When an idea grabs hold, am consumed by it, till the energy is transformed into a new form – art, product, book, illustration, song, event – or am able to absorb all the energy, thus being able to walk away from the need to do anything with it. Creation is a fascinating process. If you know what, where, why, when and how you want to go through the process, the end result can be available in minutes, hours, days. Else, it could take weeks, months, quarters, often years.
I needed 12 minutes to create this #digitalart #selfportrait. The process required 33 iterations, each iteration representing a decision made after considering multiple options. A total of 15 digital assets were created in the process. Being an abstract artist by vocation, I did not have a preconceived end-visual in mind – I stopped when I saw that the message I wanted to communicate and the visual had converged into one. The tools I used were an iPhone14Pro and iColorama app, which has AI (and regular) features.
At this point in time, some AI can do what I described in seconds. The difference is that the AI bases it on the study of all reference points available to the AI. Romantics and purists would likely argue that AI is creating on the basis of other artists works, that it is not creation, that it is built upon the works and methods of thousands of other arts.
That is exactly what human beings do, well not in thousands but definitely we learn from the works of others and our works based on the works of others … over a period of time. But we call it memory and learning because we think calling it memory makes it personal, makes it ours. But that’s what AI is doing as well – building memories on the basis of what it interacts with. Like we did when we were babies and thereon.
The difference between ML/AI technologies and human interventions is that ML can learn and make decisions from every iteration in split seconds, while human beings debate and discuss endlessly before taking a decision. The human mind is obsessed with the possibilities – endless at that – while ML technology is focused on reducing that sea of endless uncertainty by increasing the body of possible paths at every stage and learning from each permutation and combination.
At some point in the future, some AI may be able to do this in seconds with a Conscious Deliberate Differentiation – which is to my mind an important factor that differentiates human thought from artificial Intelligence. Conscious Deliberate Differentiation is the ability to make a non-choice or make a choice that is not the outcome of an analysis or make a choice that is not the apparent right choice knowing that it is not the right choice. It is Conscious Deliberate Differentiation that gives us plurality. The cliche for that is: Free Will. The cool way to say it: Coz I can.
I say this with authority since my choice of team members, business partners, study, work, even clients, students, were never logical choices. Nobody in their right minds would make the choices I did even though I knew what the right choices were. Do you know what my answer was when someone asked me why I didn’t make the right choice? “That would mean I am a computer.”
AI is good. AI is bad. AI is … just another factor in life. It was always there. We can work with it, we can work against it, we can use it, we can be used by it. We can love it. We can hate it. We can ignore it. It’s just another decision. A choice.
#thebengali #themountainwalker #art #design #learning #performance #criticalthinking #mindscape #india #icolorama #AI #ML