I love the discussion about whether art is creation or discovery.
Artists use both mechanisms to describe their process, how a particular piece came together, or how the arc of a character’s story played out. They’ll use words like find, seek, imagination, journey, intuition, inspiration, and experiment.
What do you think?
Have you ever been listening to a song for the first time, yet you somehow knew the next lyric, note, or sound? It just made sense.
Have you ever been reading a novel and intuitively knew what a character said next? Of course, she would say that.
We can sometimes attribute that intuition to our shared experiences in the world — learned experiences. We’ve seen similar people, heard similar patterns, and observed similar actions. We know how this goes because we’ve seen it before. The artist plays along.
But not always. Sometimes we’re surprised.
AI is already creating art. ChatGPT writes (and codes), DALL-E creates images, Imagen creates video, and Jukebox generates music. You’ve already read, seen, and heard creations from these platforms.
Because AI can learn anything that we can from history. Shared experiences, discovery, and even novel applications of interconnection are all learned.
Although art is hard to define, we know it comes together through both creation and discovery. We also know art has intention. It has a voice and point of view.
Would an AI ever think to itself, “I have something to say.”
