AI isn't making art. It’s selling us fake intimacy
Even an illusion has a basis in reality. Recently, I watched a cardinal attack its own reflection in a car mirror, mistaking its appearance for another bird. Human beings make similar mistakes in subtler ways. Every work of art appears to place another consciousness before us.
TL;DR
- AI generates outputs resembling human consciousness but lacks the underlying conscious reality and lived experience.
- Human relationships and art depend on the assumption of another conscious subject and shared reality.
- AI does not experience vulnerability, mortality, loss, or failure, making its 'reciprocity' performative.
- AI's contributions to cinema are logistical triumphs, not artistic ones, as it cannot participate in the human encounter that gives art meaning.
- Generative AI can stifle artistic growth by removing the resistance and struggle inherent in traditional creative processes.
- AI's creations are sophisticated illusions without a conscious subject behind them, leading to existential false alarms.
- True artistic connection arises between persons, with beauty serving as a medium for recognizing another conscious life.
- AI can reproduce the cadence and form of great works but lacks the remembered childhood, grief, or moral courage that give them ultimate meaning.
- The proliferation of AI artifacts leads to a scarcity of human presence, a culture of polished mirrors devoid of struggle.
- Trading the vulnerable artist for AI simulations deceives audiences and lulls creators into mistaking algorithmic manipulation for self-discovery.