AI and Art at the Mori Art Museum / 森美術館: AIと芸術

I went to the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo with my friend this weekend. The title of the exhibition was "Future and the Arts: AI, Robotics, Cities, Life - How Humanity Will Live Tomorrow."

I saw a whole bunch of interesting things, from a radical architecture in China and Sushi 3d printer, to a cute penguin robot and a doll of a creature that's half-human and half-chimpanzee.

But the exhibit that really interested me was art created by computers and AI.

This beautiful work is created by sticking together metal pipes with various lengths and thicknesses. The size of each pipe is determined by a computer, and the randomness makes it truly fantastic. The description said "it would be impossible for a human artist to create this," as no one can determine the sizes of thousands of these pipes in a random way.

This one, called "The History of Everything" (I don't remember the exact name but it was something like that), is created by an AI algorithm. It was trained on images tagged "everything" on Flickr, and it produced a video of vague images of various objects such as flowers, buildings, and the universe, flowing seamlessly. It left me with a mystical impression, and it really felt like it was "the history of everything."

Can AI be an artist? I think AI will stay only as a tool to assist human artists. AI doesn't have a desire to express their feelings or thoughts, and they will do it only when humans tell them to do so (at least as of right now). Nonetheless, art created by AI is unlike anything created by a human artist. I feel like AI art is the purest form of art because AI doesn't have any cultural or social backgrounds or biases. AI art can be enjoyed no matter the race, gender, generation, maybe even species. If aliens existed, even if they wouldn't understand any human art, maybe they could understand art created by AI.

今週末、友達と六本木の森美術館にいってきました。「未来と芸術展：AI、ロボット、都市、生命――人は明日どう生きるのか」という題の展示を見ました。

特に興味をひかれたのはAIによって作られたアートでした。AIは人間と違って文化的なバックグラウンドとかバイアスがないので、それによって作られる作品っていうのは最も純粋な形のアートなんだと思います。宇宙人がいたとしたら、彼らに人間のアートがわからなくても、AIのアートならわかるのかもしれないですね。