My research life started in 2008, when I encountered a study on \u201cAesthetics\u201d in Japan.<\/p>\n
It is not easy to define \u201caesthetics\u201d in short. If I would like to explain straight forward how human beings acknowledge \u2018beautifulness\u2019, and \u2018sensibility\u2019 at that moment. So, every deed done by human beings can be an object, and its scope is infinite. For such reasons, the center of discussion about \u2018aesthetics\u2019 would sometimes be ideology or art, depending on the time or country. As the definition of art is being diversified, as mentioned above, it is possible to make research like this essay. As an example, let\u2019s study AI music from an aesthetic viewpoint.<\/p>\n
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If you put a lot of music into an AI system, it would make similar and new music by analyzing original data. For example, \u201cAI Composer Emily Howell\u201d composed by David Cope, can produce a lot of music in a short time based on the old composing style of Beethoven or Mahler.<\/p>\n
In the field of popular music, a research team led by Ahn Chang-Wook under the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Korea developed \u201cAI Composer EvoM\u201d, and various popular songs including K-pop. Against such AI music, regardless of academic or non-academic field, public opinion has shown its interest in such scientific and technological aspects of AI as its historic, scientific potential and commercial value. Moreover, such controversies have recently extended to the field of \u2018post-humanism\u2019 like social and ethical issues, and aesthetic and philosophical fields by environmental philosophers.<\/p>\n
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We can re-consider, from the relationship between AI music and human beings, \u201ccreativity\u201d which is one of the main concepts of \u201caesthetic\u201d. In the evaluation of AI music in classical music (western artistic music), it is criticized as poor tasting songs that imitate songs by great classical composers simply. When I listen to AI music, I think its quality is much inferior to \u2018music by human beings\u2019. However, such criticism may be caused by the creativity of \u2018human music\u2019, which has been controversial since the latter half of the18th century. At that time, the concept of \u2018genius\u2019 or \u2018originality\u2019 rose, and the composition using existing music, which has continued since the Middle Ages, was criticized.<\/p>\n
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Namely, borrowing behavior itself means no originality. For example, the citation technique of Gustav Mahler, composer of the post-romanticism era, was related to \u2018Jewishness\u2019 (negative meaning), and its originality was suspected. Such a tendency lasted until the modernism of the 1950s and 1960s. For composers and critics who asked for novelty, the use of adjusted music means \u2018return to the past\u2019, and quoting the behavior of existing music means \u2018dirty music\u2019.<\/p>\n
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Deliberation for \u2018creativity\u2019 in AI music may become the start of this issue. Against various aesthetic questions for AI music, like 1) What is creativity? 2) What is the function of a composer? 3) What is work? 4) How do listeners react? The answers would be the following: When you input information into AI, it is \u2018human composers\u2019 that select information, and, on the other hand, it is AI that creates new music. As David Cope mentioned above, even if \u2018human composers\u2019 collect, select, and input information, AI will produce unexpected results.<\/p>\n
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From the theory mentioned above, I can say that AI has \u2018originality\u2019. According to David Cope, it does not depend on human inspiration alone but arises from another factor like a machine. And \u2018originality\u2019 does not come from anything but the context that comes around \u2018originality\u2019. \u2018Originality\u2019 comes from the composition of works that other people have done. Furthermore, it must rely on the judgement, for or against, of other people who accept or reject the things that are aesthetic. We can find such insistence of Cope in the process of creation, not in the result of works of \u2018originality\u2019. Such discussion about the \u2018originality\u2019 of AI marks an important beginning for understanding the \u2018originality\u2019 of human beings. It gives us the big suggestion that we create something new from nothing, and we can review our attitude toward appreciation, which is bound by modern mythology.<\/p>\n
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