The Mystery of Art

Ask some artificial intelligence bot to paint you a picture of how the bot feels. Can you even get an output? My guess is that you would get a flat color. Maybe green because systems are running as expected. My point is that art from a robot is not art. Robot art is innovative and resourceful, however, it lacks true creativity, emotion and character. Real Art can only be created by humans.

A long time ago Art was the only method to hold time still. Cave paintings of animals that are safe to eat and how to capture them. Along with portraits of people that wanted to be remembered for how they appeared at certain life stages. Now we have photographs that can capture the moment brilliantly. We also have gps tracking to see where the fish population travels in an effort to fish or save the ever diminishing tuna population. Technology is great. The advancements in how we do things and what we can accomplish with computers is astonishing. Algorithms that can buy and sell stocks based on complex human created rules. But there is a line where technology can not cross. Technology can not replace human emotion. A camera does not know why it is taking a picture unless is it programmed to do so by a human. The fish tracked by gps can be guided into nets, but only a human can decide if the fish should be caught or left free.

The artist is an example of hardware that can’t be replaced. Art is a skill and there are techniques that can be learned. But the reality is that there are no rules. An artist can create whatever they would like to create however they feel like creating. You can’t teach that to a software. A software just looks at everything else that has been created and iterates. An artist can create something novel. An artist can bring to life something that has never been thought of out of thin air. This is what is so great about the human brain. It is a mystery to me how art is created. Something from nothing.