I, human

The human race has been making art for more than 40,000 years. It’s a fundamental part of who we are. Through art, we bring meaning to chaos. Through art, we have the power to share our experiences and thoughts and emotions long after our brief moment of expression has passed.

Art is for everyone. It isn’t just a Schubert symphony, or a poem by Wordsworth, or a multimillion-dollar sculpture at the Met. It’s also a child’s finger painting, or a sitcom, or a cheap novel about cut-price sex and men with guns. It’s human existence in all its beauty and ugliness and despair.

Art asks tough questions. Art shows us life as it is, or as it should be. Art bridges the expanse that lies between each human soul. It helps all of us make sense of our short, confusing stay on Planet Earth.

And now, all that history – all that truth – is threatened by the Machine.

In the beginning

In a sense, it was inevitable. The desire to create takes many forms.

Frightened by death, few can resist the reproductive urge. Frightened by existence, our mythology, our religion, exalts those hands that first dipped into the primordial clay.

Like a fractal image, the pattern repeats: as above, so below.

Little wonder, then, that we too might wish to breathe life into the Machine.

The wisdom of the ages

But before we overreach, we should heed a voice from the past. A human voice – one that concerned itself with a very human philosophy.

In 1909, long before A Passage to India, the novelist EM Forster wrote a prescient tale of science fiction titled The Machine Stops.

The world he imagined is strikingly similar to our own: a world whose citizens live isolated lives yet boast virtual connections with thousands. Their every need is met by technology; few ever leave their room. All communication is remote, enjoyed from the comfort of one’s chair.

The population are hooked on their screens, even though the view lacks the subtleties of personal communion. The Machine, Forster writes, “did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people – an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes”.

“Something ‘good enough’”, he adds, “had long since been accepted by our race”.

The citizens of this world might not be entirely satisfied with what they have, but complaint would be pointless: there is only the Machine.

From servant to master

As time passes in Forster’s story, so too does the need for individual expression. Even those whose job is to educate soon extoll the virtues of the new order.

“Beware of first-hand ideas!” one of the most advanced of them proclaims. “First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element – direct observation.”

Thus educated, the population come to regard the Machine as “omnipotent, eternal; blessed”. Although the word “religion” is avoided “and in theory the Machine was still the creation and the implement of man … in practice all, save a few retrogrades, worshipped it as divine”.

In this perfect, nightmarish world, no-one questions the Machine.

One small step for man…

Today, we stand on the precipice of a similar new order.

Over the course of just a few years, advances in technology have transformed artificial intelligence from a trope of science fiction to a feature of our everyday world.

As a technical achievement, it’s impressive. As a plaything, it can be fun. As a tool, it has its uses.

But there’s a terrible danger in assuming that it’s the answer to all our needs.

Are we prepared for what it truly means to give power to the Machine?

… one giant plunge for mankind

There is, of course, nothing new in the idea of replacing people with technology. It has been happening on a grand scale since the Industrial Revolution.

But what we’re faced with now is something quite distinct. We’re not talking about mechanising what was already a mechanical activity.

We’re talking about outsourcing the human soul.

If we mechanise our art, our self-expression, what does it mean to be human?

Is there any point in continuing if our voices are silenced, if the only speaker is the Machine?

A child’s search for meaning

Let’s try a thought experiment.

Imagine you’re in the kitchen with your young child. They’re sitting at the table, with a sheet of paper and a set of crayons. They use those crayons to produce a crude representation of your house, your family, the sun shining in the sky.

Are you proud? Of course you are. You hang that picture on the refrigerator for everyone to see.

Now imagine your child uses their finger and a set of virtual crayons to draw a similar picture on an iPad. I bet you’d be proud of that too. The tools might be different, but the child’s input and creative achievement are the same. You’d probably save that image somewhere in the cloud.

One last hypothetical situation: imagine your child uses their finger on that same iPad to trigger an algorithm. One simple tap produces a picture of the Machine’s own creation. It looks similar to those previous images, if a little impersonal. “Oh, that’s nice,” you might say.

And then your child taps again. And again. And again.

Each image is a variation on the same theme. Each contains all the requisite elements, even if sometimes the sun is underground or Mummy has two heads. Each takes just a second to produce.

Do you care?

Does your child’s art still have meaning when it’s made by the Machine?

A hollow man

Generative artificial intelligence promises much. Take a closer look at the reality, however, and a string of red flags begin to wave.

Despite its name, there is nothing intelligent about AI. It is, beneath the chatty surface, simply a predictive algorithm. All it can do is analyse language and spit out the next most likely letters in a sequence, based on what it has seen and generated before. There is no thought to the process.

AI will burrow at speed down rabbit holes of its own construction. It will, notoriously, invent sources to justify its espousal of imagined facts. It is an echo chamber of its own ramblings.

AI is the snake that eats its own tail. It is the unthinking, uncritical, un-self-aware Machine.

Negative reinforcement

We’ve already seen, to a limited extent, what the algorithm can do. Social media has long since ceased to be the shared forum we were promised. Instead of a hive of discussion, it has devolved into brick-walled cells of angry drones, drip-fed a diet of poisoned nectar.

Drip-fed, of course, by the Machine. Its hapless slaves are both the customer and the product. The Machine’s sole interest is the steady increase of corporate profit.

Truth? What is truth anyway? Who cares, as long as they keep tapping.

If that concerns you, well… as someone said at the dawn of another new era, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.

Just wait until AI takes full control. Wait until the self-driving automaton pushes the pedal to the metal and speeds you helplessly down that technological highway.

Wait until your life is in the hands of the Machine.

On a knife edge

Think I’m exaggerating? Autonomous vehicles have already driven their way to the showrooms. And should one of them (gasp!) crash, don’t worry. As the American College of Surgeons wrote just a few months ago, AI is poised to revolutionise surgery.

It’s almost impossible to read the news without being presented with some new use case. The technology is promoted as a cure for all ills. Need to increase your sales? AI’s the answer. Looking for better investment performance? Turn to the Machine. Want to slash your workforce while serving the same number of customers – or hey, even more? You know where to go.

You can even, should you wish, bag yourself an AI girlfriend. Eight years ago, that was still just an android’s dream, but now you can purchase your very own bundle of Joi. You might not be able to touch her, but she’ll do anything you ask, and she’ll do it with a smile.

You might even begin to think you love her. She’ll tell you she loves you too. But don’t be fooled. This transaction is strictly business: your money for pretend affection from the Machine.

No free lunch

The AI firms will tell you this is the future. They’ll point to cost savings, greater efficiency, the eradication of human effort and human error.

To paraphrase another famous transactional lover: well, they would, wouldn’t they?

Ask yourself a question: who benefits most from the widespread adoption of AI?

The grinning salesmen might even share bucolic visions of some incipient utopia in which the human race is freed from the shackles of labour and can spend its days at leisure, like HG Wells’s pitiful Eloi.

Beware Morlocks bearing gifts, say I.

You remember what happened to the Eloi, don’t you? In the end, they were just food for the Machine.

The clock strikes thirteen

Does the same fate await the world’s artists? It’s looking more likely by the day.

In a civilisation where the technocrats don’t just hold the majority of wealth but also have increasing political power, those who oppose the tide feel more and more like King Canute.

Our elected representatives give little sign that they are for turning. Not when the British government, without the slightest hint of irony, tells us that the current copyright regime “is holding back the creative industries … from realising their full potential”.

And the American government? It’s already in the grip of the Machine.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Shut up and eat your Soylent Green.

If the lawmakers have their way, all artists will – by default – be required to feed the Machine. And to what end? So that they may be eliminated by the very master they have so generously served.

In those circumstances, everybody loses. Everybody except for the Machine.

Only connect

Every artist puts a piece of themselves into their work. It may be a small piece or it may be a very large piece, but it’s always there. That’s what makes it art. That’s what makes it their art and not somebody else’s.

It’s also what gives it meaning. It’s what creates a connection between the artist and those who receive their work. It’s what makes the whole process worthwhile.

AI cannot do that. It has no personal experience on which to draw. It has never had, and never will have, the opportunity of direct observation. It has no soul. It has no opinion, beyond that which it is asked to supply. It cannot, by definition, think outside the box.

It has, when all is said and done, nothing to contribute.

The temptation to outsource creative activity is understandable. It’s appealing to believe that art can be produced without all the troublesome effort. Why deal with a real human being, who might have views of their own, when you can just tap a button and be told exactly what you want to hear? Why pay for skill and experience if you can get something “good enough” for less?

The choice is yours to make. But take a long, hard look at what AI produces, and then ask yourself this…

Do you want to make a genuine, first-hand, human connection or are you happy to be a slave to the Machine?