Blood, Sweat, and Fears
The Artificial Event Horizon
Human supremacy in the arts and sciences is about to be eclipsed. We ourselves are the cause of our own obsolescence. We build tools to amplify our technical prowess. We build tools because our imaginations exceed our physical limitations. Now, our tools are being engendered with reason. It is not true reason; it is only probabilistic prediction complex enough to masquerade as autonomous thought. (Makes one wonder what that says about one’s own reasoning capabilities.) Nevertheless, as the complexity increases, our control over the tool will decrease. The inverse relationship between artificial intelligence and its creator is becoming stark. We are training our replacements.
Elon Musk has been warning of the dangers for well over a decade. In 2014, Musk said, “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that.” The primary reason he has built his own AI is to “[keep] an eye on what’s going on.” Nearly ten years later, his rhetoric hasn’t changed. While speaking with a reporter at the 2023 UK AI Safety Summit, he said, “the more we pay attention to [AI], the more we care about it, the more we minimize the probability of something going wrong.” This can be likened to the Mutually Assured Destruction of the Cold War, but the analogy fails because the nukes of yesteryear weren’t making their own decisions.
Ultraviolet Catastrophe
Despite the dangers, despite the superior cognition looming over the (event) horizon, AI will never produce any art, music, or poetry that rises beyond mere utility. It can emulate all that has come before it, and it may even be able to innovate in aesthetic ways in the future; but it will never produce anything comparable to human creativity. We will never be able to, in truth, ascribe a transcendent value to its output. It will never experience life nor the sense of urgency embedded in the instincts meant to ensure that life continues. AI’s efforts and energies will never, like the electromagnetic spectrum, exceed its material limits.
The products of human creativity will never be eclipsed by those of AI. There will always be a market for the material wealth of the human mind, because there will always be a need for a spiritual connection with each other. As AI learns how to pluck the heart strings of its human audience (i.e. persuade and manipulate), there will come a time when our emotions submit to the artifice of algorithmic art. However, it will never be fulfilling because art is greater than the sum of its parts. Robert Frost believed that if there are “no tears in the writer, [there will be] no tears in the reader.”
AI will never cry.