The New York department of Sotheby’s, one of many world’s most prestigious public sale homes in the case of effective artwork and artefacts, has simply bought a portray by a robotic for greater than $1.124 million.

The portray, referred to as “AI God – Portrait of Alan Turing”, was produced by the humanoid robotic Ai-Da, which readers of this web site will most likely know from our earlier protection, and which has its personal web site.

The estimated sale value of the mixed-media work was listed as being between $120,000 to $180,000 by Sotheby’s, which clearly didn’t precisely predict how a lot income the work would generate.

The client shouldn’t be but recognized, however they don’t seem to be alone of their curiosity in artwork produced by or utilizing new applied sciences.

In accordance with ArtNews.com, Sotheby’s additionally bought one other 16 artistic endeavors by “digital artists”, by which they most likely imply human artists who use digital applied sciences, though we’re not positive about that.

However of the full gross sales income for digital artwork of just below $1.5 million the bulk was clearly generated by the sale of the portray by Ai-Da, which was itself created by roboticist Aidan Meller.

Meller, who additionally owns an artwork gallery in London and offers in artwork, mentioned upfront of the sale that the public sale marks “an necessary second for the visible arts… as AI good points extra energy”.

That is the primary time a murals produced by a humanoid robotic has gone on sale at an public sale home as revered as Sotheby’s.

Nonetheless, there are lots of AI engines at present on-line that may generate photos from one single key phrase. We discovered this one – Deep AI – fairly good at producing fascinating photos from one phrase. We didn’t strive its music or video turbines, however we guess they’re equally spectacular.

All of which raises one of many elementary questions in regards to the nature of artwork. In different phrases, what constitutes artwork?

It was usually mentioned that robots could be good at repetitive duties, however they don’t seem to be inventive. Nonetheless, the voices that used to say which have turn into considerably quieter. We used to say the identical factor – we’re principally speaking about ourselves.

It’s been a number of years since robots and synthetic intelligence have been proven to be able to such issues – portray artistic endeavors, modifying video and making music – however now, they’ve turn into extra widespread and extra highly effective.

One may nonetheless – appropriately, in our view – equate a robotic utilized by a human to a device, very similar to a pencil or paintbrush. However they nonetheless have a stage of autonomy – albeit inside parameters set by the people who create them – that can more and more trigger individuals to query what it’s to be human.

What’s it that makes us completely different from robots and AI?

We will really feel assured that we’re “completely different”, however we are able to’t be so assured that robots are usually not able to being as skilful as we will be, perhaps whilst “discovered”.

It was the late Alan Turing, the English mathematician and inventor of an early pc and the topic of Ai-Da’s portray, who requested the query, “Can machines suppose?”

We don’t consider they will.

However the take a look at named after him, the Turing Check, is more and more turning into untenable, particularly as work produced by AI steadily permeates each a part of the web.

Pablo Picasso, one of the vital celebrated (human) artists ever, is reported to have as soon as mentioned that computer systems can solely present solutions – they will’t ask questions. Sounds good. We’ll purchase that. Possibly therein lies our particular high quality that robots and AI don’t but have: we are able to marvel, and ask questions on, all kinds of issues in life, the universe and every part, and examine them in ways in which robots and AI can solely dream of. And that’s the opposite factor: robots and AI can’t dream – we are able to.

Having mentioned that, AI is claimed by its proponents to “hallucinate”. However that time period is used loosely and is supposed to point that the AI is just offering false or deceptive data and presenting it as reality.

We don’t know the place that is going, however whether or not we prefer it or not, what we would name “the human area” on this context, seems to be getting smaller and smaller, or at the least harder to distinguish from areas the robots and AI are more and more taking up.