v. 76

Living people
are soft and tender.
     Corpses are hard and stiff.

The ten thousand things,
the living grass, the trees,
are soft, pliant.
     Dead, they’re dry and brittle.

So hardness and stiffness
go with death;
tenderness, softness,
go with life.

And the hard sword fails,
the stiff tree’s felled.
The hard and great go under.

The soft and weak stay up.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. Ursula K. Le Guin

Smack down ! Gunfight at high noon!

Yesterday a group of us came to the Geneva Public Library in late afternoon. Twice per month we philosophically discuss a topic. Taking time for an adult discussion once in a while is satisfying.

We set out to think together regarding the role of art-making. Those around the table follow certain interests with discipline, with care, and thus make art.

Does art matter? If so – how does it matter? What is changed by art making, or art appreciating?

The comparison with AI was introduced. That is to say that AI now, or soon will produce a result indistinguishable from a human created work. What is the distinction between an AI simulation, and human making? To sharpen the point, – what do we accredit as “real”? Is it important, (relevant) that AI feels nothing upon the light-speed formulation of an image, or a series of verses, or a story? Why care that AI has no meat-connection with the earth, with the cosmos? The link is computational… The AI result is a probabilistic association, a blind-guess of elements typically associated… But hold on, “buckle-up” the AI is sure to become “better and better”. If AI mimics a living mind, how close is “close enough”?

We concluded our discussion on a note of disagreement. Disagreement is incentive to think more deeply, to extend my pondering.

Why am I viscerally resistant? Revulsion comes upon imagining human populations regarded as surplus, disposable, since there’s nothing left for them to do.  Why so defiant toward a tool that promises – in a narrow definition of “reason” to become “better” than any human?

Without doubt I feel repulsed by those who intend to create a tool to end every tool. The ultimate tool capturing the user’s knowledge repertoire. Agency is imitated in machine language. Moreover not to speak of enormous quantities of energy, of land, of water-coolant demanded by this project. And the central motivation is fear. A terror of being technologically overrun by someone else.

On more than one level such as this – strikes me as obscene.

To say again in an antiquated manner: a sacrilege.