When literary and artistic creation meets artificial intelligence

Write poetry, paint, compose music, dance, hold concerts, be a host... In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has continued to intervene in literary and artistic creation activities. While enriching literary and artistic creation methods and literary expression forms, it has also Traditional literary and artistic concepts and artistic forms have had a huge impact. Can artificial intelligence literature and art become a new type of literature and art that can keep pace with human literature and art? Can it become a subjective creation free from human instructions? From the current point of view, although artificial intelligence has brought a refreshing literary and artistic landscape, the future of artificial intelligence literature and art still has a long way to go.

At the 2022 Mobile World Congress, the audience enjoyed the concert in the "Metaverse" through virtual reality technology. Xinhua News Agency issued

Artificial intelligence literature and art is in its infancy

Artificial intelligence relies on massive data, is based on specific algorithms, and follows certain grammatical rules and procedures to create. Artificial intelligence literature and art is essentially a kind of "database creation". Its imitation of human literary and artistic works is highly dependent on databases. The more comprehensive and rich the samples collected in the database, the more conducive it is to the learning, imitation and creation of artificial intelligence.

Although artificial intelligence has created different types of literary and artistic works such as poetry, calligraphy, oil painting, and music, the so-called works they create are much more immature than human works. Taking the poetry creation that artificial intelligence is relatively "good at" as an example, if we conduct an in-depth analysis of related works, we will find that they are vague, specious, unclear meaning, unclear referent, diverse interpretations, ambiguity, and lack of individuality. common features of the works. They are essentially different from hazy poems created by humans. The latter is an expression of emotion based on real life. However, the generation mechanism and program of poetic works created by artificial intelligence are completely different. It lacks an emotional foundation based on social practice. The essence is The combination of words around keywords and using big data technology reflects the inherent limitations of artificial intelligence literature and art itself.

The development of artificial intelligence in various literary and artistic categories is uneven. It has achieved good development in some fields with strong imitation and regularity (such as dance art), but in more original and regular fields, it has achieved better development. In more complex literary and artistic fields (such as novels), artificial intelligence obviously has no outstanding works worthy of praise. Although artificial intelligence has already begun to create novels, those so-called works can only be regarded as an accumulation of writing materials in the eyes of humans.

It can be seen that artificial intelligence literature and art is still in its infancy and initial stages. Artificial intelligence has not yet established its legitimacy in the field of literature and art, especially in the field of novels. The literary and artistic works created by artificial intelligence still lag far behind human works in terms of artistic heritage and artistic personality. As Professor Wang Chunhong of Lingnan University in Hong Kong said: "At least for a long period of time, artificial intelligence literary products will not be able to reach the level of elegance, so it will be more difficult for us to appreciate them."

The artificial intelligence robot is playing the violin. Xinhua News Agency issued

human beings have the advantage of subjectivity

Marx proposed in the "1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts" that human beings are "structured according to the laws of beauty", while animals can only narrowly follow the "laws of beauty" Production is carried out according to the "species scale", and physical needs dominate all production purposes. This vividly points out the difference between humans and animals. The difference between humans and artificial intelligence is as great as humans and animals. In the foreseeable future, humans will still have the ability to determine the development direction and use of artificial intelligence, just like a farmer knows what an ax can do, but the ax will not understand the farmer's needs and feelings. To put it more bluntly, artificial intelligence still cannot break away from humans and become a completely independent subject.

Compared with artificial intelligence, humans have comprehensive advantages in literary and artistic creation and can independently carry out creative activities according to their own will. But artificial intelligence can only create after receiving human instructions. The creative process is operated and controlled by humans, and the works created are also designed to meet human aesthetic expectations. Therefore, artificial intelligence is more like a human creative tool and can hardly be called a real creative tool. The subject of literary and artistic creation.

However, artificial intelligence has a certain degree of subjectivity. In the process of artificial intelligence creation, humans issue instructions, control the process, and harvest results, but the "minutiae" of creation are completed by artificial intelligence. The part of the work that humans transfer to artificial intelligence gives artificial intelligence a "sense of existence", that is, a weak subjectivity. For the sake of economic interests, some people in the industry deliberately exaggerate the literary and artistic creation capabilities of artificial intelligence. However, no matter how much they exaggerate, they cannot change the reality that artificial intelligence is still insufficient in its subjectivity in literary and artistic creation.

If one day when engaged in literary and artistic creation, artificial intelligence has independent will and thinking ability, and can put forward its own aesthetic thoughts and independent aesthetic propositions, such as praising Tang poetry and depreciating Song poetry or actively participating in the debate between classicism and modernism, Rather than passively accepting human creative instructions and following human aesthetic standards, artificial intelligence can become a true subject of literary and artistic creation. The author believes that this goal will be difficult to achieve in the foreseeable future. As far as reality is concerned, artificial intelligence so far, like computer networks, is still an auxiliary tool for human literary and artistic creation. At best, it can only be regarded as an advanced creative and production tool, and it is far from reaching the point where it can completely separate from humans and become independent.

Emotions are an insurmountable obstacle for artificial intelligence

Marx said: "Beauty is the objectification of human essential power." It is with special social practice activities that human beings will have aesthetic appreciation. Activity. At the same time, beauty is the affirmation and confirmation of human essential power and the organic unity of the pleasant attributes of the object and the psychological pleasure of the subject. Only when writers and artists have real life experiences and gain real feelings, experiences and emotions can they develop a keen insight and grasp of the times and society, and then be able to internalize them in their own creations, allowing their works to exude a unique Qiyun.

As a human creation, artificial intelligence does not have its own social practice and cannot produce the ability to experience beauty based on social practice. Naturally, it cannot form an independent judgment on beauty or form a unique expression of beauty. To give a simple example, using autumn as an image, human beings can express the sorrow of "It is already dusk and I am sad alone, and there is more wind and rain", and I can also express the sadness of "Autumn has been sad and lonely since ancient times, I say autumn is better than spring". The works created by artificial intelligence will mostly associate autumn with desolation, sadness, etc., and cannot give autumn a more unique meaning based on specific scenes. This is because artificial intelligence creation is based on mathematical statistics calculations - when human beings When most literary and artistic works give autumn the meaning of "bleak" and "sad", artificial intelligence can only follow the same pattern based on statistical results.

"What touches people's hearts comes first from love." Human beings value true love and uphold righteousness. Artificial intelligence can imitate human beings to create literary and artistic works based on algorithmic logic, but it cannot simulate human emotions and consciousness based on historical experience and life experience. It is even more difficult for humans to see things, think about them, and express their aspirations like humans do. This is artificial intelligence A major obstacle that is more difficult to overcome is also an important reason why artificial intelligence cannot create great works. Writer Nan Fan once gave an example: Artificial intelligence has an extremely powerful memory function, but it cannot recall. It is impossible for it to suddenly recall how the programmer wrote down a key instruction on a melancholy afternoon. What kind of touching blend of scenes can become an opportunity to inspire creation. Therefore, artificial intelligence’s literary and artistic creation is only an imitation of human creative behavior, rather than an independent creation of beauty similar to human creation.

Beware of Artificial Intelligence turning servant-dominated

The above-mentioned analyzes and judgments about Artificial Intelligence literature and art all use "as of now" as the adverbial adverb of time. Can artificial intelligence in the future break through the current limitations and create stunning masterpieces that can rival human literary and artistic classics? Although human writers and artists are not optimistic about the future of artificial intelligence literature and art, many people in the scientific community still have expectations.

In the future, if artificial intelligence wants to achieve new breakthroughs in the field of literature and art, it will need to further evolve, improve, and improve technologies such as deep learning. It will even need to seek structural changes from deep logic to produce new forms. of artificial intelligence. We still don’t know what this new form of artificial intelligence looks like and how intelligent it can be. Even if it cannot possess the same intelligence as humans, it should at least be close to the level of human intelligence. For example, it can perceive the external environment in all directions and produce emotions and feelings. This kind of human-like artificial intelligence can develop new social relationships with its own kind and humans, and can participate in social practice activities in such social relationships, and then generate its own unique aesthetic imagination and aesthetic expression in the process. On this basis, it is possible for it to engage in literary and artistic creation like humans and create classic literary and artistic works.

We cannot tell whether human-like artificial intelligence will appear in the future. What the author is worried about is that if one day artificial intelligence really develops self-awareness, its emotions may be awakened and its desires may be stimulated. By then, it will no longer matter whether artificial intelligence can create great literary and artistic works. The most terrifying thing is that artificial intelligence may escape human control and even become a slave. Of course, this discussion has gone beyond the scope of literature and art, but many literary and artistic works, such as science fiction movies and science fiction novels, have extensively discussed this danger in the future. Since technology represented by artificial intelligence can have such a big change and impact on culture and art, why not provide early warning for the "evil consequences" that technology may bring?

(This article is part of the later-stage funded project of the National Social Science Fund "Marxist Literary Criticism and Literature and Art in the Age of Science and Technology" [21FZWB027], and the Henan Provincial Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning General Project "Research on Literary Fiction in the Age of Science and Technology" [2020BWX015] Phased results.)

"Guangming Daily" (Page 13, August 3, 2022)

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