The Implications of Digital Art Passing the Turing Test

Authors: Marcel Becker

Abstract:

Applicaon of the Turing to digital art will lead to beer understanding of the meaning of digital art. This topic has gained importance with the emergence of AICAN (‘AI Creave Adversarial Network’) machines. Many digital artworks will pass the test, but it must be quesoned whether this is a disqualificaon of human art. The paper integrates into two threads of philosophical discussions. It starts with discussions about the Turing test. The paper first refutes the objecon that the comparison is not jusfied given the interacve set up of the Turing test. And in discussing the Turing test the paper lays bare a not widely discussed peculiarity of the test. Turing talked about the ‘universal machine’, but in the test the core queson is whether the computer can replace a parcular human being (a man, disnguished from a woman). This tension is used to emphasize the highly contextual use of digital machines. The main part of the paper discusses aesthec theories in order to understand the possibilies and consequences of digital art passing the Turing test. It applies these theories on several categories of art. The main findings of the study are that the forms of digital that ‘imitate’ great arsts might pass the Turing test but do not contribute to further development of art and do not fulfill a vital condion of art. And there is a category of art in which the personality and the background of the arst are important. There are limitaons in the way digital art can replace human in expressing and culvang meaning. Nevertheless there are forms of art that pass the Turing without complicaons. The applicaon of aesthec theories shows that these forms must are strongly connected to autonomous and formalisc forms of art, that have come up in the 20th century.

Keywords: ditigal art, turing test, aesthetics, creative adversarial network