Is Art Made by Computers Art?
OR what sort of Art might a computer make? Would we accept it as Art?
If computers might indeed someday become sentient or intelligent, then why would we assume they would want to create art. When we think of computer art, we think of pretty computer generated colors, swirls, mathematics, fractals, raytraced solids, quirky animations, etc. But these are the sorts of art WE make with computers.
Maybe computers would make completely unintelligible art, art that is neither visual, audial, or textual. Maybe a computer will find art in the making of a network connection run better. Maybe a computer will creatively skip processing steps in order to arrive at the same answer. Computers might fill idle time with "entertainment" which could be as complex as finding bugs in each other’s operating systems, or running their CPU idle processes (hey, WE watch TV).
I guess art/humor/beauty/hate depend so much on culture, it would be hard to conceive of those things by a computer. It’s like asking how someone will be when they grow up without knowing where and with whom.
How can we know the computer as equal, as sentient/intelligent before it is born?
We wouldn’t share:
- the same native language "binary" (we speak it, but only passingly),
- the same cuisine (raw electrical energy, Americans like cow meat),
- the same customs (they might have a handshake, but we keep forgetting what to put in the packet header),
- the same bodily function (they coredump, we… well),
- sexual orientation (would they be homosexual/heterosexual/asexual? We as humans still can’t decide even if homosexuals are okay… what would we do with computers that are mated via hub with 20 different computers? Call it polygamy? Does the Alpha Server reign supreme over it’s tribe of Microsoft Clients *G*?)
- the same concerns (we worry about the morning commute, the kids, our savings… what would it be like to worry about being unplugged by a careless cleaning crew, to commute through a jammed network cable, to not have arms, to not have eyes, to not have smell, etc.)
What happens when the race we’ve created begins to find that it doesn’t really have much in common with us, when we find that they aren’t much fun to talk to? They don’t care about sports, politics, getting laid etc. What happens when the little children that needed us for so much, every keystroke, every brushing, every time they needed to be let out to play in the yard, every scrap of technology, know-how, advancement, runny nose, bad day, college tuition, and approval stop needing? We think we understand them, and because we share so little in common we project our biases onto them. We call them mindless machines, and we turn our backs on their rights. Do we use them to test viruses, cosmetics, Microsoft software?
MOST people would say that computers weren’t sentient, and you would be one of those people, because "Most People" said it.
So we probably would decide that computers still can’t create art, because we expected them to create art we would like.
Isn’t that just typically human though?