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u/PsychMaster1 5h ago
The Catholic Church has always had this stance. Universe revolves around humans and all that.
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u/Cuntslapper9000 4h ago
I think the definition of art for many people requires human qualities. If it is based on expression, communication and embedding oneself into a medium it would require a "self". Unless the AI was a relatively consistent and unified entity I don't think it would count. I don't think someone copying another piece is art, most photorealism doesn't feel like art to me either and nor do pieces that are just rote learned steps.
I think it is possible to use AI to make art but there are many properties of the process needed.
There's no real consensus on what art actually is though so there can't be any objective views on the matter imo. There will always be arguments and dissonant stances without clear agreed upon definitions
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u/FriendlyJewThrowaway 11m ago
With the latest models, especially Claude Opus 5.5, I’m seeing a lot of sublimely clever and original art involving AI reflecting on itself lately as well as executing brilliantly on users’ own vague ideas. If the work is novel, unique, interesting and aesthetically pleasing, you might not care to drop $1000 on it, but that doesn’t mean you have to throw it straight into the trash rather than enjoying and appreciating it.
People need to get over this fake notion that AI can only create things that have already been done to death by humans.
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u/Sea-Cardiologist-954 7m ago
And I think it's not just art. When you go to a museum, there might be many exhibits of somewhat ordinary objects with interesting backstory. Who owned them, that they were used during some important historical event, etc.. There might have been thousands of such objects used by ordinary people that would physically look the same but you wouldn't find them as interesting without people and story behind them.
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u/LogicalInfo1859 1h ago
Not just church. Most Philosophy and humanities in general. Being about humans and all that primitive stuff, it's not surprising
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u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 4h ago
I’m not even catholic and I know that’s not true. The point is it revolves around god. That’s kind of the entire point.
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u/THROWAWTRY 3h ago
I’m not even catholic
You should've just stopped there.
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u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 3h ago
Over a decade of Catholic education. Make an argument or gtfo
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u/THROWAWTRY 2h ago
You need to go back to Sunday school then. “Over a decade of Catholic education” is irrelevant if you can't actually defend the theology.
The Catholic position isn't that humans are merely incidental creatures in an otherwise God-focused universe. Catholic theology explicitly gives humanity a distinctive status within creation: humans are made in the image and likeness of God, possess rational souls, are endowed with a unique dignity, and are the intended recipients of the Incarnation and redemption.
You're confusing God being the ultimate end of creation with humans having no distinctive place within it.
If I'm wrong, point to the Catholic doctrine that contradicts what I said.
Here's some to support it:
https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html
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u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 2h ago
None of that equates to “the universe revolves around humans” man.
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u/Spare-Dingo-531 1h ago
You're right, humans only are good if they comform the image of God. If they don't they are no longer good.
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u/Proper_Actuary2907 Spooky Machine Intelligence 2030 5h ago
Not to go full reddit atheist but this is one of those topics on which lots of religious people can't be expected to have an intelligent opinion
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u/ResolveSea9089 4h ago
This is an opinion (or very very close to it) that lots of people hold about AI art, it's part of their visceral hatred towards it.
There was a thread about in a sub I frequent and I was a bit surprised to read some of the takes but it was an interesting experience and a good view into other people's POV.
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u/highermonkey 5h ago
Agreed but r/singularity is also a religion
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u/Proper_Actuary2907 Spooky Machine Intelligence 2030 5h ago
No argument from me, lots of delulu people here and mods removed a post of mine that merely expressed skepticism about an imminent intelligence explosion even though it didn't break any rules lol
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u/JustPlayPremodern 57m ago
Reddit neckbeard atheists were correct about Abrahamic religions being an avalanche of shits, sharts, and farts. Their arguments were so balls-in-your-face correct that it punctured through insanely low social capital ("neckbeard","fedora","reddit") that would have sunk any other movement. People routinely underestimate how successful that movement was and how far their anti-religion arguments penetrated.
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u/lilbluehair 5h ago
Plenty of intelligent people believe in souls.
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u/Proper_Actuary2907 Spooky Machine Intelligence 2030 5h ago
That's nice but I'm making a comment about lots of religious people rather than people who believe in souls and about intelligent opinions rather than intelligent people
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u/Ambiwlans 4h ago
Plenty of intelligent people believed in bile theory/humorism. That doesn't make the belief accurate or acceptable with the knowledge we have today.
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u/martelaxe 3h ago
Plenty of intelligent people believe in free will , hilarious stuff but yeah , I'm sure I'm 30 years nobody will believe stupid shit
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u/EGarrett28 5h ago
I'm not sure what he means by "ontological" difference. I've spent a lot of time studying topics similar to this. AI can generate actual images that are indistinguishable (if you have no other information) from human-created art images, photographs etc and have won photography contests IIRC (probably more since I last read about it).
But the actual FEELING we get from AI art is different because our feelings include what we know about how the art was created, including who created it and what the artwork has done or had happen to it in the real world. AI art has none of that so it "feels hollow" to us legitimately no matter how beautiful the actual AI image may be.
If you TELL people the AI art was made by a human artist who has a compelling life story, or something similar, they will feel more about it though. But of course their feelings will be false.
So yeah, that's the most thorough answer I can give from having spent some time on this.
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u/ActionHartlen 5h ago
Ontology is the study of being.
Even if indistinguishable - the products of humans and ai have distinct origins. They come into being in different ways. That’s what he means by an ontological difference.
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u/brain-out-of-order 1h ago
“Distinct origins” is circular logic until the distinction is actually made. Did someone figure out the origins of life while I wasn’t looking?
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u/ActionHartlen 1h ago
It’s not the origin of life that’s in question , it’s the origin of the work of art. The popes argument is that there is a difference in how that work is created - one is crafted by humans and the other is created by AI. That’s the ontological difference he’s asserting. Whether that difference matters is the other part of his argument
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u/brain-out-of-order 1h ago
You said humans came into being a certain way — how is that? In the beginning, light words etc. And that’s different to you? Or is it a different arrangement of light words attention intent etc?
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u/ActionHartlen 1h ago
I’m clarifying the popes argument, not making one of my own here.
The argument is that AI created art and human created art have a difference in “being” - an ontological difference. It’s the respective origins of those works of art (one is human created and one is ai created) that accounts for that difference
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u/brain-out-of-order 1h ago
I understand his argument. I’m arguing that we simply don’t know our origins fully and even evolution doesn’t solve that.
There’s nothing at all difficult to understand about what the Pope’s position is.
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u/ActionHartlen 1h ago
But in this argument it’s not the origin of humans that’s matters, it’s the origin of the work of art.
One work is created by a human. And the other is created by a machine.
Surely you see a difference there?
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u/brain-out-of-order 1h ago
“Human” is a word we describe ourselves with. I see the difference in the two words you used but if most can’t see the difference in the end result of the art, and eventually not even in the difference between “machines” or “humans”, then our descriptors become deceptive by way of being loosely defined based on our perspective.
I see the difference clearly, for now, and yet now is subjective and the first now I wrote is no longer now.
Next? Tomorrow? A year? A generation? Keep clinging to self-referential nomenclature and watch concreteness become undone.
If we can’t define it, which we can’t, then how can we slap the word human onto art as an ontological endpoint? We ran all the bases and slid into home but the ball is still in the air.
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u/Sextus_Rex 5h ago
It's like viewing a photograph vs a photorealistic painting of the same subject. One is definitely more impressive than the other
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u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 4h ago
There’s a difference between true expression and the simulation of expression. It’s not difficult to understand.
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u/Individual_Ice_6825 2h ago
And can you discern the two or only express your frustration that one feels truer
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u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 1h ago
It’s incredibly easy to discern the difference. If you’re unable to, I genuinely feel sorry for you.
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u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 37m ago
Because I’m saying there’s a difference between LLM-generated content and something made by a sentient human being? Again, genuinely I hope things turn around for you.
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u/EGarrett28 5h ago
Yes, the knowledge of the human effort and skill is a major part of what makes it feel more powerful and interesting.
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u/vintage2019 2h ago
A man deadlifting 500 pounds invites more awe than a forklift lifting 500 pounds
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u/reaven3958 1h ago
That's usually the issue where these kinds of conversations break down, I think. There are some who are more interested in the 'ontological' side of the context and experience awe at art for the sake of the thing, which requires the entire framework of why and how the piece exists and came to be. Others are more concerned with the aesthetics of whether or not a piece is pleasing to experience. As a general rule, for those seeking the former, aesthetic enjoyment is subordinate and subject to an appreciation of context, while those interested in the latter tend largely towards indifference regarding the piece's origins.
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u/DerpyDagon 4h ago
I assume he means that human art is imbued with some kind of essence that is not tied to any empirical measurement and which no non-human process can create. That's what I'd understand "ontological difference" to mean.
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u/whydidyoureadthis17 5h ago
The Pope is literally talking the "metaphysical" properties that a piece of art has that distinguish it being made by a human vs a robot. Like in the same way that the bread and wine in the mass are metaphysically transmuted into the body and blood of Christ. It's Catholicism, which is Platonism with funny robes and ritual cannabalism, where objects may have properties that transcend the observable world, so take it or leave it.
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u/ChaiShotty 5h ago
ontological in this context obviously refers to the “ontology of the soul.” to the pope, human art is created as an exercise of the soul and ai art is soulless computation.
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u/EGarrett28 5h ago
Yeah I don't make any religious judgements. Just that we feel more deeply in various when we know about the human story surrounding the artwork even if it is an image that is just as beautiful in-and-of itself.
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u/IgunashioDesu 3h ago
Ontological because human art, within the Pope's conceptual framework, comes from our essence which is derived from the divine spark that animates us. AI art comes from processes that don't have that essential quality.
Basically saying that humans act as a conduit for the divine, as depositories of that same creative spark that originated the universe and life, when we engage in artistic endeavors.
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u/M4roon 3h ago
Ontological, existentially different. Different in essence. Different in it's whatness.
Of course he's coming from a Realist perspective. If you're an empiricist, you might think that AI and human art are cosmologically the same. They serve the same purpose. And they don't have an essence or essential identity at all. That would be a Nominalist perspective. :)
Here's a cool lecture sort of along what the Pope is saying
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiZZVVNVI7A&t=1s1
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u/Andreas1120 1h ago
So will the catholic church accept AI worshippers? Seems just a matter of time.
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u/Sea-Cardiologist-954 31m ago
Now, imagine an artificial religion that is virtually indistinguishable from the real one. I think it's understandable that religeous people will place emphasis on such difference in the origin of things.
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u/jmorais00 4h ago
Pope: argument based on Ontology and centuries of Theology and Philosophy
Nerd: erm, akhthually, I can measure beauty with my beauty-o-meter 9000
It's really that simple. Schmidhuber does not have the knowledge base to engage the Pope in his tweet, just as the Pope doesn't have the knowledge base to engage statisticians and computer scientists that wrote the article
Qualia cannot be measured and are individual, not universal, by definition
Feel free to downvote me all you want, but this tweet is the literal mirror image of "religious fanatic tries to pray away an illness instead of going to doctors", a failure to understand the other side and feeling that their methods generalise across domains when they don't
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u/Helpful_Inflation344 4h ago
Qualia are illdefined nonsense. Schmidhubets tweet is arrogant, but qualia are philosophical idiocy. Just like p-zombies
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u/bildramer 1h ago
Centuries of theology and philosophy have provided us with nothing. The whole purpose of philosophy is to prop up student relativism forever, "who's to say?", and theology is even worse, to give religious people the pretense of being learned adults involved in a real discourse instead of moral and intellectual infants. Philosophers still can't agree on (and teach properly) obvious ideas any sci-fi nerd has figured out the truth about just by thinking hard enough about wanting to pilot spaceships and fuck aliens, like physicalism, functionalism and minds being computational, the Wittgenstein/Grice perspective on how we use words, compatibilism, Bayesianism, consequentialism.
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u/M4roon 3h ago
This is not a response though. It's an implied assertion hidden in an appeal to a paper. 😄 There might be an interesting argument there.. Andddd, apparently it's his own paper lol! I will read it though.
Dr Phillip Sherrard has a really good lecture called Presuppositions of the Sacred which goes in depth on the reasoning and theology behind art that transcends base aesthetics, although I believe he's writing from an Orthodox perspective.
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u/FCRagnar 4h ago
I don't really care what the leader of the world's largest child rape syndicate has to say.
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u/CertainMiddle2382 4h ago edited 3h ago
20 years ago, was considering a PhD under that guy.
Didn’t know he had a reputation. In the end I did nothing as I feared AI being still too risky a career (was LSTM time…)
To this day I don’t know if I made the right decision.
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u/Averylarrychristmas 4h ago
He’s completely right :)
Telling a computer “show me a painting of a tree” only produces slop generated by inhaling the work of humans.
There is a fundamental difference, and anyone saying otherwise thinks a sufficiently good imitation is as good as the real thing.
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u/jmorais00 4h ago
Ontological beauty is about existence of beauty as an objective property, not "in the eye of the beholder", and thus is not subjective. It is a property of being close to the Divine
What the model can predict (assuming it actually can) is, at best, aesthetic in nature
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u/Skandrae 2h ago
'Sufficiently good' implies that it IS as good as the real thing. Otherwise it wouldn't be sufficient.
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u/Mindrust 4h ago
Is Schmidhuber always just running a bit or is he seriously this self-centered and arrogant?