The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Culture and Art

Artificial intelligence has become so fashionable, there is so much talk about it, about what it can do and do to us, that it almost seems that we already have one foot in the dystopian world that it inhabits. Will Smith in Yo Robot.

The other day I had breakfast with Chat GPT. As I drank my coffee, he told me that a bad AI could very well enslave us all and take over the world. But he also told me that a good AI could very well help us go faster in that long-distance race, that we have been running against death for centuries, to find a cure for the most terrible diseases.

Artificial intelligences are here to stay. And while we fool around with them for fun, AI creators, connoisseurs and legislators are looking for the best way to insert them into our lives, while keeping them under control. Because AIs hide a dark side. Well, actually they don’t even hide it, because they confess it themselves.

The dark side of AI gives for endless penalties. From kill us alluntil keep our jobs and send us to unemployment, going through destroying what we call art.

Destroy art?

Yeah. destroy art.

As programmers, connoisseurs and legislators are very busy defining and regulating the presence of AI in political and economic structures, let’s talk about culture and art and how to protect them from AIa safeguard that has never been among the main priorities of those who govern our destinies.

The bit of AI that programmers, connoisseurs and legislators are letting us know, so that people like you and me get used to AI, is the one that they have programmed to create texts, images, and music… Wow, what a coincidence , the raw material of culture and art.

Since ever art has been the realm of authenticity. The great truths of the human being are those that sustain art since the beginning of humanity. Dissatisfaction, the heroism of inhabiting a hostile world, love, heartbreak, loneliness, admiration, hate, friendship, revenge, fear, courage, hope, despair, faith, ties, freedom… From within that irrepressible blizzard of feelings, the artist creates.

Can AIs create like this?

There are those who predict that, as soon as they are educated with the appropriate materials, they will practically be able to write like Cervantespaint like Munch and compose as Beethoven.

Cultural companies (publishers, producers, record companies, newspapers, magazines…) must already be rubbing their hands together because writers, screenwriters, cartoonists, photographers, musicians… have the bad habit of charging for their work, and what’s more, it takes months —! and even years!—in carrying it out. The AIs do not have a salary, they do not contribute to social security, they do not request sick leave, they do not request extension of deadlines for the delivery of their work, because in minutes they have everything done. Artificial intelligences are going to fall very, very nice to companies.

But as nice as they are, I insist, Can AIs write like Cervantes, paint like Munch and compose like Beethoven?

I say no.

An AI will be able to pretend that it is Cervantes, that it is Munch, that it is Beethoven and even all three at the same time if it wants to, but you will only be imitating them. The result will not be true. Because an AI doesn’t know what it is fall in love to the bars of Aldonza Lorenzo and see every time you look at her the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso. An AI doesn’t know what it is either let the anguish grow and grow inside until a scream explodes as you try to cross a bridge over the void. An AI doesn’t know what it is love music, remain deaf and continue to be devoted to it against all odds and fate. AIs don’t get sick, they don’t die, they don’t bury the dead or dreams or illusions.

What is an AI going to tell us in a book, in a drawing, in a song?

Anything.

You can’t tell us anything. Because he doesn’t know anything about how beautiful and how tragic it is to be human.

With the arrival of artificial intelligence in our lives the big question is not whether AIs can be artists. They can not. It is impossible, they lack flesh, bone and nerve fibers transporting pain and happiness in gushes.

An AI may be able to write the instruction manual for the washing machine very well. Also draw the washing machine so that it is very clear to us where the spin button is, and not lose everything when removing the clothes from the drum. Although I also have my reservations about it because, from what I’ve seen so far, AIs tend to chatter without caring about the truth or falsehood of what they say, so you trust what an AI tells you. As long as they don’t reprogram them so as not to lie, none of the information they give us will be reliable, including the washing machine manual.

The big question when it comes to artificial intelligence and art is whether we, the people who laugh and cry every day, are willing to try shelter us from the elements of the world with texts, photographs, music, drawings… fake, synthetic, made in minutes by machines that have never experienced a bad wind blowing away their lives.

And the second big question is whether artists will be willing to accept a boat as a pet. If they are going to assume the demands of the Industry and are going to create images, books, music, scripts… with artificial shortcuts for lazy artists eager to maximize time and produce artificial artlike the one that makes the custard powder in the dessert section of the supermarket.

All this without even considering the dilemma of intellectual property rights. A topic that seems to matter nothing to AI creators or legislators or those “artists” who may have already adopted AI among their “craftsman” tools. Before accepting a boat as a pet, it is necessary to consider the legality and ethics implying. BecauseWho owns a work that is the result of the algorithmic combination of hundreds of other works, created by human beings whose names and surnames are hidden by artificial intelligence? I certainly don’t believe in AIs, and I doubt very much that the instructions that can be given to an AI to combine or imitate other people’s works can make you the owner of the result.

Faced with these two big questions, I believe —I hope and wish— that the majority of human beings will not be willing to accept that Poetry be mechanized for us.