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AI-aesthetics and the Anthropocentric Myth of Creativity

Publication data:

Emanuele Arielli and Lev Manovich,"AI-aesthetics and the Anthropocentric Myth of Creativity," Nodes Journal of Art and Neuroscience Fall 2022, nodesjournal.com.

From the article:

Suppose human creativity could be potentially replicated by mechanical processes. In that case, we would face a crossroads: either we could give up using the concept of creativity altogether, or if we hold to our common understanding of what creativity is, we could agree to apply this concept to non-human phenomena as well, as world champion Lee Sedol did when judging the performance of AlphaGo. However, the idea that artificial creativity discloses the mechanic nature of human creativity should also be met with a bit of critical detachment, particularly if we consider the specific case of the arts. In fact, artificial reproductions of human artifacts do not follow the same processes with which humans actually produced those artifacts. Nobody thinks that Mondrian followed procedures similar to the algorithm used in 1966 that generated pseudo-Mondrian, even though the public appreciated the artificial images more than the original ones....

Article  2022