On AI and the Unknowability of Art

I’m scared of the unknown. You are too, I’d bet. Most of us are. This isn’t a bad thing; that fear exists for a reason. It’s a survival instinct baked into our DNA that tells us that maybe we shouldn’t eat those berries that weren’t here last harvest, accept food from that tribe across the valley, or trust those pale folks waving from those giant dhows. It’s beyond human - a natural failsafe shared with most living things that has, thus far, done a remarkable job at keeping our insatiable human curiosity from killing us all. Faced with this, our collective anxieties surrounding the growing use of Artificial Intelligence seem anything but unusual.

A.I is, in its most powerful form, inherently unknowable. Fed the entirety of humanity’s collective works, neural networks process an unthinkable amount of data in a nebulous, unseeable void - a black box - outputting generated work that simulates human-made work in ways even its creators do not and cannot fully understand. Most of those who argue for and against the use of A.I have fundamental misunderstandings about how neural networks work, in large part because it is fundamentally impossible to fully understand how neural networks work. But they do work. It is the ultimate force of unknowability and it threatens to continue changing our world in ever more unpredictable ways. Some worry that it will replace us - a particularly troubling thought for beings who are constantly struggling to find their place in things. Others worry it will destroy us. Regardless, it’s something we should be talking about. How will it be used? How may it be abused? How will it ultimately change us? And in the din of discourse, a sentiment that echoes particularly frequently is that we need to protect artists. As I meditate on this sentiment, a stubborn question quietly nags at the back of my spine: protect us from what?

History is a carousel. Events repeat. Ideas take root, sprout, and die with the regularity of seasons. Our fears, too, manifest predictably with the arrival of that which threatens irrevocable change. As artists, we’ve seen this before; The Gutenberg Press didn’t replace authors, but it did make literature more widespread and accessible. The Cinematograph didn’t replace playwrights, but rather deepened and expanded the way we were able to tell stories. I don’t think A.I will replace artists; but I do think it’ll widen the canvas. Left to its own devices, machine learning excels at the derivative, the rote, the repetitive, the mentally laborious. Where it falls woefully short is in the realms of mysteries that the endlessly complex human mind insists on locking away from us: the realm of creativity; creating new ideas, connecting old ideas in unique ways, adapting to change, weaving complex emotional charges in ways precise and intentional enough to make another human mind truly feel something. Worrying that A.I will replace us the way cars replaced horses troublingly presupposes that the purpose of horses was to pull our carriages. Humans are craftspeople, architects, and designers; NOT labourers. A.I is a tool and can replace us no more than a drill can replace a carpenter.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped capitalists from attempting it. Listen close and you’ll soon realize that most all cries of A.I’s horrors are critiques of capitalism, tragically misdirected. Who more stands to profit from our diverted anxiety? The corporations that we look to consistently feed us ‘art’ aren’t troubled with the burdens of finding something true and beautiful. They have found that it is far easier to make quick and efficient ‘content’. And if removing the “human” element of their process can stand to make them even a cent more on their dollar, they are more than happy to abandon their artists, shrug, and say “Look what A.I made me do,” as we continue to fight amongst ourselves. We don’t need protection from the tools. We need protection from the masters who mean to use these tools to exploit us.

And if you will indulge me a brief aside, I firmly believe that as artists, it’s paramount for us to recognize the many forms that art and beauty take. Beneath the expressionless surface of these esoteric technologies, lies a world of beautifully complex mathematical ingenuity borne from the minds of deeply creative engineers that an honest soul could only see as artists in their own right. Alas, beautiful things are terrifying too, of course. None of this is to say that we shouldn’t be scared. We should be. When the QT Team began entertaining the idea of using A.I art for an issue, we immediately started talking about the ethics concerns surrounding it. What would it mean? What would we be saying about art? About ourselves? About queerness, the fear of it, the unknowability of it, and the beauty of it? After I introduced our incredible artist Vanida to the world of generative A.I and seeing what she created, we knew we had a powerful statement to make. A.I didn’t design this issue. An artist designed this issue using A.I. When we saw what we created - our visions turned to words, manifest - we felt something.

We should - we must - continue to have conversations about this; about the rapidly evolving world of art, about our role as artists within this changing world. What we can’t afford to do is spend our time policing how artists produce their art. In the words of Fred Hampton, “That’s their game,”. And they will win every fucking time if we let them.

The future is fluid. It’s in flux. It’s unknowable.

But isn’t that what art is? An attempt, however impossible, to know the unknowable?

Be scared, and come explore with us anyway.