Category: Aesthetics

 

An issue in aesthetics is whether the ethics of the artist should be relevant to the aesthetic value of their work. Obviously, what people think about an artist can influence their feelings about their work. But how people assess works of art and how they should do so are different.

One way to approach this is to look at art works as like any other work or product, such as a student’s paper in a philosophy class or a storage shed. In the case of a student’s paper, a professor can be influenced by how they feel about the student. For example, if a professor learned that a student had groped another student, then the professor is likely to dislike the student. But if the professor decided to assign a failing grade to the alleged groper’s paper, then this would be unfair and unjust as the quality of the paper has nothing to do with the behavior of the student. After all, a paper is supposed to be assessed based on the quality of the writing nd not on what the professor feels about the student.

By analogy, the same should apply to works of art: the quality and merit of the work should be assessed independently of how you feel about the artist and their (alleged) misdeeds. In the case of the technical aspects of the work, this seems obviously true. For example, the misdeeds of an artist have no bearing on whether they get perspectives right in a drawing or hit the correct notes in a song. Another analogy, that will lead to an objection, is to a professional athlete.

In sports like running and football, an athlete’s performance is an objective matter and how the spectators feel about the athlete has no role in judging that athletic performance. For example, how the spectators feel about a marathon runner has no impact on how their time should be judged. The time is what it is regardless of how they feel. By analogy, the same should apply to works of art. A work is what it is regardless of how people feel about the artist. The analogy to athletes leads to an objection against this view.

While the quality of an athlete’s performance is an objective matter (in certain sports), professional athletes are often also entertainers. For example, a professional basketball player is there to play basketball to entertain the crowd. Part of the enjoyment of the crowd depends on the quality of the athlete’s performance, but what an audience member thinks about the athlete can also affect their enjoyment. For example, if the audience member does not like the athlete’s history of domestic violence, then the fan’s experience of the game can be altered. The experience of the game is not just an assessment of the quality of the athletic performance, but can involve consideration of the character of the athletes.

By analogy, the same applies to artists. So, for example, while Combs might be a skilled musician, the allegations against him can change the experience of someone listening to his music.

The obvious reply is that while people do often feel this way, they are mistaken. They should, as argued above, be assessing the athlete based on their performance in the game. What they do off the field or court is irrelevant to what they do on the court. In the case of art, the behavior of the artist should be irrelevant to the aesthetic merit of the work. For example, Combs music should not be considered differently in the face of the allegations against him. Once again, people will feel as they do, but to let their feelings impact the assessment of the work would be an error.

This is not to say that people should feel the same about works in the face of revelations about artists or that they should still buy their art. The right to freedom of feeling is as legitimate as the right to freedom of expression and people are generally free to consume art as they wish. They are also free to say how a performance (be it athletic or artistic) makes them feel. But this is a report about them and not about the work. Naturally, there are aesthetic theories in which the states of the consumer of art matter and these are certainly worthy of their due, but this goes beyond the limited scope of this essay.

Another approach to the matter is to consider a case in which nothing is known about the creator of a work of art. As examples, a work might be found in an ancient burial site, or an anonymous poem might appear on a web site. These works can be assessed without knowing anything about their creators and this suggests that the moral qualities of the artist are irrelevant to the quality of the work.

Suppose that the anonymous poem was regarded as brilliant and beautiful, but then people learned it was written by an awful person. Nothing about the poem has changed, so the assessment of the poem should not change either. But some would change their minds based on the revelation. Now imagine that that the initial attribution of the poem was in error, it was really written by a decent and kind person. Nothing about the poem has changed, so the assessment should also remain unchanged. The point is that tying aesthetic assessment to the character of the artist entails that judging the aesthetic merit of a work would require knowing the moral status of the creator, which seems absurd. Going back to the sports analogy, it would be like having to determine if a runner was a good or bad person before deciding whether a two-hour marathon was a good time or not. That is absurd. Likewise for the art. As such, the moral qualities of the artist are irrelevant to the aesthetic merit of their work. Unless they are not

 

AI generated works have already disrupted the realm of art. As noted in the previous essay, this is a big problem for content art (art whose value is derived from what it is or how it can be used). However, I will show that named art might enjoy some safety from AI incursions.

Named art, at least in my (mis)usage, is a work whose value arises primarily from the name and fame of its creator. Historical examples include Picasso, van Gogh, and Rembrandt. An anecdote illustrates the key feature of named art.

Some years ago, I attended an art show and sale at Florida State University with a friend. She pointed to a small pencil sketch of a bird that was priced at $1500. She then pointed to a nearby sketch of equivalent quality that was $250. Since I had taught aesthetics for years, she asked me what justified the difference. After all, the sketches were about the same size, in the same medium, in the same realistic style and were executed with similar skill. My response was to point to the names: one artist was better known than the other. If a clever rogue managed to switch the names and prices on the works, the purchasers would probably convince themselves they were worth the price—because of the names. The nature of named art can also be shown by the following discussion.

Imagine, if you will, that an amazing painting is found in an attic that might be a lost van Gogh. If the value of works of art was based on the work itself, we would not need to know who created it to know its worth. But the value of the might-be-Gogh depends on whether it can be verified as a real-Gogh. It is easy to imagine the experts first confirm it is genuine (making it worth millions), then other experts confirm it was painted by Rick von Gogh (making it worth little), and then later experts re-affirm that it is genuine van Gogh (making it worth millions again). While nothing about the work has changed, its value would have fluctuated dramatically, because what gives it value is the creator and not the qualities of the work as art. That is, a van Gogh is not worth millions because the painting is thousands of times better than a lesser work, but because it was created by van Gogh and the art economy has said that it is worth that much. As such, the value of named art is not a function of the aesthetic value of the work, but of the name value of the work. This feature provides the realm of named art with an amazing defense against the incursion of AI.

 While an AI might be able to crank out masterpieces in a style indistinguishable from van Gogh, the AI can never be Vincent van Gogh. Named art gets its value from who created it rather than from what it is. So works created by an AI in the style of van Gogh will not be of value to those who only want the works of van Gogh. This can be generalized: those looking for works created by Artist X will not be interested in buying AI created art; they want works created by X. As such, if people value works because of the creator, named art will be safe from the incursion of AI. But one might wonder about AI created forgeries.

While I expect that AI will be used to forge works, successful deceit would not disprove my claim about named art being safe from AI incursion. The purchaser is still buying the work because they think it is by a specific artist; they are just being deceived. This is not to deny that AI forgeries will not be a problem, just that this would be a forgery problem and not an AI replacing artists problem (other than stealing the job of forgers, of course).

It might be objected that named art will not be safe from AI art because AI systems can crank out works at an alarming rate and, presumably, low cost. While this does mean that content artists are in danger from AI, it does not impact the “named” artists. After all, the fact that millions of human artists have produced millions of drawings and paintings does not lower the value of a Monet or Dali; the value placed on such paintings is independent of the works of these “lesser” artists. The same should hold true of AI art: even if one could click a button and get 100,000 original images ready to be painted onto canvas by a robot, the sale price of the Mona Lisa would not be diminished.

If AI systems become advanced enough, they might themselves become “named” artists with collectors wanting a work by Vincent van Robogogh because it was created by Robogogh. But that is a matter for the future.

 

This essay changes the focus from defining art to the economics of art. This discussion requires making a broad and rough distinction between two classes of art and creators. The first class of art is called “named art.” This is art whose value derives predominantly from the name and fame of its creator. Works by Picasso, van Gogh, Rembrandt and the like fall into this category. Artists who are enjoying a fleeting fame also fall into this category, at least so long as their name is what matters.  This is not to deny that such art can have great and wonderful qualities of its own; but the defining feature is the creator rather than the content.

The second class of art can be called “content art.” This is art whose value derives predominantly from what it is as opposed to who created it. For example, a restaurant owner who needs to put up some low-price original art is not buying it because it is, for example, a “LaBossiere” but because she needs something on the walls. As another example, a podcaster who wants a music style for her podcasts choses it because she needs low-cost music of a certain style. As a third example, an indie game designer who needs illustrations is looking for low-cost images that match the style and fit the adventure. They might be interested in but cannot afford works by some famous illustrator. This essay will be about this second class of art, although the term “art” is being used as a convenience rather than theoretically.

Since the worth of content art is the content, of the two types it is most impacted by AI. As those purchasing content art are not focused on who created it but on getting the content they want, they will be more amenable to using AI products than those seeking name art. Some people do refuse to buy AI art for various reasons, such as wanting to support human artists. If the objective of the purchaser is to get content (such as upbeat background music for a podcast or fish themed paintings for a restaurant), then AI created work is in competition with human created work for their money. This competition would be in the pragmatic rather than theoretical realm: the pragmatic purchaser is not worried about theoretical concerns about the true definition of “art”, they need content not theory.

Because this is a pragmatic competition, the main concerns would also be pragmatic. These would include the quality of the work, its relevance to the goal, the time needed to create the work, the cost and so on. As such, if an AI could create works that would be good enough in a timely manner and at a competitive price, then AI work would win the competition. For example, if I am writing a D&D adventure and want to include some original images rather than reusing stock illustrations, it could make sense to use images generated by Midjourney rather than trying to get a human artist who would do the work within my budget and on time. On a larger scale, companies such as Amazon and Spotify would presumably prefer to generate AI works if doing so would net them more profits.

While some think that the creation of art is something special, the automation of creation is analogous to automation in other fields. That is, if a machine can do the job almost as well (or better) for less cost, then it makes economic sense to replace the human with a machine. This applies whether the human is painting landscapes or making widgets. As with other cases of automation, there would probably still be a place for some humans. For example, an AI might be guided by a human to create works with far greater efficiency than the works could be created by human artists, but with better quality than works created solely by a machine. While replacing human workers with machines raises various moral concerns, there is nothing new or special from an ethical standpoint about replacing human artists and the usual moral discussions about robots taking jobs would apply. But I will note one distinction and then return to pragmatism.

When it comes to art, people do like the idea of the human touch. That is, they want something individual and hand-crafted rather than mass produced. This is distinct from wanting a work by a specific artist in that what matters is that a human made it, not that a specific artist made it. I will address wanting works by specific artists in the next essay.

This does occur in other areas—for example, some people prefer hand-made furniture or clothing over the mass-produced stuff. But, as would be expected, it is especially the case in art. This is shown by the fact that people still buy hand-made works over mass-produced prints, statues and such. This is one area in which an AI cannot outcompete a human: an AI cannot, by definition, create human made art (though we should expect AI forgeries). As long as people want human-made works, there will still be an economic niche for it (perhaps in a wat analogous to “native art”). It is easy to imagine a future in which self-aware AIs collect such work; perhaps to be ironic. Now, back to the pragmatics.

While billions are being spent on AIs, they are still lagging behind humans in some areas of creativity. For now. This will allow people to adapt or respond, should there be the will and ability to do so. There might even be some types or degree of quality of art that will remain beyond the limits of our technology. For example, AI might not be able to create masterpieces of literature or film. Then again, the technology might eventually be able to exceed human genius and do so in a cost-effective way. If so, then the creation of art by humans would be as economically viable as making horse-drawn buggies is today: a tiny niche. As with other cases of automation, this would be a loss for the creators, but perhaps a gain for the consumers. Unless, of course, we lose something intangible yet valuable when we surrender ever more to the machines.

 

While it is reasonable to consider the qualities of the creator when determining whether a work is art, it also makes sense to consider only the qualities of the work. On this approach, what makes a work art are the relevant qualities of that work, whatever these qualities might me. It also makes sense to consider that the effect these qualities on the audience could play a role in determining whether a work is art. For example, David Hume’s somewhat confusing theory of beauty seems to define beauty in terms of how the qualities of an object affect the audience.

Other thinkers, such as Plato, take beauty to be an objective feature of reality. Defining art in terms of objective beauty could entail that the qualities of the work determine whether it is art, assuming art is defined in terms of possessing the right sort of beauty. Given all the possibilities, it is fortunate that this essay does not require a theory of what qualities make a work art. All I need is the hypothesis, for the sake of discussion, that something being art is a matter of the qualities of the work—whatever they might be.

One practical reason to focus on the work rather than the artist (or other factors) is there can be cases where we don’t know about the artist or the context of the work. For example, the creators of many ancient works of art are unknown and judging whether these works of art would seem to require judging the work itself. Alternatively, one could take the view that no matter how beautiful a work is, if we do not know about the creator, we cannot say whether the work is art.  But this can be countered, at least in the case of works that predate AI.  We can assume the creators were human and much is known about humans that can be applied in sorting out whether the work is art.

A science fiction counter to this counter is to imagine alien works found by xenoarcheologists on other worlds. It We might know nothing about the creators of such works and there would be two possibilities. One is that there is no way to judge whether the work is art. The other is to accept that the work can be judged on its own, keeping in mind that the assessment could be mistaken.  

Another way to counter this is to consider the case of AI created works in the context of an aesthetic version of the Turing test. The classic Turing test involves two humans and a computer. One human communicates with the other human and the computer via text with the goal of trying to figure out which is human, and which is the computer. If the computer can pass as human long enough, it is said to have passed the Turing test. An aesthetic Turing test would also involve two humans and one computer. In this case, the human artist and the art computer would each create a work (or works), such as music, a sculpture or a drawing. The test must be set up so that it is not obvious who is who. For example, using a human artist whose style is well known, and a bad AI image generating program would not be a proper test. Matching a skilled, but obscure, human artist against a capable AI would be a fair test.

 After the works are created, the human judge would then attempt to discern which work was created by a human and which was created by AI. The judge would also be tasked with deciding whether each work is art. In this case, the judge knows nothing about the creator of a work and must judge the work based on the work itself. While it is tempting to think that a judge will easily tell a human work from AI, this would be a mistake. AI generated art can be quite sophisticated and can even be programmed to include the sort of “errors” that humans make when creating works. If the AI can pass the test, it would seem to be as much an artist as the human. If the work of the human is art, then the work of the AI that passes the test would thus also seem to be art.

As a side note, I have recently run into the problem of my drawings being mistaken for AI work. Since 2013 I have done birthday drawings for friends, posting the drawing on Facebook. Prior to the advent of AI image generators, people knew that I had created the work, and they (mistakenly) deemed it art. Now that AI image generators are good at reproducing photographs in styles that look hand drawn, people often think I am just posting an AI image of them. I am thus failing my own test. I will write more on this in a future essay but back to the topic at hand.

If whether a work is art depends on the qualities of the artist, then a judge who could not tell who created the works in the test would not be able to say which (if any) work was art.  Now, imagine that an AI controlled robot created a brushstroke-by-brushstroke identical painting as the human.  A judge could not tell which was created by a human and the judge must rule that neither work is art. However, this is an absurd result. One could also imagine a joke being played on the judge. After their judgment, they are told that painting A is by the human and B is by the computer and then they are asked to judge which is art again. After they reach their verdict, they are informed that the reverse was true and asked to judge again. This does show a problem with the view that whether something is art depends on the qualities of the creator. It seems to make more sense to make this depend on the qualities of the work

But there is a way to argue against this view using an analogy to a perfect counterfeit of a $100 bill. While the perfect counterfeit would be identical to the “real” money and utterly indistinguishable to all observations, it would still be a counterfeit because of its origin. Being legitimate currency is not a matter of the qualities of the money, but how the money is created and issued. The same, it could be argued, also applies to art. On this view a work created in the wrong way would not be art, even though it could be identical to a “real” work of art. But just as the perfect counterfeit would seem to destroy the value of the real bill (if one is known to be fake, but they cannot be told apart, then neither should be accepted) the “fake art” would also seem to destroy the art status of the “real art.” This would be odd but could be accepted by those who think that art, like money, is a social construct. But suppose one accepts that being art is a matter of the qualities of the work.

If it is the qualities of a work that makes a work art and AI can create works with those qualities, then the works would be art. If an AI cannot create works with those qualities, then the work of an AI would not be art.

As a philosopher, my discussions of art and AI tend to be on meta-aesthetic topics, such as trying to define “art” or arguing about whether an AI can create true art. But there are pragmatic concerns about AI taking jobs from artists and changing the field of art.  

When trying to sort out whether AI created images are art, one problem is that there is no necessary and sufficient definition of “art” that allows for a decisive answer. At this time, the question can only be answered within the context whatever theory of art you might favor. Being a work of art is like being a sin in that whether something is a sin is a matter of whether it is a sin in this or that religion. This is distinct from the question of whether it truly is a sin. Answering that would require determining which religion is right (and it might be none, so there might be no sin). So, no one can answer whether AI art is art until we know which, if any, theory of art has it right (if any). That said, it is possible to muddle about with what we must work with now.

One broad distinction between theories relevant to AI art is between theories focusing on the work and theories focusing on the creator. The first approach involves art requiring certain properties in the work for it to be art. The second approach is that the work be created in a certain way by a certain sort of being for it to be art. I will begin by looking at the creator focused approach.

In many theories of art, the nature of the creator is essential to distinguishing art from non-art. One example is Leo Tolstoy’s theory of art. As he sees it, the creation of art requires two steps. First, the creator must evoke in themselves a feeling they have once experienced. Second, by various external means (movement, colors, sounds, words, etc.) the creator must transmit that feeling to others so they can be infected by them. While there is more to the theory, such as ruling out directly causing feelings (like punching someone in anger that makes them angry in turn), this is the key to determining whether AI generated works can be art. Given Tolstoy’s theory, if an AI cannot feel an emotion, then it cannot, by definition, create art. It cannot evoke a feeling it has experienced, nor can it infect others with that feeling, since it has none. However, if an AI could feel emotion, then it could create art under Tolstoy’s definition. While the publicly available AI systems can appear to feel, there is yet a lack of adequate evidence that they do feel. But this could change.

While the focus of research is on artificial intelligence, there is also interest in artificial emotions, or at least the appearance of emotions. In the context of Tolstoy’s theory, the question would be whether it feels emotion or merely appears to feel. Interestingly, the same question also arises for human artists and in philosophy this is called the problem of other minds. This is the problem of determining whether other beings think or feel.

Tests already exist for discerning intelligence, such as Descartes’ language test and the more famous Turing Test. While it might be objected that a being could pass these tests by faking intelligence, the obvious reply is that faking intelligence so skillfully would seem to require intelligence. Or at least something functionally equivalent. To use an analogy, if someone could “fake” successfully repairing vehicles over and over, it would be odd to say that they were faking. In what way would their fakery differ from having skill if they could consistently make the repairs? The same would apply to intelligence. As such, theories of art that based on intelligence being an essential quality for being an artist (rather than emotion) would allow for a test to determine whether an AI could produce art.

Testing for real emotions is more challenging than testing for intelligence because the appearance of emotions can be faked by using an understanding of emotions. There are humans who do this. Some are actors and others are sociopaths. Some are both. So, testing for emotion (as opposed to testing for responses) is challenging and a capable enough agent could create the appearance of emotions without feeling them. Because of this, if Tolstoy’s theory or other emotional based theory is used to define art, then it seems impossible to know whether a work created by an AI would be art. In fact, it is worse than that.

Since the problem of other minds applies to humans, any theory of art that requires knowing what the artist felt (or thought) leaves us forever guessing—it is impossible to know what the artist was feeling or feeling at all. If we decide to take a practical approach and guess about what an artist might have been feeling and whether this is what the work is conveying, this will make it easier to accept AI created works as art. After all, a capable AI could create a work and a plausible emotional backstory for the creation of the work.

Critics of Tolstoy have pointed out that artists can create works that seem to be art without meeting his requirements in that an artist might have felt a different emotion from what the work seems to convey. For example, a depressed and suicidal musician might write a happy and upbeat song affirming the joy of life. Or the artist might have created the work without being driven by a particular emotion they sought to infect others with. Because of these and many other reasons, Tolstoy’s theory obviously does not give us the theory we need to answer the question of whether AI generated works can be art. That said, he does provide an excellent starting point for a general theory of AI and art in the context of defining art in terms of the artist. While the devil lies in the details, any artist focused theory of art can be addressed in the following manner.

If an AI can have the qualities an artist must have to create art, then an AI could create art. The challenge is sorting out what these qualities must be and determining if an AI has or even can have them. If an AI cannot have the qualities an artist must have to create art, then it cannot be an artist and cannot create art. As such, there is a straightforward template for applying artist focused theories of art to AI works. But, as noted above, this just allows us to know what the theory says about the work. The question will remain as to whether the theory is correct. In the next essay I will look at work focused approaches to theories of art.

The rap musician Sean “Diddy” Combs has been accused of kidnapping, drugging and coercing women into sexual activities. This potentially puts him in the company of such men as Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein. These cases, and others like them, raise the question of the aesthetic impact of these misdeeds on their works. This is an old topic and philosophers, since at least Plato, have discussed the effect of the ethics of the artist one the aesthetics of their works. However, it is still worth discussing and is obviously relevant today. I will begin by getting some easy matters out of the way.

One concern that is more a matter of psychology than philosophy is the impact of the artist’s behavior on the audience. The experience of the audience can be affected by their beliefs about the ethics of the artist. It is possible that an audience member will find their aesthetic experience diminished or even destroyed by these beliefs. For example, someone listening to Combs’ music might think of the allegations and be unable to enjoy the work. It is also possible that some will be unaffected by this. For example, someone who enjoys his music might find this enjoyment undiminished by the allegations against Combs.

While considerations of how people might react are relevant to the aesthetic issues, they do not settle these issues. For example, how people might react to an artist’s misdeeds does not settle whether the ethics of an artist is relevant to the aesthetic merit of their work. To use an analogy, how fans feel about a professional athlete’s moral misdeeds does not settle the issue about whether they are a skilled athlete.

Another area of concern is the ethics of supporting an artist who has engaged in misdeeds. This is part of the broader issue of whether one should support anyone who has engaged in moral misdeeds. As such, it is a moral issue rather than a specifically aesthetic issue.

While a customer has every right to patronize whoever they wish to give their money, what is under consideration is whether one should support an artist one thinks is a bad person. On the one hand, a moral case can be made that by supporting such an artist by buying their work, purchasing tickets to their movies or subscribing to a service that streams their shows one is supporting their misdeeds. Naturally, as the degree of financial support diminishes, so does the support of their misdeeds. To illustrate, if I think a painter is evil, but pay them $10,000 for a painting then I am providing more support than a situation in which I think Combs is evil yet keep paying for a music streaming service that he profits from.

It is also worth considering that unless the artist is operating alone the decision not to support their art impacts other people. So, for example, if someone decides to not buy any music by Combs because of what he is accused of doing, this might cost Combs some minute fraction of his income, but it also punishes everyone else who receives money from these sales. While people have every right to make purchasing decisions on ethical grounds, it is also important to consider that the target of their ire might not be the only one impacted.

 It can be argued that supporting an artist one regards as morally bad is not supporting their misdeeds. One is paying for the art and not paying them to commit misdeeds. The purchasing of the art is not an endorsement of the misdeeds but a financial transaction and what matters are the aspects that are relevant to the transaction. To use an analogy, one does not need to inquire whether a mechanic has engaged in misdeeds that have nothing to do with their job before deciding to use their services or not. One also does not feel obligated to investigate what the mechanic might use the money for. What matters is the quality and cost of the work. Naturally, a person might prefer a nice person as a mechanic or be upset if the mechanic used the money to pay prostitutes or buy illegal drugs, but that is a matter of preference.

It can be argued that patronizing a bad person who is an artist does support their misdeeds. After all, it is the wealth and power of people like Combs, Spacey and Weinstein that enabled them to get away with their alleged misdeeds for so long. On this view, once a person knows about the misdeeds, they would be morally accountable for continuing to provide support for the artist. This is analogous to patronizing any business that is accused of doing terrible things. On the one hand, one can claim to be just buying their product or service without endorsing their misdeeds. On the other hand, without customers they would be far less able to do their misdeeds.

 

In the United States, the left seems to dominate comedy. Comedians like Seth Myers and shows like The Daily Show are clearly left leaning, although they do mock Democrats and leftists. While there are conservative comedians, the big names, such as Jeff Foxworthy, usually avoid ideological comedy and are more likely to comment on red necks rather than red state politics. Conservative comedians who engage in ideological comedy tend to fare poorly in the mainstream, leading to the conclusion that conservative comedians can be good at comedy but that conservative comedy, so far, is not good. That said, conservative comedy is seen as good by those who like it, which leads into the classic aesthetic debates about objectivity and subjectivity. But I will focus on the apparent failure of conservative comedy as comedy.

Smug liberals might claim good comedy requires intelligence and conservatives are less intelligent than liberals. Conservatives might counter that stupid liberals are amused by stupid liberal jokes and fail to appreciate the brilliance of conservative comedy. One concern is that this issue of who is more intelligent is an ideological fight, and this raises the question of unconscious bias on the part of researchers and concerns about methodology. But even if liberals are, in general, somewhat more intelligent than conservatives, this would not adequately explain the apparent disparity in the quality of comedy.

An alternative explanation is that there is a psychological difference. The same traits that draw a person to liberalism would also make a person more proficient at comedy. In contrast, the traits that draw a person to conservatism would make them less capable at comedy. What, then, are these traits and how might they impact comedic competence?

Conservatives, by definition, want to preserve the existing social order and tend to have favorable view of traditional social institutions. Liberals tend to be more willing to change the social order and are less inclined to take tradition as a justification for institutions and practices. As political comedy often involves making fun of the existing social order and mocking traditional institutions, this would help explain why conservative comedians would be less inclined to engage in this sort of comedy.

But while conservative comedians might shy away from making fun of conservative targets, there is still a target rich environment. There are many liberal targets ideally suited for conservative comedy. In fact, liberal comedians already mock many of these targets, such as Joe Biden.

Conservatives do mock institutions and social orders they see as tainted by the left. Trump, for example, has been attacking the justice system. However, this mockery tends to be more of an attack than comedic in nature. While some see Trump as a clown, he is not a comedian.  Given the abundance of targets and the willingness of conservatives to go after them, it is something of a mystery why this rich ecological niche of liberal mocking has not been filled with successful comedy from the perspective of the right.

One explanation could be a variation of the victim narrative conservatives usually reject when used by the left.  The left often explains, for example, why women or minorities are underrepresented in an area in terms of oppression and victims of oppression. Conservatives could claim that comedy is dominated by liberals, and they are using their power oppress conservative comedians. If only conservative comics were given a chance, perhaps in the form of some comedic affirmative action, then they could succeed with their conservative comedy.

This explanation could, ironically, be countered by the usual conservative response to claims about oppression, such as the failure of the allegedly oppressed being due to their own inferiority, to deny the alleged disparity or advance the bootstrap argument. While this approach might be satisfying, it is worth considering that conservative comedians are the victims of oppression, that their voices are being silenced by the powerful, and that they are victims. The dearth of conservative comedians, like the dearth of minorities in the highest positions in society, is consistent with injustice. If conservative comedians are being unjustly oppressed, then steps should be taken to address this, perhaps beginning with a comedic affirmative action program to help them get established in the face of a system that has long been stacked against them. Assuming they want to be comedians.

It also worth considering whether conservatives want to be comedians. As with some other cases of alleged oppression, perhaps there are few, if any, conservative comedians because few, if any, conservatives want to be comedians. If this is the case, then there is no oppression to address, and things are as they should be. This is what, of course, conservatives often say about the alleged oppression of others.

Another possible explanation for the failure of conservative comedy lies in comedy itself, at least as defined by our good dead friend Aristotle. As Aristotle saw it, comedy “is a subdivision of the ugly” and “consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive.” Political comedy often involves mocking targets across the lines of power, because politics is largely about power relationships. Liberal comedy typically involves mocking up the hierarchy from below. For example, female comedians making fun of the patriarchy is mockery aimed upwards. As the mockery is directed upwards, it generally will not be painful or destructive. This is because the advantages of power are possessed by the target and not the comedian.

Since conservatives tend to support existing power structures and established social values, the target of conservative comedy tends to be people and organizations outside of those structures or who have different values. As such, conservative comedy would tend to be aimed down the power curve: people in stronger positions going after weaker targets. For example, a white comedian mocking Black Lives Matter is mocking downward from an advantageous social position. A straight comedian mocking trans people is also mocking downward. These are general claims and there can be cases in which a specific conservative comedian might be mocking upward. To use an obvious example, a conservative comedian mocking Biden would be mocking upward because of the disparity between them and the powers of the President. Matters can, of course, get complicated. While Biden is President, he is also old and being in this category puts him at a comedic disadvantage in our society.

While comedy can be aimed downward and still be comedy, this is challenging because such attempts can easily become painful or destructive, thus ceasing to be comedy. Trump provides an excellent example of this. While he often claims to just be joking, his enormous power advantage means that he is almost always punching downwards and thus appears bullying and cruel rather than comedic. As another example, the Daily Wire’s Lady Ballers is an attempt at comedy that has been largely unsuccessful. While this is for a variety of aesthetic reasons, punching down at transpeople from a position of social dominance seems cruel. But this sort of comedy can be successful with those who share the ideology of the comedians—but this seems to be more a matter of enjoying the ideology rather than the comedy.

This, I think, is a plausible explanation for the dearth of good conservative comedy. As conservatives, they are not inclined to punch up or mock the traditional hierarchy. But if they punch down, this tends to be cruel and ugly and thus unlikely to be comedy. But there can be niche for conservative comedy—they could punch up at powerful liberal targets while avoiding also punching down. For example, mocking a powerful liberal woman, like Clinton, without resorting to misogyny. Or mocking Obama without engaging in racism. But this is what liberal leaning comics already do, so perhaps conservative comedy simply cannot be good because of the nature of conservatism.

A robot writing.An iron rule of technology is that any technology that can be used for pornography will be used for pornography. A more recent one is that any technology that can be used for grifting will be used for grifting. One grift involves  using AI to generate science-fiction stories  to sell to publishers.

Amazon, with its Kindle books, has seen a spike in AI generated works, although some people identify the works as such. Before these text generators, people would steal content from web pages and try to resell it as books. While that sort of theft is easy to detect with automated means, AI generated text cannot currently be readily identified automatically. So, if a publisher wants to weed out AI generated text, they will need humans to do the work. Fortunately for publishers and writers, AI is currently bad at writing science fiction.

Unfortunately, some publishers are being flooded with AI generated submissions and they cannot review all these texts. In terms of the motivation, it seems to mostly be money—the AI wranglers hope to sell these stories.

One magazine, Clarkesworld, saw a massive spike in spam submissions, getting 500 in February (contrasted with a previous high of 25 in a month). In response, they closed submissions because of a lack of resources to address this problem. As such, this use of AI has already harmed publishers and writers. As would be expected, some have blamed AI but this is unfair.

From the standpoint of ethics, the current AI text generators lack the moral agency needed to be morally accountable for the text they generate. They are no more to blame for the text than the computers used to generate spam are to blame for the spammers using them. The text generators are a tool being misused by people hoping to make easy money and who are not overly concerned with the harmful consequences of their actions. To be fair, some people are probably curious about whether an AI generated story would be accepted, but these are presumably not the people flooding publishers.

While these AI wranglers are morally accountable for the harm they are causing, it must also be pointed out that they are operating within an economic system that encourages and rewards a wide range of unethical behavior. While deluging publishers with AI spam is obviously not on par with selling dangerous products, engaging in wage theft, or running NFT and crypto grifts, it is still the result of the same economic system that enables, rewards and often zealously protects such behavior. In sum, the problem with current AI is the people who use it and the economic system in which it is used. AI has is just another tool for spamming, grifting, and stealing within a system optimized for all this.

As noted above, AI generated fiction is currently bad. But it can probably be improved enough to be enjoyable, if low quality, fiction. Some publishers would see this as an ideal way to rapidly generate content at a low cost, thus allowing them more profit. This would, obviously, lead to the usual problem of human workers being replaced by technology. But this could also be good for some readers.

Imagine that AI becomes good enough to generate enjoyable stories. A reader could go to an AI text generator, type in the prompt for the sort of story they want, and then get a new story to read. Assuming the AI usage is free or inexpensive, this would be a great deal for the reader. It would, however, be a problem for writers who are not celebrity writers. Presumably, fans would still want to buy works by their favorite authors, but the market for lesser-known writers would likely become much worse.

If I just want to read a new space opera with epic starship battles, I could use an AI to make that story for me, thus saving me time and money. And if the story is as good as what a competent human would produce, then it would be good enough for me. But, if I want to read a new work by Mary Robinette Kowal, I would need to buy it (or pirate it or go to a library). But, as I have argued in an earlier essay, this use of AI is only a problem because of our economic system: if a writer could write for the love of writing, then AI text generation would largely be irrelevant. And, if people were not making money by grifting text with AI, then they would probably not be making AI fiction except to read themselves or share with others. But since we do toil in the economic system we have; the practical problem will be sorting out the impact of text generation. While I would like to be able to generate new stories on demand, my hope is that AI will remain bad at fiction and be unable to put writers out of work. But my concern is that it will be good enough to generate rough drafts that poorly-paid human will be tasked with editing and rewriting.

A fake Banksy Thanks to AI image generators such as  Midjourney and Dall E of Open AI it is easy to rapidly create images almost as fast as you can type in a prompt.  This has led some to speculate that this will put artists out of work and perhaps even be the doom of creativity.

In addition to being a philosophy professor, I also create stuff for tabletop role playing games like D&D and Call of Cthulhu. In addition to writing, I also create maps and images. As such, I do have a stake in the AI game and disclose this as a potential biasing factor.

Looking back into the shallow depths of human history, professions are changed or even eliminated by economic and technological shifts. Fads in fashion or food can result in significant economic changes, such as the case of the beaver pelts once used in men’s hats. Once a lucrative market and source of income, the fashion trend ended, the trappers had to find other options. In other cases, the change technological. For example, New England was known for its whaling industry and whale oil was used extensively for lighting. When alternatives, such as kerosene, became available, this whaling industry ended. Kerosene was itself mostly replaced by electricity, also resulting in changes in employment. And, of course, there is the specific technological change of automation, when machines reduce or eliminate the need for human workers.

For most of human history, machines tended to impact  physical jobs—although there is the example that electronic computers eliminated the need for human computers. Back in the 1980s when I first debated about AI as an undergraduate, most people thought that AI would not be able to engage in creative activity. This was often based on the view that machines would never be able to feel (which was assumed to be critical for creativity) or that there is some special human trait of creativity a machine could never replicate. As a practical matter, this seemed to hold true until AI started producing images and text good enough to pass as created by competent humans. This has led to the practical worry that AI will put creatives out of work. After all, if a business can get text and images created by AI for a fraction of what it would cost to pay a human, a sensible business will turn to AI to maximize profit.

This shows that the true problem is not AI but our economic system. A sci-fi dream has been that automation should be used to free us so we can spend more time doing what we want to do, rather than needing to grind just to survive. But AI used in this manner would free people from employment opportunities.

While a creative might like creating to earn the money they need to afford food and shelter, they are creating primarily for economic reasons and usually not doing what they really enjoy. I distinguish between people who make some income from their creative hobby (as I do) and people who must create to earn their living. While someone who depends on creating to live might enjoy their work, AI is only a problem if they need to create to pay the bills. After all, if they were creating out of the love of creativity, to express themselves, or out of pure enjoyment, then AI would be irrelevant. They would still get that even if AI took all the creative jobs. Since I do not depend on my game creations for my living, I will keep creating even if AI completely dominates the field. But if AI replaces me as a professor, I will keep doing philosophy but I will need to find new employment since I have grown accustomed to living in a house and having food to eat.

As such, the problem with AI putting people out of work is not an AI problem but a problem with our economic system. Part of this is that creative works are often mere economic products. It just so happens that the new automation threatens writers and artists rather than factory workers. But this threat is not the same for all people.

I titled this essay “AI: I Want a Banksy vs I Want a Picture of a Dragon” because of the distinction between the two wants and its relevance to AI images (and text). Suppose I want a work by Banksy to add to my collection. In that case, no AI art will suffice since only Banksy can create a Banksy. An AI could create a forgery of a Banksy, just as skilled human forger could—but neither creation would be a Banksy. While such a forgery might fool someone into buying it, as soon as the forgery was exposed, the work would become valueless to me—after all, what I want is a Banksy.

When people want a work by a specific creator, the content is of far less importance than the causal chain—they want it because of who created it, not because of what it looks like, what it sounds like, or what the text might be. One example that nicely illustrates this is when Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling wrote a book under a pseudonym. Before the true authorship was revealed, the book sold few copies. After the reveal, it became a top seller. The exposure of a forgery also shows this. A work can be greatly valued as, say, a painting by Picasso, until it is revealed as a worthless forgery. Nothing about the painting itself has changed, what has changed is the belief in who created it. In these cases, it is the creator and not the qualities of the work that matters. As such, creatives whose work is sought and bought because it was created by them have little to fear from AI, aside from the usual concerns about forgeries.  But what if I just want a picture of a dragon for my D&D adventure? Then AI does change the situation.

Before AI became good at creating images, if I wanted a picture of a dragon, I would need to get one from a human artist or create it myself. Now I can just go to Midjourney, type in a prompt and pick between the generated images. I can even direct the AI to create it in a specific style—making it like the work of a known artist. As such, while AI is not (yet) a threat to creators whose works are sought and bought because they created it, it is a threat to the “working class” of creators who sell their work to those who are seeking a specific work rather than a work by a specific person. AI is a real threat to them, but a real boon to those who want works for the lowest price and want them quickly. AI is also a threat to those who might have been the next Banksy. If artists cannot earn a living while they work towards the fame that makes their works desirable because they are their work, then there will be fewer such artists. Of course, the value of such works is also largely a result of features of our economic system—but that is a matter way beyond AI and art.

In closing, creators like Rowling and Banksy will be just fine for now, but the “working class” creators will be facing increasing challenges from AI. This obviously should not be blamed on AI, but on those who create and perpetuate a system that allows people to inflict such harm on others just because they become less economically useful to the business class. The heart of the problem is that creative works are a commodity and that some people insist that others must labor for their profit—and ensure that violence is always ready to maintain this order.

Being nerdtastic by nature, my nerd sense picks up disturbances in nerd culture. One of the loudest types of disturbances is when people express outrage at gender and race swapping involving established characters. For example, when word that there would be a non-white Spider-Man, social media erupted with rage about wokeness. But are such criticisms automatically bad?

On the face of it, there can be reasonable criticisms of such swaps. One common criticism is that the swap is motivated by a desire to pander to a specific audience and this pandering should be condemned. A problem with this criticism is that while pandering could result in a worse work of art, pandering does not entail that the work is therefore bad from an aesthetic standpoint. An obvious problem with this criticism when it focused only on swapping is that what is labeled derogatorily as pandering is likely to be an attempt to appeal to a target audience. Those who bash works for pandering via swapping generally do not bash works that have white male characters (and actors) selected to appeal to a target audience. As a specific example, it would seem odd for most critics to bash the Top Gun movies for pandering to an easily identified target audience. And I certainly would not attack Top Gun for doing this. After all, if you want people to watch your films or read your books, you do need to appeal to your audience. Naturally, if efforts to appeal are done badly and harm the work, then this would be a reasonable criticism but this has no necessary connection to wokeness.

Another common criticism is that such swapping is the result of laziness and that new characters should be created instead of swapping existing characters. There is usually also the criticism that the swap is made to cash in on an existing intellectual property and not due to a good aesthetic reason, such as meaningfully exploring the swap. This criticism does have some bite but is more a criticism of the way capitalist media companies operate rather than proof that wokeness is killing art. Companies certainly engage in this practice, since they can churn out more content dressed in an established IP without the effort and risk of creating new characters. But to be fair, this does make good business sense. At least until the audiences become exhausted with the companies milking their IP. Once again, there is no necessary connection to wokeness.

A third common criticism takes us into the matter of aesthetic identity of fictional characters. In metaphysics, the problem of personal identity is the challenge of determining what (if anything) makes an entity the same person across time, distinct from all other people and things. This is a difficult problem because you need to work out the metaphysics of personhood and identity. In the case of aesthetic identity, the problem is a bit less daunting. For in-world identity of characters, this is settled by author fiat. For example, if a person is a soul in a fictional world, whatever body has that soul is the same character. But this does not settle the matter of aesthetic identity in the real world, which is the problem of sorting out what makes a character the same character. I think the easy and obvious answer is that aesthetic identity is a social identity: being the same character is a matter of the audience accepting the character as the same. But, of course, people can make good faith rational arguments about why people should or should not accept a character as being the same. As an example, Batman has changed over the years and there have been heated fights over the various actors portraying the character in the movies. But Batman is generally accepted as still being Batman, despite these variations. In the case of Batman, a gender-swap could probably be criticized in a good faith manner. After all, Batgirl and Batwoman are already established characters. In the case of Black Panther, swapping in a white or Asian person could be criticized because of the centrality of Black Panther’s blackness in the character. That is, a white Black Panther would not be the same character. That said, someone could make a good story looking at a female Batperson to explore what would be different if Bruce Wayne had been Betty Wayne or what impact having a white person as the Black Panther might change. In any case, valid aesthetic criticisms of swapping would seem to have no meaningful connection to wokeness or lack of wokeness.

I was a bit reluctant to voice my agreement with these criticisms since they are often used as dog whistles for racism and sexism. But they are used in this manner because they do have merit in their proper context. This raises the question of how you can discern the difference between a good faith criticism of swapping on aesthetic grounds as well as criticisms of capitalism motivating companies to make lazy efforts to milk their intellectual property and bigoted attacks on works using the swapping criticism as a dog whistle. This can be challenging, but there are often cases where the critics lay out their explicit sexism and racism.

 

A good example of this is the Battlestar Galactica (BSG) reboot. These days, some have gone as far as to claim that BSG was the last non-woke sci-fi series and now the Kara Thrace (Starbuck) character is well-liked and rarely attacked by the anti-woke folks. But back in the day, BSG was attacked for being a “social justice” show and Dirk Benedict, who played Starbuck in the original series, attacked the decision to cast a woman in the role of Starbuck. While this reboot aired in 2003, Benedict’s criticism will sound quite familiar today:

 

The best minds in the world of un-imagination doubled their intake of Double Soy Latte’s as they gathered in their smoke-free offices to curse the day that this chauvinistic Viper Pilot was allowed to be. But never under-estimate the power of the un-imaginative mind when it encounters an obstacle (character) it subconsciously loathes. ”Re-inspiration” struck. Starbuck would go the way of most men in today’s society. Starbuck would become “Stardoe.” What the Suits of yesteryear had been incapable of doing to Starbuck 25 years ago was accomplished quicker than you can say orchiectomy. Much quicker, as in, “Frak! Gonads Gone!”

 

And the word went out to all the Suits in all the smoke-free offices throughout the land of Un-imagination, “Starbuck is dead. Long live Stardoe!”

 

I’m not sure if a cigar in the mouth of Stardoe resonates in the same way it did in the mouth of Starbuck. Perhaps. Perhaps it “resonates” more. Perhaps that’s the point. I’m not sure. What I am sure of is this…

 

Women are from Venus. Men are from Mars. Hamlet does not scan as Hamletta. Nor does Hans Solo as Hans Sally. Faceman is not the same as Facewoman. Nor does a Stardoe a Starbuck make. Men hand out cigars. Women “hand out” babies. And thus the world for thousands of years has gone’ round.

 

 

While I disagree with what Benedict wrote, I do “respect” that fact that he did not hide behind dog whistles and openly presented his views of women. Someone could, of course, make a good faith criticism of the character change, since the original BSG had female Colonial Warriors, including Viper pilots such as Serina and hence there would seem to be nothing gained by the swap. But Benedict’s “criticism” is not made on aesthetic grounds, but on the grounds that the swap is part of a broader conspiracy to emasculate men and that, apparently, women should be limited to making babies and not piloting fighters. While anti-woke critics often appeal to “realism”, realism is against this sort of “biological realism.” In the BSG series, Battlestar Galactica is leading a refugee fleet of the last known human survivors of the Cylon attack. As such, humanity is in dire straits and needs everyone to participate in the fight. This situation is an even more extreme version of what happened in the real-world during WWII: women had to step into “traditional male” roles, such as factory work and even enter combat. This shows, beyond all reasonable doubt, that women can do such “men’s work” as well as men. Ironically, realism is on the side of “the woke” and this sort of attack is sexism and a denial of reality.

In closing, while there can be good faith criticisms about swapping, the claim that “wokeness” is killing art by forcing aesthetically bad swaps has no merit. There can be aesthetically bad swaps and swaps that can be justly criticized as lazy efforts to milk an IP but these do not arise from “wokeness.”  While some “anti-woke” critics might be operating in good faith, Benedict’s example illustrates what seems to drive much of the criticism: bigotry.