figurative language is artistic. If there was a clearer and more direct way of saying something then the ONLY reason for figurative language would be aesthetics or to gain an emotional response. While aesthetics and emotional responses are not art, they are the defined purpose of art.

And I do get that I am basically inventing word usage here (although it seems to meet the second definition of artistic - relating to or characteristic of art or artistry). But I have had too many art arguments like this, where I find myself generally agreeing but feeling like we just don't have the words to bridge our misunderstanding.

OK, carry on talking among yourselves; the philosophy world seems as cliquey as any other. — David Rose

Actually, less cliquey, but equally selfish :grin:

You will notice that almost every response in the thread (and many other threads) has a blue name included. That means they quoted (or tagged with @ button) the person. That sends the person a reminder that someone commented. Then we go and respond. I do try to read whole threads that I am involved in, but sometimes, you come back 48 hours later and there are 8 pages of responses. So you just hit the ones that were direct responses.

I think if you quote previous speakers you will be SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to get a response. Sorry if it seemed like you were being ignored.

It's difficult to believe programmed computers would develop that self-reflexivity. — David Rose

Agreed. But you also just pointed out that most humans can't really do it either.

Maybe the true relevance of this discussion relates not to A.I.-produced texts but to the poststructuralist literary Theorists' argument that all literary texts are purely derived from preceding texts, as all linguistic statements are articulated from the pre-existing language; so literary texts might just as well be generated by computer programmes as by writers. That was part of the ideological anti-humanist stance of the poststructuralists, once fashionable although now sliding into the old-fashioned. — David Rose

An interesting take. Is the stance basically questioning how 'creative' are all the things we refer to as 'creativity'? They have a point.

it lies in this same circularity of defining what constitutes a 'literary' text, and by whom. — David Rose

EVERY art thread includes me making arguments related to this quote (they may be simple and unrefined but I refuse to accept art being defined by an authority beyond the dictionary).

I voted NO, but what I meant was not yet, maybe not ever. Is there any reason why AI should develop ethics? Many creative and highly intelligent people are compete arseholes. Caravaggio threw acid in his girlfriend's face. Does this mean that an artificial intelligence will also be capable of being creative and arseholish at the same time too?

As I understand a great deal of modern theory, almost anything can be 'art' - it just depends on how we choose to see, say, an urinal or an unmade bed. In that case, more or less anything that can affect its environment can create art.

Take as an example a work that WAS NEVER INTENDED to be "art" but was deemed "art" by a viewer. Has the viewer become the artists in that case? Or is this somehow NOT "art"? — ZhouBoTong

Excuse the time taken to reply.

It might depend on the viewer. A critic might say its art, a child might say its art, a person who dislikes art might even say its bad art. But I don’t think any of them are artists. But how do I prove that? I think it makes sense at the least, or as a beginning, to say that an artist produces art, to begin with the artist.

I was wondering, if we destroyed all art, made it disappear, what would go and what would be left?

Excuse the time taken to reply. — Brett

No problem. We were talking in a couple different art threads...so hopefully my response is on topic.

I think it makes sense at the least, or as a beginning, to say that an artist produces art, to begin with the artist. — Brett

I am with you here, but it brings up questions:

What was the first art? The first two cavemen to see animals in the clouds? The first cave paintings? Or the first civilized human that intentionally created an abstract and/or impractical work that was designed to illicit an emotional response from its viewer?

and of course your question would similarly apply:

I was wondering, if we destroyed all art, made it disappear, what would go and what would be left? — Brett

Interesting question. Does artistic language count? Does figurative language serve a purpose besides "dressing up" the statement? What about Lionel Messi? Many professionals are called "artists" when they reach a high level, is this just a metaphor, or are we saying something about their skill being beyond reason or instruction? The more I think about it, the more we would be destroying EVERYTHING created by humans. I am looking at phones, staplers, printers, and clocks right now...they all have artistic elements.

So, could we actually destroy ALL art? Would that include destroying all minds capable of understanding, and therefor containing, art? I can understand there is a difference between "artistic" and "art" that potentially clarifies most of my problems...but how could the adjective "artistic" exist (or make sense) if there was no "art"?

Well, a bunch of questions with few answers. That's all I got :smile:

Excuse me while I wipe away the hubris.

Excuse me while I wipe away the hubris. — Brett

huh? please explain. I don't see where pride relates. And I barely made an argument, so it is not like you are referring to my confidence in being right. I don't get it?

Maybe this was supposed to be a response to the rich/poor thread? I still wouldn't see the hubris, but at least I was more strongly disagreeing.

I usually regard your posts as quite reasonable. Possibly I over reacted there. Throwing so many questions at me in one post didn’t seem like an attempt to address my post. I mean, did you expect me to address each question? It seemed more like a dismissal of the query. Anyway, I think the subject has been done to death, and I have my answer: only humans produce art.

I usually regard your posts as quite reasonable. — Brett

Well we don't need to go that far :razz:

Throwing so many questions at me in one post didn’t seem like an attempt to address my post. — Brett

Ok, I can see that...but that is exactly what I was doing. Your question made me think of all those questions. In order to answer YOUR question, I would need to know the answers to all of MY questions...I don't know those answers, so I could only give an incomplete answer to your question.

I mean, did you expect me to address each question? — Brett

Not at all. They were just there to show how difficult it would be FOR ME to answer your question. Those are all of the questions that I start considering in my attempt to answer your question.

I actually thought that your question was similarly rhetorical. It seemed designed to make us think about what art was, by thinking about what an absence of art would look like.

It seemed more like a dismissal of the query. — Brett

I can see how it could be seen that way. Does my explanation here at least convince you that that was not my intention? although I may need to work on my communication (or lack there of) style.

Anyway, I think the subject has been done to death, — Brett

What?!?! No, just kidding. Definitely done to death. I always feel like I am trying to answer these things in an objective manner, although I actually view most (all?) analysis/discussions on art as almost wholly subjective...this is probably where I just end up confusing people :grimace:

only humans produce art. — Brett

I am still not sold...but I don't have any arguments that are stronger than any of the weak unconvincing stuff I have already mentioned.

:up: p

A computer can produce art, but without emotion, it will forever lack that which can be deemed 'creativity'. It will have merely completed a series of tasks without a fuller understanding of its own product; it is this understanding and basic human touch that places the brute existence of art into the category of something inherently creative and wonderful. Fundamentally, this requires a level of independence that AI simply does not have.

Often creativity leaps beyond intellect, reason, and the logical; the very thing that is authentic and not artificial.