Entry #5 - On the Humanities and Being Human

 

When I think of the humanities as a field, I think of art, because I view art as something that is distinctly human. My definition of art does not just include drawing and painting, but literature, sculptures, architecture, philosophy, media, fashion, and music as well, and as far as humankind knows, only humans are capable of producing these many examples of art.

Sure, some animals can communicate by making music with their mating calls, but that comes solely from a desire to reproduce. Animals aren’t capable of thought in the way that humans are, and while they can be trained to do certain things, there is no possible way to train them to think as complexly as humans can. This is not to say that animals can’t experience emotions; of course they can. Animals - like my cat, Bugzy, for example - can feel agitated, bored, remorseful, curious, content, and excited, with or without the assistance of humans. Like humans, animals also have motivations of their own. Unlike humans, though, these motivations rarely transform into anything that doesn’t directly correlate to their survival. Animals crave comfort (warmth, shelter, and safe environments) as well as food, water, and sex, because they are simple creatures, and that is about it. Other than the six emotions I listed above, animals aren’t really capable of feeling much else. 

Animals will never see life through the rose-tinted glasses human children wear. They will never experience heartbreak or enjoy sex in the way that human adults do. Animals will never lay awake at night, haunted by that one time they’d called their teacher “mom” in seventh grade, just like they will never experience identity issues, political persecution, or existential dread. These, too, are distinctly human experiences - and only some of many human experiences that drive humans to produce art. Art, experience, and emotion are all intricately connected; humans can tell when art is soulless and void of life. 

Which is why AI, no matter how advanced it becomes, will never be able to produce art in the way that humans do. Why? Because Artificial Intelligence is just that - artificial. It is not natural. It is not human - or even animal - and is therefore inauthentic, as it cannot experience emotion in the way that humans do. They cannot experience the same events that humans experience, either. 

 
On September 6th, 2023, the United States Government Accountability Office released a statement on how different kinds of AI work and the potential threats AI has against personal privacy and even entire industries. According to the guide the GAO released, in order for Generative AI to produce “artwork,” a user must enter a request specific prompt into the AI’s system. The AI then analyzes the prompt, identifies features from the request through pre-existing images and art available online, and uses these images to generate new images of its own. 

 

So, when AI is asked to make art, it is not actually making art. All Generative AI can do is take the works of others and merge them into something new. This is not art; it is AI following directions from a user’s input. It is theft. It is akin to another person tracing over the work of a different artist or erasing that artist’s watermark and claiming the art as their own. 

What AI-generated “art” produces are soulless works of art that almost always end up looking the same, because there is no emotion behind these pieces. The images are simply generated without a second thought and almost instantaneously. No hard work goes into these pieces. No struggle goes into these pieces. That is why artwork handmade by humans will always be different from - and dare I say, superior to - AI produced artwork.