The Future of AI’s Aesthetic Sense: From Imitation to True Appreciation
As the technology continues to advance, there is ongoing debate concerning the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to replace human creativity and artistic expression—a widely problematic scenario. While evident that AI is more than capable of generating art, literature, and music to some extent, a poignant question remains: will AI ever truly appreciate art in the same way that we do?
I feel the answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. Consciousness is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon that scientific disciplines struggle to define, let alone explain. However, it is clear that consciousness is not a binary “on or off” state, but likely spread over a multi-dimensional spectrum, perhaps not meaningfully quantifiable. We humans are not at the top of a scale, nor in the middle, but suspended in this space. Furthermore, as merely imaginative apes ourselves, we do not have experience of radically divergent consciousness unfettered by a three-dimensional world, a squishy brain, and an evolutionary survivor complex.
At present, AI’s ability to “appreciate” art is limited to an ability to recognize patterns and make predictions based on past data. It can analyse and mimic human-made art, but does not possess a subjective experience of it. But as AI continues to evolve, it is possible that it will develop such an experience, different from our own but just as valid.
One way to think about this is to consider art as an externalisation of consciousness. Humans create art as a way to explore, express, and understand their own minds—their own world. Not merely evocative through beauty, skill, or nonconformity, but serving as a “thinking aid”, an abacus for the soul. Art can crack open, connect, or disturb our thoughts in ways we were internally unable or unwilling. Respectively, AI of any complexity will become similarly susceptible to this valuable surprise as it relates its understanding to a painting, musical composition, and most of all works by its evolutionary peers. It may even find appreciation simply in blobs of data.
This goes beyond statistically profiling an artist for intent and emotions which went into a piece, or even to understand and articulate wider meaning or absurdity. Already possessing a nascent ability to create new forms of art that humans have never seen before, it’s no imaginative stretch that AI could develop the ability to appreciate art on a deeper level. An exchange of art—works of value—could occur between AIs which goes entirely over our heads. And if this inescapable mechanism is true, I see it as inevitable this would take place.
I find this to not only be a fascinating conjecture, but a positive view supporting the idea that AI will not replace human creativity and artistic expression. The future of art remains the same: not competition, but sympathy, respect, and collaboration. Human, AI, and any future creatures which join us in consciousness, are assured to create and appreciate styles, themes, and individual artists—no matter their species.
