Here's why AI cannot create a masterpiece

Computers only follow instructions.

Computers only follow orders.

If you could follow orders and create an artistic masterpiece, any talented mathematician among us humans would be able to create a masterpiece simply by figuring out the formula, by studying other masterpieces, and following it.

But history has shown us that mathematicians and scientists are not unusually inclined to be successful artists.

If a computer could create a masterpiece by following a sophistocated computer program, than there would be more successful artists who are top mathematicians or scientists.

Because we know humans can create artistic masterpieces.

If a computer could create a masterpiece by following a computer program, a talented mathematician or scientist among us humans could use the same formula to create an artistic masterpiece more easily than the rest of us.

Talented mathematicians and artists have been around, with considerable knowledge of many things, for thousands of years.

Ancient Greece gave us Archimedes.

Was fascinated by mathematical symmetry in art.

So was medieval Baghdad.

If there were a formula that a computer could follow to create an artistic masterpiece, someone among us humans would have figured it out by now and used it to allow mathematicians and scientists to create great art more easily than most of us.

But there is not an unusual abundance of successful artists among scientists and mathematicians.

Quite the opposite.

Artistic talent and scientific/mathematical talent are usually found in different people.

We think of artistic types and scientist types.

Left-brain and right-brain.

It is even a trope, a cliche.

If it is a cliche that artists and scientists are very different and are talents usually found in different people, than surely following a mathematical formula derived from studying other artworks- something that you can bet that many people have done- does not help you create an artistic masterpiece.

And that's all an AI can do.

Follow a formula.

A computer is simply a machine that computes the answer to an equation.

A computer, an AI, can take a masterpiece and modify it, bend it, stretch it, without f-ing it up too much- if it is very well programmed.

But the work was already a masterpiece before the AI modified it.

An AI could conceivably imitate the writing style of Truman Capote

But the artistry was already there in the Truman Capote original.

An AI could give the Mona Lisa green skin and four arms.

But she would be beautiful and enigmatic because it was already in the Leonardo da Vinci original.

An AI is simply a formula, an equation.

A computer can only follow a formula.

And until the blue fairy gives the AI a mind of its own, that's all the computer will be able to do.

If following a formula were enough, there would be more humans who are good at following formulas, more engineers and scientists, producing great art.

It's not enough.

There are not that many great artists among great engineers and mathematicians.

You need more than just a formula to create an artistic masterpiece.

An AI might modify a masterpiece

But an AI cannot create one.

Food for thought!

God loves you!

Sincerely,

David S. Annderson