Could art as a profession eventually be replaced by technology?

[Eclipse Dragon]

Many many years ago, my uncle graduated with a degree involving airline scheduling, however, with the progress of computer systems, he quickly found himself out of a job and his degree pretty much useless. Situations like this, of course, get me thinking about my own job. I'm a commercial artist. I design t-shirts and do a little freelance illustration on the side, but I'm pretty much the "art person" at the company I work and I end up doing...everything else art related as well.

One thing that I regularly notice from customers is this idea that because my art is done on a computer, it's easy. I mean really easy, as in it's not uncommon for someone to expect beautiful, finished work in less than 24 hours. Of course computers do make things easier, I have an "undo" button for example, but there's still a lot of "old fashioned" work involved. I still need to be able to draw, since people come up with some very wild ideas, the kind of things that can't be found in clip art libraries.

Art tools also seem to be moving toward and favor a traditional approach. People prize hand painted textures as oppose to push button filters and tablet monitors such as cintiqs try to mimic the feel of pencil and paper.

So while the technology seems to be moving in favor of aiding artists, rather than replacing them, why is the viewpoint that it takes so little effort so prevalent?

Could there be a future in which computers replace artists?

Personally I don't believe so, because even if computers were able to perfectly mimic exactly the image a person has in their head, it would feel "mass produced" and I believe people will often prefer something that another person had to put time and effort into making, but I'm curious, what do you think Escapist?

 

[Fappy]

I believe they already have and will dominate some areas of art, but it shouldn't be a detriment to most artists out there. As you said, most of the technology being developed is designed to aid artists, not replace them. Even with the photo editing programs these days that can do everything for you, you are still the one that took the photograph. Besides that, any photographer worth their salt could outdo an optimization algorithm any day of the week.

It may sound cheesy, but true art comes from the heart and the tin-man doesn't have one last time I checked.

 

[Story]

You know this exact same thought has haunted me before and that was personally why I decided to not to major in a degree related to artwork. That's probably a life choice I'll regret latter in life. Who knows. Anyway.

For your first question I've found that people who aren't involved in art in anyway tend to think it is easy in general, nevermind the idea that computers make things easier. Why people feel this way I'm not exactly sure. My guess is that a single image is seen as something easily produced and, since some don't know the process of creating the image, it can be easily replicated. The creative process isn't really factored in with these type of people either.

As for your second question, I honestly don't dont think so and goodness I hope not. So far it seems like a lot of professions are already being replaced by computers, though the imagination element will always stem from a human being before it does a mechine right? There will always be at least quite a few people in human society that will value hand-made art in some complicity.

 

[Rabbitboy]

Why not? We have already computer programs that can solve problems they encounter even if the solution isn't within their original programming. Problem solving also requires some creative thinking

CGP Grey did a video on the subject of automation and the music you hear in the last 4 minutes was written by a computer program.

 

[Atmos Duality]

It's not about what the machine wants; it's what the people want.
If people only want what the machine can provide, then they become machines.

Put less pretentiously; machines are just tools. Mundane tasks like organization and optimization are more easily automated, but those tasks have a specific purpose. Creation (of any art), by comparison, is an act with HUGE variations of purpose and people have all manner of requests (purposes) for art.

While it's possible for a machine to randomly create something people will like, but that's just chance and chance doesn't really have any purpose. (A thousand monkeys with typewriters and infinite time may eventually create Shakespeare, but we don't have infinite time...which is why there has only been one William Shakespeare)

Und...back to work for me.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

A student in the year above me - I study Computer Science at University - did something related to this for his dissertation actually. His project was on writing a program to generate sound tracks for films by using computer vision to determine what colours were in the image and some machine learning rules based on music theory to generate suitable audio to play.

Now while that sounds impressive - because it is - it should also be noted that that project was more limited than it sounds. First, the rules were restricted to only being based on the colours on display. Second, the rules (to my knowledge at least) weren't adaptive. Third, the audio was limited to mostly being ambient sounds.

But these problems can be resolved either now or in the future. The first by having more analysis of other aspects of the film - what's in view, what sounds are there etc.. The second by having rules which adapt as they learn based off of some success criteria, such as reviews or sales of the film. And the third by having a wider variety of available sounds and samples.

The main problem, however, is computational resources. A computer might be able to eventually use the above points or similar to take inspiration from things and produce artwork based off of them, but you would need a hefty data centre in order to do something at the same scale of complexity as humans producing art. And let's face it, computers currently are not that good at emulating the brain.

Though this does ask a similar question to the Turing test:[footnote]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test[/footnote] Could a machine produce pieces of art indistinguishable from pieces produced by a human?

In summary, it might happen, but you will probably be retired before our computers have the ability to leave a major effect on the number of art professions.

But hey, CollegeHumour seems fairly optimistic about the whole thing.[footnote]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-jAflT_e28 (NSFW)[/footnote]

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I know that the OP feels disrespected when his customers think that what he does is easy, but on a technical level current art is, for lack of a better word, easy.

See, before photography was created, the pinnacle of art was being able to reproduce reality as closely as possible, and this was incredibly difficult. After photography was created this skill was no longer necessary because a photograph can reproduce reality with more precision than any person ever could. Because of this art largely moved away from realism and began to be judged less on a technical level and more on an emotional level.

On a technical level modern art isn't particularly difficult. Look at a Picasso, almost anyone could reproduce one of his famous works without a huge amount of effort, but the reason that Picasso is prized as a master isn't because he was technically proficient but because his art evoked specific feelings and emotions within those who viewed it, and it showed them the world from a different perspective. This is something that machines will probably never be able to do because a machine has no emotion to convey. A machine may become technically proficient but art created by a machine will never have soul.

The difficult part of creating art isn't the technical side of it anymore, it's the creativity behind it, it's coming up with an idea and then putting down that idea to paper in a way that even slightly represents what's in your head.

 

[renegade7]

Well, even though a lot of furniture is made on machines now, has the handmade furniture industry gone under? Of course not.

Even if an AI is created that can do art, even a lot of very good art, there will still be people who want to do art, and there will be people who find their work worth paying for. Art and enjoyment of art is subjective so even though there might be an AI created to be the "perfect" artist, it can't make everything to please everyone because there is no such thing as "perfect" art.

Also, I think the expression of skill is just as important in the perceived quality of a work of art as its subjective appeal. People like seeing feats of skill. A computer programmed to generate "perfect" art is not a skillful artist, it's a computer following a program.

More realistically, since AI at this time is almost entirely in the realm of speculation, technology just gives the artist more and better tools. For instance, have you ever heard a 19th century piano compared to one built with 21st century tools, knowledge of acoustic physics, and modern engineering practices? The antiques sound like crap by comparison.

 

[Story]

On a technical level modern art isn't particularly difficult. Look at a Picasso, almost anyone could reproduce one of his works without a huge amount of effort, but the reason that Picasso is prized as a master isn't because he was technically proficient but because his art evoked specific feelings and emotions within those who viewed it, and it showed them the world from a different perspective.

Just a nit-pick as while I do mostly agree with your stance, I feel as though Pablo Picasso isn't the best example for your point. While Picasso was well known for his cubist and expressionist works he was also a technically skilled artist that worked in a number of different styles including what might be considered "realistic" looking before photography became extremely popular. He was pretty much a prodigy when it came to art.
This is a work by him at an early age for example.

And going off of that I don't think the OP meant high art when discussing machines replacing art but instead machines replacing art as a profession. In other words commercialized art such as graphic design and logo making or maybe things that are meant to be consumed on mass like illustration or animation.

 

[Erttheking]

I kind of doubt it. Unless we manage to create A.I. that can mimic the human being perfectly, I doubt any machine made art could really have the spark of human imagination.

 

[Vault101]

snip?

yeah, digital is just a medium that's very efficient, the same principles still apply, a Similar attitude exists with electronic music . They think its just a big red button that says "MAKE ART"

anyway theoretically EVERY job could be replaced by technology

I guess you have to look at where the commercial demand is for art because that's where the AI's would be used, there's also stuff like mo-capping and its effect on actors/animators

if you want an AI to do up some concept art for your post apocalyptic dinosaur western then sure, but it might not nessicaryly replace people doing art for the sake of it


but art is different in that its something people happily peruse regardless, most people who do art do not do it as their fulltime jobs

snip.

depending on what your going for its still important to have a grasp of the fundamentals, and that includes the hardstuff like copying reality

 

[rorychief]

I very much doubt it. I think our minds would shut off as soon as we learned a computer had created the piece. When I look at art it's like a crime scene where every observable detail is a piece of evidence, all of it bidding me to ask why? Why this, why that, why have these things been specifically chosen to be presented as opposed to the infinite alternatives that could have been? What am I supposed to infer from what is implied? What is the artist giving, what are they withholding, what did they assume I would assume, what did they expect I would expect? Who are they and what are they saying?
With a machine the answer is always because that's all this machine could have done. Always because it was unable to do anything differently. There is no intention, thought, creativity. A programmer gave it a series of solutions to potential problems it might be posed and it chose the one that ticked the right boxes. No decision making was involved, no creative process, no trail of revealed consciousness to follow until you're left speculating and projecting. It never even comprehended that the piece would be observed by an observer, so observing it would be lame. Like wondering why a cctv camera chose to frame the shot the way it did, why it chose the subject it chose, why it let the shot play as long as it did. Because it was unable to do otherwise, its potential was shackled to its purpose, that's why. Boring.

 

[Armadox]

Many many years ago, my uncle graduated with a degree involving airline scheduling, however, with the progress of computer systems, he quickly found himself out of a job and his degree pretty much useless. Situations like this, of course, get me thinking about my own job. I'm a commercial artist. I design t-shirts and do a little freelance illustration on the side, but I'm pretty much the "art person" at the company I work and I end up doing...everything else art related as well.

One thing that I regularly notice from customers is this idea that because my art is done on a computer, it's easy. I mean really easy, as in it's not uncommon for someone to expect beautiful, finished work in less than 24 hours. Of course computers do make things easier, I have an "undo" button for example, but there's still a lot of "old fashioned" work involved. I still need to be able to draw, since people come up with some very wild ideas, the kind of things that can't be found in clip art libraries.

Art tools also seem to be moving toward and favor a traditional approach. People prize hand painted textures as oppose to push button filters and tablet monitors such as cintiqs try to mimic the feel of pencil and paper.

So while the technology seems to be moving in favor of aiding artists, rather than replacing them, why is the viewpoint that it takes so little effort so prevalent?

Could there be a future in which computers replace artists?

Personally I don't believe so, because even if computers were able to perfectly mimic exactly the image a person has in their head, it would feel "mass produced" and I believe people will often prefer something that another person had to put time and effort into making, but I'm curious, what do you think Escapist?

Ha, last post for the night, but I'm so very glad that I'm not alone on this. I work as a graphic designer in a sign shop. I design everything from political signs to billboards, banners of all kinds, make vehicle wraps and car magnets, and on occasion create new logo designs for companies looking to change their look or brand. For the most part my job can be mind bogglingly boring ( a day of just putting together coroplast "For Sale" signs is not the most engaging thing in the world), but people have gotten so used to the turn and burn signs that I can get out in a day that when they come to me with a real project they don't understand that there is actual effort.

I'm still trying to find the "make everything look good" button in Photoshop. Hell, I'd be happy if I could get a proper line tracing tool in bloody Sai Flexi Pro. In general it's the disconnect from those who see the final product, but don't get to see all the steps leading up to that point.

Can the tool replace the person? Oh, absolutely, one day they will get mass marketing down to such a science that the grand algorithm can set assets onto a page in just a way to completely eliminate the rank and file commissions. A machine can figure out how to put Ariel Bold text in a half inch thick border with a .500" rounded corner on it I'm sure. Businesses don't want to pay for you or me as a person because we're the most expensive part of making a commercial product. Vinyl's cheap baby, but design and labor? That's where you start leaking money. Businesses don't want to pay for a human to make their products; they want their art now, cheap and it don't matter the quality of thought that went into their art or skills that crafted their personal logos as long as they can stuff it on everything they own as quickly as they can get it to the public. You're not important at all, and if they could make clip art do everything for all cases they would.

Hell, tee shirt's and vinyl signs will be the first jobs that it'll replace, but the skills we have? Man that will be invaluable in the design field building the assets and clip arts and brush tools that keep the grand machines rolling, someone's got to keep changing out the vinyl on the latex printers.

edit: This is also not helped by the fact that way, WAY to many businesses seem to think that they can just grab any old image off the net and use it for their own, or get their brother's cousin to bang out something for free in their spare time. Or get non-professionals to work tirelessly for "exposure".

Visual art as a commodity has some of the the least amount of staying power then nearly any type of service save maybe music. In no other field can the end product be so blindly removed from the labor and service that is needed to generate it and duplicated without the producers knowledge. That is the hardest part of being a commercial artist is knowing that every image you do is only one more image they won't need to get from you ever again.

So a good 40% of your effort isn't even in designing the art, but marketing and applying yourself in the local field to make sure people are aware of your services. Keeping public awareness is the hardest part of being an artist, and you don't get paid a dime for any of that time spent.

 

[CrystalShadow]

I think people have this idea because they've never tried to do it.

This applies not just to art, but to anything that requires a lot of skill. They do not understand how much work is actually involved in it, and so they treat it as though it's trivial.
Why this is I do not know.


As for the core premise, I do believe in theory anything, even art can be done by machines. We are a long way off from this happening, but automation does creep up on you.

What bothers me in this regard is people being complacent, and saying 'oh, well, this could never happen to me'.
Sure. It might not happen this decade, or even this century, but you are being incredibly naive to say it's impossible.

And while this is a slightly different topic, I think we are woefully unprepared for the consequences of automation.

It began in manufacturing. Currently, automation is slowly creeping into retail jobs.

And every time this happens, we end up with a bunch of people out of work. And a bunch of others who still have jobs acting as though all these displaced people can all just go do something else.

Well... Sure. They probably can. now... But if this trend actually does continue, there will come a point where machines are so much more efficient at just about any task (doesn't have to be absolutely everything. Even just being better than a human at 90% of tasks would have much the same effect), that you reach a point where anyone hiring a human being to do a job is doing so for ideological reasons only.

That may not sound so extremely terrible, except that present day society has an extremely utilitarian view of the worth of a human life.
Your value as a human being is in large part tied to the job you do, and how 'productive' you are.
Clearly, this attitude will lead to a disaster of epic proportions if we ever reach a point where the vast majority of the population could never hope to be good enough at anything to outdo a machine.

What do you do with all these 'useless' people then?
With current attitudes, we'd treat them as worthless garbage, to be honest.

It may sound silly to some, but this is one of my biggest fears for the future.

Automation, and it's interaction with the attitudes of present-day society.

And no, I'm not talking about some doomsday skynet style scenario where machines take over, but rather the far more insidious and awkward consequences of a scenario where machines are just plain better at pretty much everything than humans are.

What troubles me here, is others notice this trend too, but rather than confront it directly, they always seem to focus on 'how do we find jobs for the displaced people', which is only ever going to be a stopgap measure at best.

We need a major shift in cultural attitudes regarding how we look at people that "Aren't doing anything productive.", and we need to start doing it now, BEFORE we have an actual problem, and not wait until the disaster is already happening.

But... Nobody ever seems to agree with me on this. They seem stuck in a bubble of disbelief, and don't seem to think this scenario could ever happen, even though it is the obvious long-term trend of what automation is leading up to.
It started in manufacturing, but you can see it's now spreading into retail. There are warning signs of it spreading into transportation (no more bus drivers, train drivers, taxi drivers, pilots, etc.)...
There are constant threats of it making programmers and web developers redundant. (these tend to be less believable short-term, but still...)

The point is not that there is nothing left for humans to do... yet but that the evidence shows that the pool of tasks for which humans are better than machines is definitely shrinking, and there's no clear evidence that any skills are 'safe' from this trend.
It's not a matter of if, but merely a matter of when.

 

[viscomica]

Oh, man! I surely hope so. Just so that the artistic community would go bersek about it and all chaos would break loose. (grabs popcorn)

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Besides that, any photographer worth their salt could outdo an optimization algorithm any day of the week.

Funny that you should mention photographers because they probably know this fear even more than graphic designers or any other "commercial art" field. While it's very true that any plain photo taken with a cell phone can't match what a professional photographer can do, it's also a question of what people want.

Of course people want photos, but it seems like on most occasions, with the exception of weddings, ext, people are willing to settle on just any photo, rather than the best photo. A professional photographer can give you the best photo, but a cell phone will give you a photo at no extra cost.

snip

I'm more just speculating, I don't really think if this thing happens, that it will happen within my working lifetime. Even if for some reason people became so content with using clip art in MS paint, rather than hiring an artist to draw out exactly what they're looking for, you'd still need an artist to draw the clip art, and there's also fine art, which appeals to those people as you said who value hand made-art. It's a luxury item and as long as there is a want and money, there will always be a demand for luxury items.

PS: People have been worrying about machines taking the place of humans since the 1850's, I would say that worry is a bit misplaced and ignorant.

In the case of my uncle, it was a very real concern and did happen. We also had this issue with factory workers decades ago, where portions of the job got automated and other portions got outsourced, quite a few people found themselves out of jobs and even whole towns built around those factories (which had been shutdown) declined. In regard to art, I'm thinking more worst case scenario, sci-fi movie plot type stuff.

On occasion, I get to work with "old school" graphic designers, these are the people who can barley use email, who have hands so steady from years of working in ink, that they could double as heart surgeons if they had the right knowledge. Although a few have regretted not learning Illustrator because it does simplify the process a little, they're still working and they still get the job done, it's just now, if a customer want's a digital version, there's an extra step.

I know that the OP feels disrespected when his customers think that what he does is easy, but on a technical level current art is, for lack of a better word, easy.

See, before photography was created, the pinnacle of art was being able to reproduce reality as closely as possible, and this was incredibly difficult. After photography was created this skill was no longer necessary because a photograph can reproduce reality with more precision than any person ever could. Because of this art largely moved away from realism and began to be judged less on a technical level and more on an emotional level.

Of course current art is easier than it was before photography was invented, I'm not going to deny that. I'm not talking about commercial art as opposed to fine art. I'm referring to the people who are making the logos on Gatorade bottles and the possibility of a computer making that logo instead of a person.

That being said, there is still a very real demand for technical skill in commercial art because people want representation when they're trying to sell or buy products, they want team mascots and t-shirts with firefighters and dogs, they want tattoos of their favorite pets with wings and a halo, they want their book illustrated with what the words say, they want a painting of their family if only because it's more "artsy" than a photograph.

 

[happyninja42]

PS: People have been worrying about machines taking the place of humans since the 1850's, I would say that worry is a bit misplaced and ignorant.

In the case of my uncle, it was a very real concern and did happen. We also had this issue with factory workers decades ago, where portions of the job got automated and other portions got outsourced, quite a few people found themselves out of jobs and even whole towns built around those factories (which had been shutdown) declined. In regard to art, I'm thinking more worst case scenario, sci-fi movie plot type stuff.

On occasion, I get to work with "old school" graphic designers, these are the people who can barley use email, who have hands so steady from years of working in ink, that they could double as heart surgeons if they had the right knowledge. Although a few have regretted not learning Illustrator because it does simplify the process a little, they're still working and they still get the job done, it's just now, if a customer want's a digital version, there's an extra step.

I'm pretty sure he's more talking about the "Robot Domination", but your personal example isn't any different from any form of worker who has been replaced by a newer method. The same could be said for specialists in a particular profession, who were then laid off because nobody was working with that material anymore. They started using this other guy who knows how to use computers for example. That's just the sad reality of progress. People who are unable to adapt to the new work environment, get replaced by those who can. If his job has been replaced by a machine, well there are openings for the machine operators/maintenance/IT now, and he could try that kind of job. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett from one of his books. "The bronzesmith was really angry when the ironsmith came around with his new method, but the ironsmith sure was happy to have work, and his customers were happy with the new material."

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Can the tool replace the person? Oh, absolutely, one day they will get mass marketing down to such a science that the grand algorithm can set assets onto a page in just a way to completely eliminate the rank and file commissions. A machine can figure out how to put Ariel Bold text in a half inch thick border with a .500" rounded corner on it I'm sure. Businesses don't want to pay for you or me as a person because we're the most expensive part of making a commercial product. Vinyl's cheap baby, but design and labor? That's where you start leaking money. Businesses don't want to pay for a human to make their products; they want their art now, cheap and it don't matter the quality of thought that went into their art or skills that crafted their personal logos as long as they can stuff it on everything they own as quickly as they can get it to the public. You're not important at all, and if they could make clip art do everything for all cases they would.

Maybe I'm a bit more optimistic, I have definitely encountered this behavior, where a person wants a logo or shirt (or anything else) as quickly and cheaply as possible. It's a very very common attitude, but we've also gotten people who have come in from other print shops with T-shirts that were done as quickly and cheaply as possible and they... don't look good. We help them out a bit for a slightly higher price, give them a little advice if they're willing to listen (side by side comparisons for different scenarios)[footnote]You really want yellow next to white, are you absolutely sure about that? It helps if you put are dark color between those two, here come see...[/footnote] and their product looks 10x better and they're absolutely thrilled and keep coming back. Even in a world where machines could just slap some Ariel Bold on a white background and call it a day and even if it were so great and popular at first, would people keep embracing that? I imagine eventually things would start to look very samey and that can't be good for promoting your business.

edit: This is also not helped by the fact that way, WAY to many businesses seem to think that they can just grab any old image off the net and use it for their own, or get their brother's cousin to bang out something for free in their spare time. Or get non-professionals to work tirelessly for "exposure".

...Yeah. *eye twitch*

Oh, man! I surely hope so. Just so that the artistic community would go bersek about it and all chaos would break loose. (grabs popcorn)

Out of curiosity, why do you feel this way?
Or do you just like watching people get angry in the same way people watch car accidents?
Not that I have any problem, I'm just wondering.

People who are unable to adapt to the new work environment, get replaced by those who can. If his job has been replaced by a machine, well there are openings for the machine operators/maintenance/IT now, and he could try that kind of job. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett from one of his books. "The bronzesmith was really angry when the ironsmith came around with his new method, but the ironsmith sure was happy to have work, and his customers were happy with the new material."

That's a fair point.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I'd say no. Art is inherent to the human condition and until the Singularity strikes(which still counts as fiction for the immediate future) computers would be unable to convey meaning (or the lack thereof) in that same way.

Say a machine is programmed to copy an existing piece of art. It would do a perfect copy unless programmed otherwise(and even then would perform to specific parameters). A person will always leave little traces of their personality on the copy, speaking volumes about who they are and how they feel towards the work of art in question. Unless the machine is manipulated step by step, it could never re-produce this sort of effect (at time of writing).

Art is all about conveying experiences in a faulty manner. Machines are designed to be precise, and the subconscious mechanics behind everything involving art; movies; books; games; music; paintings; etc. are built upon subtle nuances, both intentional and unintentional, done badly or well-executed. This is something contrary to computer science, which is rooted in logic and precision: machines are there to make tasks easier and they cannot 'work' on something in the same way humans do(unless again, it's programmed to do so, but such a level of sophistication isn't there yet).

Machine-based creations can be considered art, but the algorithms in question were executed by a human for the express purpose of creating 'something'. Such creations are niche, since they possess a specific mentality. However, whilst this can become a type of art, it can never replace "Art"(general term).

I feel that this discussion also ties into the questions brought up relating to "glitch art" in this video:
Since it talks about a similar sort of dichotomy between what is intended and unintended, and how that determines what is and what isn't "Art".

 

[Ninja-Jordan]

I think anything that needs to be mass produced, which is a very technical thing, can be replaced by technology. I think it goes the same for a lot of people who had factory jobs assembling cars or other...stuff, they were replaced by robotic assembling units and computer programs installed to assemble things in a certain way. But art isn't always so technical. You can't program inspiration, or scenarios or stories that inspire art. Computers are just parts that receive data that tells them to do things, so a computer can get a description of something and paint it, but it can't get to the description on it's own. I think technology will always be around to serve artists, but how could it ever replace them?