The creativity of "Digital Cows" - a Few thoughts on AI
How does the new enter the world? Given the current state of the art, probably not through generative AI.
In my opinion, artificial intelligence can be understood as an ontological affront. A digital—but perhaps also healing—disruption: after all, it forces humans to confront what defines them. No statistical mathematics (for what is called “artificial intelligence” is really nothing else, but this term isn’t very catchy) will be able to deal with the Foreign—as opposed to the “Other.”
The foreign, in contrast to the “Other,” cannot be captured within known systems of order (see my reflection on “foreignness”). In a system that calculates options for action based on probabilities, the “Other” can thus appear as a point of comparison or a counterpoint, as an opposite, or as something that does not exist—perhaps even as a missing element of known phenomena. The Other thus initially appears to us as something to be compared. Something is “different from…” and is thus related to the "non-Other". "The Other" can be integrated into one’s own horizon of rules and order—even if it is accepted only as something incomprehensible and other. It can be laced into a linguistic corset, and thus even a mathematically oriented linguistic model could at least describe it.
What does this mean for art? AI can create wonderful visual worlds, but only from the repertoire it knows. And it can never know what it doesn’t know—while there are ways to give it a kind of simulated “will” through mathematical rewards, even that is programmed. The “new”—as something unprecedented and uncategorizable—remains beyond its reach.
So are AI models “digital cows” that simply ruminate?
Perhaps. But what are we, then? Can we conceive of the unimaginable? Something completely new, with no connection to what has come before? Or do we, too, simply assemble, compare, and force it into an existing framework of thought and language?
No. Humans can do more than simply “sort”; the new and creative can trigger complex emotions ranging from fear to amusement, or the fun of experimenting and the joy of one’s own creativity. This level of processing is still lacking in any artificial intelligence, and it will remain beyond its reach.
The New, the Unseen, challenges humans to deal with it. A machine doesn’t even care. Perhaps that is the comforting essence: creativity—and the struggle that comes with it—is reserved for living beings. (And it is a real struggle: The most of my Pics were deleted by me, before anyone other can see it - to sloppy. To build a real good prompt is the real art of the progress!)