*** I first met Christian Dittmer when he was in like eighth grade (I think). He was a precocious and very smart young middle-schooler who was already digging into philosophy that most folks won’t encounter until late in college! I ended up working with him quite closely reading philosophy in a more systematic and formal way throughout his high school years. An exceptionally talented philosopher, he is also a remarkably creative musician and composer. Now a student at Auburn University, Christian has begun releasing his own music and so when I found out that he had a new EP coming out this week, I asked him to write up a Music Mondays post that talked about issues emerging from his new music. I am so very glad that he accepted the invitation and I think you will really benefit from thinking with him about the task of musical composition as implicating our humanity (and make sure to check out his new EP - discussed and linked below.
Written by J.C. Dittmer II
Before I begin, I would like to clarify that I am a composition/technology major, not a computer technology major, so I don’t know much about AI. All I know is that it has served a variety of helpful functions throughout the tech world, but this essay will not be discussing the kind of AI that helps you with your math homework (which I definitely have no experience with whatsoever). The thing that has raised so much controversy in recent news is generative AI, the kind that does your math homework for you (read: allows you not to have to learn math!).
A hypothetical example might be helpful here. Picture yourself as the head of a school system. This new algorithm has recently been developed which generates unique lessons and problems tailored to each student so that they can get the most efficient use out of their K-12 education. This program deals with every academic problem that a teacher would likely highlight, and is able to answer all questions almost instantaneously, communicating with the students using language specific to their level of expertise. Hearing about this application, you decide that it is worth implementing into your school. (I mean why not embrace another excuse to pay teachers even less? Hmmmmm.)
I’ll stop the story here before I fall on a slippery slope ending in a Black Mirror episode, but I’m sure you see where this scenario could go. Perhaps the students end up flourishing academically now that each course is personalized to them. Perhaps they go to school just to interact with a laptop or they end up not needing to go to school at all because they can do all the work at home. Neither of these outcomes are mutually exclusive, of course. I was homeschooled for the last four years of my pre-college education and, let me tell you, it’s efficient but it’s lonely.
There are plenty of schools that have already implemented something like this hypothetical I describe. I myself remember spending hours completing assignment after assignment on different scholastic websites while the teacher just sat in their corner and supervised. Were this to extend to the extreme of human educators becoming completely removed from the equation, we would lose something integral to a healthy childhood experience. While I do acknowledge that this is a very far-fetched future, I’m trying to make a point that hits us right where we are, so I ask for your patience for a few more minutes.
Teachers have more jobs than merely to educate. A teacher will comfort the student who encounters a frustrating problem or bruises their knee. A teacher will identify students with harmful behaviors and try to help guide them in a better direction. The thing that made my education so meaningful was seeing how my teachers were also imperfect through the mistakes they made while leading the classes. Because of this, it was easier to connect personally with the teacher and retain more investment and existential connection to the material being taught.
I have begun with this example about the possible futures of our school system because this scenario is analogous to what has become of the music industry as well.
An AI algorithm can complete some of those auxiliary tasks associated with being a teacher. Indeed, it can even make mistakes (though it is probably less likely to see erring as a matter of being human!). However, however capable AI might be as a knowledge distribution device, it lacks the one thing that all great teachers and great musicians both display: empathy.
It is empathy that explains why we laugh with Sting when he sits on a piano at the beginning of “Roxanne” but laugh at an artificially generated singer mispronouncing one of its lyrics.
The AI that generates “music” is incapable of reciprocating our human feelings that emerge from hearing that very music. And neither is corporate America very capable of such empathy, apparently, as it continues to adhere to a soul-crushing syllogism:
The best option is whatever is most profitable
You will save money investing in AI-generated “music” rather than in human-generated music
Therefore, invest in AI instead
There are obviously a lot of problems with this argument, but I’m not here to critique capitalism since I know Aaron has raised many important questions in that direction in his posts here on “Philosophy in the Wild.” Instead, I’m here to talk about art.
Philosophers have had a lot to say about the subject of art over the years, and I took a course on aesthetics last semester so I’m somewhat of an expert on the topic (sarcasm). Anyone who has taken any Intro to Philosophy class is probably familiar with Plato. Indeed, his early dialogues were some of the first texts I read (upon Aaron’s recommendation back when I was in middle school). One thing I was surprised to learn is how much this man hates art. Well, said a bit more precisely, he at least had a lot of critical things to say about art.
In brief, Plato views most, if not all, artists as imitators of true things. Thus, works of art are mere reflections of transcendent ideas (or so Plato’s theory of Forms suggests). For example, a poem about a flower is less “real” than the actual flower, but that flower is merely an instance of the Idea of flower, by which this or that object count as flowers in the first place. Thus, as Socrates declares in Book 10 of the Republic, such artistic imitations are “thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, because they are appearances only and not realities.”
To use one of Plato’s own analogies, a painter may paint a cobbler without knowing the first thing about making shoes. Plato sees this as despicable because, if the cobbler has been depicted well enough, this artist could “deceive children or simple persons,” when a picture of the cobbler is shown from a distance to where the viewer will think they are looking at an actual cobbler. Essentially, artists are corrupting the youth into believing a false or distorted reality, which is not very good if you’re looking to raise children with a rational mindset to rule the republic. Hence, artists are of no value in Plato’s ideal society.
To bring this point home, although Adam Sandler played a pretty convincing cobbler in a film, you probably shouldn’t take him your shoes to get new soles!
Now, to clarify, I wholeheartedly disagree with Plato’s account, and plenty of other philosophers have challenged the idea that artists are deceitful imitators. I bring it up simply because, while this does not truly apply to art created by humans, Plato may have actually been a few millennia ahead of his time by perfectly describing the issue with generative AI.
An AI algorithm may store in its servers all the information in the world, but it possesses no knowledge, as such. All it can do is mimic patterns. The more information, the clearer the pattern. Yet, within these uncanny imitations lies no further insight into the material it is reproducing. Provide an AI with a limitless assortment of images, videos, and articles about cobblers and it may generate something that is, in appearance, a cobbler. But neither the one depicted nor the thing that created them knows the first thing about making shoes.
Of course, one need not be intimately familiar with a craft in order to properly illustrate it on a canvas. The thing that, I believe, makes human art different is, again, the empathetic emotional context in which it exists. We need not know what a cobbler is doing to a shoe in order to sympathize with his struggle. Most of us have seen Jan Mateijko’s Stańczyk and deeply understand the nature of this character without, I’m assuming, having any first-hand experience of what it takes to be a court jester.
We humans, as feelers, have the almighty power of interpretation and can relate basically anything that has ever existed to our own lives in some way. The notion of pareidolia reifies this idea very well through how our minds react to facial expressions in inhuman objects.
To me, the way in which we search for reflections of our own emotion both in the wild and in curated exhibits pleads that the manufacturing of our species’ most intimate method of emotional communication (music, or art in general) not be outsourced to an apathetic pattern-recognition software. In preaching to this naturally-generated choir, I reaffirm that our best option is to invest in other people. There are plenty of areas, even within the music industry, in which AI can be utilized as a tool that serves our human interests, but it can never express the core feelings from which those interests arise, it can only imitate these things. In this way, and with a nod to Plato, it can only deceive.
This post was written in promotion of a piece of music I have just released that celebrates the irreplaceability of the human touch. It is a five track EP of experimental electronic — some guitar-based, some synth-based, some sample-based — music. I’ve been working on this for almost a year and feel more confident about delivering this to an audience than I have with any of my previous releases.
Here it is on Spotify:
And here is the Bandcamp link:
If even one of you felt like devoting 15 minutes of your time to give it a listen, I would be overcome with emotion (and get such a shock that I’d probably jump in the ocean). Otherwise, thank you for reading and go make art.
Oh, and here is the video for track 5: A Human’s Touch:
Find me: https://linktr.ee/JC_DittmerII
Thanks for reading Philosophy in the Wild ! This post is public so feel free to share it.
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