I thoroughly enjoyed the final cut of Everything is a Remix which, if you’ve seen earlier cuts, has been updated to include a chapter about AI and its impact on Art.
The conclusion is uplifting, affirming the triumph of human creativity over the robots. Kirby Ferguson completed this multi-year project, manually curating an impressive number of clips (that he readily admits was done without permission) to make this masterpiece and clearly speaks from his soul.
His concluding message in part four, about the threat of Artificial Intelligences to Art, is inspiring,
Of all humanity’s technological advances, artificial intelligence is the most morally ambiguous from inception. It has the potential to create either a utopia or a dystopia. Which reality will we get?
Just like everybody else, I do not know what’s coming. But it seems likely that these visions of our imminent demise will someday seem campy and naïve – because our imaginings of the future always become campy and naïve.
AIs will not be dominating creativity because AIs do not innovate. They synthesize what we already know. AI is derivative by design and it is inventive by chance.
Computers can now create but *they are not creative.* To be creative you need to have some awareness, some understanding of what you’re doing. AIs know nothing whatsoever about the images and words they generate.
Most crucially, AIs have no comprehension of the essence of art: living. AIs don’t know what it’s like to be a child. To grow-up. To fall in love. To fall in lust. To be angry. To fight. To forgive. To be a parent. To age. To lose your parents. To get sick. To face death.
This is what human expression is about. Art and creativity are bound to living, to feeling.
Art is the voice of a person. And whenever AI art is anything more than aesthetically pleasing, it’s not because of what the AI did. It’s because of what a person did.
Art is by humans, for humans.
Everything is a Remix
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