Are computers more creative than humans?
It is critical to understand that generative AI systems are not creative. In truth, they lack intelligence. If I provide a text prompt asking for artwork portraying a robot holding a paintbrush, but the program has no idea what a “robot” or a “paintbrush” are, the software will fail. It might make the art by using a statistical method that matches images with the words and phrases in the prompt.
Because generative AI systems are trained on millions of existing documents acquired from the internet – photos, essays, articles, drawings, paintings, and photographs — the results are stunning. To prevent creating objectionable outputs, these systems may filter out offensive information before training, but in general, the dataset is pretty thorough, allowing the program to make artwork in a variety of styles.
If a spacecraft full of enterprising aliens arrived on Earth and invited humans to donate our collective works to a database so they might create derivative artifacts for profit, we would almost certainly demand pay.
I don’t intend to suggest that these systems are uninteresting; they are incredible technology that are really beneficial. However, they are not “creative” in the manner that we humans conceive of creativity. This may seem difficult to accept, given the robot pictures above are definitely unique works with personality and emotion.
From that point of view, it is hard to argue that the program didn’t make real art, even though the AI didn’t feel anything while making it and didn’t use its own sense of beauty. The same holds true for text-generating systems. The output may be easy to read, use effective and colorful language, and really make you feel something, but the AI has no idea what it is talking about or what feelings it is trying to evoke.
The artwork was done by all of us
Although a person started the process by supplying cues, no human can be credited with creating the piece; they are a collaborator of sorts, but not the artist. After all, each work is created with its own distinct style and composition. So, who is in charge of creating the work?
In my opinion, we all made that artwork – mankind itself.
Yes, the artist is the community we call mankind. And I don’t just mean those living today, but everyone who contributed to the billions of creative objects used to train generative AI systems. Not only have these AI systems taken and analyzed the original works of many human artists, but people who shared the art, wrote about it on social media, or just voted for it made it more visible on the internet, which is a huge database that is spread out all over the world.
In other words, a similar AI system wouldn’t be able to make emotional art if it didn’t learn from a library of creative works made by humans. It would probably not produce the robot images in my previous example. As a result, I believe humankind should be recognized as the artist of record for large-scale generative art.
Who should be rewarded if mankind is the artist?
The artist or team of artists who developed the robot images above would be rewarded. Big budget films may employ hundreds of artists from many disciplines, all of whom contribute to a single piece of artwork and are all rewarded. But what about generative art made by AI systems educated on billions of creative human artifacts?
Who should be rewarded if we acknowledge that the genuine artist is mankind itself? Clearly, the software businesses that supply the generative AI tools as well as the massive computer capacity necessary to run the models ought to be well compensated. I have no problem paying the monthly fee that is needed to make the art samples above. It was logical and justified. But a lot of people helped make that piece of art, and their contributions were added to the huge amount of original material that the AI system used to learn from.
Humanity tax is something reasonable to do. It might be a small transaction charge that is paid into a centralized humanity fund or dispersed to decentralized accounts through blockchain. I know this seems odd, but consider it this way: If a spacecraft full of enterprising aliens arrived on Earth and invited humans to donate our collective works to a database so they might create derivative artifacts for profit, we would almost certainly demand pay.
This is already occurring on Earth. Without being asked, we humans have donated a tremendous collection of collective works to some of the world’s top organizations – corporations that can now construct generative AI systems and sell derivative material for a profit. It will also be used for more than just making short images at the top of articles like this one. Soon, these methods will be used to make everything from conversational ads to movies, music, clothing, furniture, and, of course, more art.