Articles claiming that AI will not only replace blue-collar and white-collar workers but also surpass humans in artistic fields such as composing music, writing, and drawing are now familiar. There is talk of novelist AIs, painter AIs, and composer AIs appearing. Perhaps they are already active somewhere, but we just haven’t heard the news yet. However, AI can never become an artist.
Art is the act of a prophet-like figure first recognizing an unknown world that no one has ever gone to and presenting it to the public in a dreamlike form. An artist stands at the intersection of the world known to humans and the world that is yet unknown, gradually expanding humanity’s frontier. In that respect, the current trend of calling just anyone an artist is extremely vulgar. It is wrong to call someone an artist just because they sing well, dance well, play an instrument well, draw well, or write well. No matter how plausibly they display their talents, if there is no novelty that did not exist before, they are a “skilled worker,” not an artist.
Artists explore worlds that scholars have not yet even established as theories. Of course, scholars also pioneer new areas, but in many cases, they draw inspiration from pure literature or philosophy. The portrait hanging in Einstein’s studio was not of Newton, the father of science, but of the philosopher (writer) Schopenhauer. (He said that Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation inspired him to conceive the theory of relativity.) Psychologist Jordan Peterson said that Dostoevsky was one of the greatest psychologists in history, and Carl Jung was also influenced by Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. Literary works and philosophy have served as beacons for research in psychology and physics.
Like this, an artist must become a pioneer in humanity’s journey to find truth. They must have a clear reason and purpose for why they are pioneering a certain field, and they must also have a moral and human sense of responsibility for the impact their work will have on society. Therefore, it can be said to be a very serious error to call people who simply contrive to capture human senses, those who are solely focused on achieving a “hit (jackpot),” artists. Artworks should make people engage in deep imagination and contemplation, not create mass frenzy and imitation like popular culture.
An artist stakes their life on their work. The public who encounters the artwork can gain a much deeper understanding of the work by understanding the artist’s life. The life of an artist is the journey of a traveler searching for truth, and the character of the artist formed in that process is embedded in the work. Memories of childhood and first love, pain and frustration, success and joy, memories of love and betrayal, etc., are scattered and reconfigured like small particles to form the framework of the work.
Therefore, the artist’s life also becomes a criterion for evaluating the truthfulness of the work. If they lived a life far from truth, a life with a different exterior and interior, their work is just a flashy lie. Often, people who like a certain work also like the author of that work. They like them as a fellow human being, respect them, and further resonate with them. No matter how plausible something a machine produces may be, it lacks life. It lacks the fierce scars of a soul that has passed through countless hardships of life with its whole body. What do I care what a machine thinks about love, what the machine’s philosophy of life is? It’s all just plausible patchwork.
AI can create ambient music to be played appropriately in coffee shops or restaurants, or create paintings to be hung in hotel rooms or bathrooms, but that’s it. What something that does not have life, something that is not human, does may be production activity, but it cannot be art.
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