Humanity

So . . . the scene above is on a ridge just a mile from our home. I made the picture from a trail we often use for morning walks. The mountain barely visible in the background is part of the Appalachian range, and the Appalachian Trail is up there along the top of it. As a landscape picture, this one is okay. Not great but okay. If I posted it on Facebook the picture would get some likes.

But what if there were some people in this picture, looking as if they belonged there? That would add to it, right? And since this is rural, perhaps they would best be a farming couple out enjoying the walk and talking with each other. Talking in a way to make you feel their enjoyment of nature and of each other. Something like the following perhaps . . ..

I was happy about what these people added to the picture and went on to think more about this. I visualized the same couple as they might be on a small farm beside the sea. Up high above it perhaps. On the coast of Ireland perhaps. And so I imagined the following . . .

We know the process that might be used to create this series of pictures. I would first have enlisted and contracted with the models. I would have selected the clothing they would wear, and arranged their transportation. I would have shot the bare landscape scene and then placed the couple in it for their part. Putting them in just the right location and distance from my camera. I would have directed them to interact in different ways and later selected the shots I liked best. Then we would book flights to Ireland and repeat this on the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare.

All this is reasonable and could have happened that way with an adequate budget and a good bit of time. Instead, using artificial intelligence, I selected a picture I had already taken and spent some enjoyable minutes with my notebook computer and my AI application. AI and I created these pictures. The result is every bit as good as the traditional method. Who could tell the difference?

But some would say the AI pictures are deceitful and misleading. Although they may look real, they aren’t real and so they should not be allowed. You, the reader, may have thought this already. It is not unusual if you did. It is also to be expected that more and more we will be questioning what we read and see because of AI. 

But, if you think about it, the movies we love are just like this—they aren’t real either. They create scenes and situations that never existed, but we watch them as if they did. Sometimes at the end we are so into the story that we stay sitting through all those rolling credits because we are so transfixed and hating to break the spell.

Music is also like this. Someone feels something strangely moving and writes it into music. The music becomes an experience of something that words only hint at. When this succeeds, the listener has the same experience. When this greatly succeeds, the music may endure for hundreds of years. Sometimes we even refrain from replaying our music too often because we want the experience to remain new and fresh.

Poetry is like this. The poet feels things and then invents the right words to convey those feelings. Some poems may also sustain us for hundreds of years.

So AI is simply another way that our imaginations can be enhanced and extended. And so what if AI can invent some things faster and better than we mortals can? Are we jealous? After all, we humans invented AI, did we not?

Should novels not be published that depict the unknown and uncertain? that portray places that don’t exist? that imagine happenings that never happened? Should makeup not be allowed because it makes people look better than they actually do? Should fairy tales and ghost stories be kept from the minds of children? Should actors not pretend to be someone they are not? Should cartoons and comedians not be allowed to portray the ridiculous?

Imagination, representation, and interpretation—whether in art, science, or storytelling—are inseparable from what makes human understanding possible. And our humanity allows for the paradox that AI, which lacks feelings and emotion, may still create images that produce those feelings in us. That is the remarkable irony here.

We spend about a third of our lives in sleep. And a lot of that time we are dreaming. What do we dream about? Much of the time our dreams have little relation to the literal and actual.

I will give an example of my own. I have a recurring dream where I literally “leap tall buildings at a single bound.” I sometimes do sustained flying using my arms as wings. Sometimes those flying dreams can go wrong and I crash to the ground. But when things are going right they are exhilarating. They are so real that I look forward to the next one.

If the imaginary in our dreams can be more satisfying than the actual in our lives, what does that teach about reality? 

Painters have been falling in love with portraits of people who never existed for centuries; readers weep over fictional deaths; a sculptor feels tenderness for a lump of marble that’s finally “become” someone.

The most persuasive answer to “what is real” could be this: real is whatever evokes a genuine response in us, regardless of where the image or story came from. 

Is heaven real? Some people casually think so. Others strongly believe so. Others doubtfully hope so. Others scornfully deny the very idea. None of these viewpoints can prove itself yes or no in scientific terms. Even AI has no clue. Human understanding and artificial intelligence both have their limitations. But our quest for reality continues.

There were many years that a lot of us looked forward each week to the imagined lives of people in a small Minnesota town named Lake Wobegon. We knew them by name, almost like dear friends. Father Emil, Pastor Ingqvist, Pastor Liz, Wally Bunsen, Mr. Berge, Miss Falconer, Johnny Tollefson, Harold Starr, Carl and Florian Krebsbach, Art of Art’s Bait Shop, and Dorothy of the Chatterbox Café. Some of them reminded us of people we knew, and some of them reminded us of us.

Was Lake Wobegon real?

I think the answer is both no and yes. I think the reality of much reality is both no and yes. The reality of the couple on the hillside near my home or on the Cliffs of Moher is both no and yes. I did not actually make a picture of those two people in those two places. But they look happy and can be imagined as belonging to either scene. You can imagine walking up and meeting them, smiling and getting acquainted. That would be so nice.

Maybe, for a while at least, it is better to dwell on things like that than on all the war and killing and lying and stealing and imprisoning and executing and deporting and other human cruelty that is the focus of our daily news.

Afterword

Someone might read this article and say that I have been duped by AI. I realize there is lots of negative feeling about AI these days. People complain about the jobs it is replacing, the energy it requires, the falsehoods that people create with it, the “cheating” that occurs when students use it in school. And, of course, others claim that AI is out to get us all and eventually destroy humanity. 

Along with this, there is also a lot of negative criticism directed at cellphones. They are ruining our children. We are getting addicted to them. People can’t have a conversation with people any more because of them. They are robbing young men of their manhood, etc.

Along with this, there is also a lot of negative criticism directed at social media. It is dividing the country, dividing families, promoting conspiracies and falsehoods, etc.

To me, it is all about how we are using these amazing tools. They can be used for amazing good or for depressing ill, and sometimes it does seem that the ill is winning out. 

You can email Ed Briggs HERE

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