Episode description

In 2022, an AI generated work of art won a US state art competition. The artist used Midjourney, one of the popular AI systems that also include Dall-E and Stable Diffusion. They are trained on the millions of images scattered through the internet, using a deep learning program called a ‘generative adversarial network’, or GAN for short. It works by taking in text prompts, where you type in what you want the artwork to look like, and the AI then draws on the huge database of artworks, to generate a new work that conforms to the prompts. 

But to create a great AI work, it’s not as simple as typing ‘create some great art’. The artist who won that competition put in lengthy complex prompts, working up hundreds of iterations before he arrived at the final work. 

So, is this really art?  When we see an AI art creation, it genuinely feels ‘creative’. But is there something humans do when we create which is qualitatively different to AI? Like AI in every domain it has touched, AI art is challenging us to rethink our categories and even to ask us to question what it means to be human.

Our guests for this conversation are both experts in the intersection between art and technology.  Professor Ahmed Elgammal has actually constructed AI systems that have created artworks that are so good, a majority of people believe they are truly original human creations. Michael Sacasas,on the other hand, sees AI art as missing an essential ingredient, no matter how good its style is. It’ll never convey the deep connection between artist and viewer that we all crave.

Guests

Ahmed Elgammal

Dr. Ahmed Elgammal is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and an Executive Council Faculty at the Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University. He is the founder and director of the Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Rutgers. He is also the founder and CEO of Playform AI, a platform that is dedicated to give artist access to the latest generative AI tech. In 2017, he developed AICAN, an autonomous AI artist and collaborative creative partner, which was acclaimed in an Artsy editorial as “the biggest artistic achievement of the year.” In 2021, he led the AI team that completed Beethoven’s 10th symphony, which received worldwide media coverage. He received M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Michael Sacasas

Michael writes The Convivial Society, a popular newsletter on technology, culture, and the moral life.  Michael has written for The New Atlantis, Comment, Plough, The New Inquiry, Real Life Magazine, Mere Orthodoxy, The American, and Second Nature Journal. His work has also been featured in The Atlantic, Vox, and the New York Times. He is the Executive Director, Christian Study Centre in Florida, and earned his MA in Theological Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary in 2002. He was later a doctoral candidate at the University of Central Florida studying the relationship between technology and society with a focus on the work of Hannah Arendt.  He is an Associate Fellow in Ethics and Culture at the Greystone Theological Institute.

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo and Bronwen Reid

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram 

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