What does Jason Isbell have to do with Artificial Intelligence?

 

What does Jason Isbell have to do with Artificial Intelligence?

 

Many fear artificial intelligence; that it will in essence, at the end of the logic, replace us. A fortiori, AI will replace artists. As chatbots and AI grows in power and seemingly to expand the definition of intelligence to the point of replacing us and our aesthetic endeavors, I propose that Jason Isbell puts this idea to rest.

If you haven’t heard, Jason Isbell garnered Grammy nominations for Best Americana Album for “Weathervanes,” Best Americana Performance for “King of Oklahoma” and Best American Roots Song for “Cast Iron Skillet.”

Some background on Isbell is relevant for my purposes. Per the Music Box documentary, the divorce of his parents impacted him greatly. He is a recovering alcoholic, at one point he overdosed while he was in Drive-By Truckers.

What does this have to do with AI?

The driving idea behind AI replacing us and our aesthetic endeavors, is that if we just feed the software enough data and provide enough computing power, AI can produce art.

But I contend that art requires a body. Art can’t be produced with just data and computational power.

I contend that Jason Isbell’s trauma is in his body, and that it feeds his art. His body is a resource for aesthetics. The word I used with my therapist is “incarnate.” Isbell’s experience, interacting with his memory and his skill and craft, honed over decades of practice and performance and listening (which necessitates a body) produce art. Art that moves you and me, and him.

In the Music Box documentary, he gets choked up singing one of his own songs. The power of Cast Iron Skillet isn’t really measurable. Watch CBS’ John Dickerson hold back emotion after Isbell performs Cast Iron Skillet here at 39:45. It took this guy about 2:17.

Art requires emotion, production and reception. Emotions require bodies with hormones and chemicals and electricity in a delicate balance.

The delicate balance of guitar, harmony, and lyrics is what Isbell manipulates in Cast Iron Skillet, and in my humble opinion, Isbell is a master at a level few humans will ever reach.

Reaching requires a body. Art requires a body.

Culture is in his songs.

Tie in George Carlin’s line about “a little secret about the blues. You don’t just need to know which notes to play, you have to know why they need to be played.”

AI doesn’t possess a why. AI isn’t motivated. AI doesn’t feel compelled to write songs.

Jason Isbell does feel compelled.

Be thankful for Jason Isbell, and don’t fear for artists.

Truman Capote, AI, and Comedy

I recently reread Truman Capote's La Côte Basque from my Great Esquire Fiction book and it prompted my research into this story, which prompted this post on Artificial Intelligence and Comedy.

In researching this story and Capote, google kept popping up things about Capote's IQ. After I finished my research of this story (and how it basically ruined Capote's life and resulted in his slow suicide via drugs and alcohol) I went back to the Capote IQ.

Now the internet isn't exactly the place for unequivocal truth, but let's say that Capote's "internet" IQ of 215 is close to the truth. 

Now we know that AI can now write novels and poetry and there is cause to believe it can be "good" or "decent" writing. 

Because AI is a matter of pattern recognition. Recognize enough patterns and you can create, be it skyscrapers or stories. 

This is a crucial point. 

So I thought of comedy. If AI can recognize the parts/patterns of a joke, (set-up, punch line, etc.), it can in theory, create comedy.

So in time we can expect computers to be comedians?

Naw.

Part of what computers and AI can't access or pattern recognize, is feelings. Humans have feelings. And pain. Certainly what drove part of Richard Pryor's comedy was pain. Part of what drove George Carlin's comedy was anger.

Can computers pattern recognize their way to pain or anger?

In my estimation, no.

Pain and anger, (and I say this in my 51st year on the planet, and in therapy), require a biography, a full narrative to draw from.

Computers and AI don't have a past, replete with feelings and memories.

Can computers and AI pattern recognize their way to feelings and memories?

You can see where this is going. An infinite regress, a homonculus with a homonculus with a...

Kurzweil is probably correct about the future and the singularity may be near. And he's probably correct that we shouldn't fear it or the algorithms.

Probably.

I have always been more afraid of humans than anything else, being a student of history.

I certainly do not fear robots and AI creating anything artistic that will rival what humans can do. 

Capote, IQ of 215 and all, was, per Nietzsche, human, all too human, and imperfect and flawed and capable of sadness and regret and shame, in incredible proportions.

Ah feelings, nothing more than feelings.
Trying to forget my feelings...

AI can't feel or forget.

Our (human) art is safe.

Just not from humans.

Get it?

The Peak of Beauty

Saturday night I had the tv to myself and came across an old 80’s movie I never got around to…so I watched Clue, mainly because it looked a little like one of my favorite movies Murder ByDeath.

First things first, Clue is no Murder By Death. Clue is closer to murder by movie. Twas not for me.

But…the very, very voluptuous maid in Clue was played by actress Colleen Camp. I remembered her from the second Police Academy movie as the very firearm-informed love interest of Tackleberry.  The scene where she brings Tackleberry home to meet her family is uproarious. Uproarious I say.

Camp is breathtakingly beautiful in Clue and it got me to thinking about a person’s peak of beauty. We talk about an athlete’s peak and the peak of our mental abilities, so how about a peak of beauty?

But no you say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, beauty is subjective, so finding a peak is futile.

Ah but let’s take a quick peak at a couple of pics.

Collen Camp in 1985’s Clue.

 

Now to give you an idea of how beautiful Camp is in 1985, take a look at her next to two other actresses from the movie:

Collen Camp at event of Knock Knock, 2015.

Now before you start crying about ageism and sexism and body shaming, let’s take a look at Marlon Brando.

Now most reasonable, sane people will undoubtedly say that the younger of the two people are the more beautiful of the two people.

Why?

Asking why here gets us into some really worm filled cans containing subjects such as evolution, proximate vs. ultimate causation, procreation fitness, and more.

But aren't these cans we should open? Can't we talk about beauty without fear of repercussion?

Don't we appreciate beauty because it is rare and doesn't rare run on a time continuum (if it were rare forever it wouldn't be rare!) and if it does, can't we then talk about a peak of beauty?  

Isn't this scene a thing of beauty?

What Separates You From the Beasts?

So the wife was away this past weekend which meant that I got a little Netflix to myself – my wife and I have very different tastes when it comes to movies – so I was able to watch some of Cave of Forgotten Dreams. This documentary is about cave art from about 32,000 years ago that, because of a rock slide, could not be accessed and results in pristine, untouched art. 

It is 2015. Our “sense” of history and art really doesn’t emotionally go back very far. It takes mental energy to connect history to our present and so we typically don’t, which results in the sophomoric “(art) history is dead facts” syndrome.

But what this movie made me do is spend that mental energy and I sat in awe in front of the television thinking about an artist or artists, in that cave making art as mammoths roamed outside, as torches provided light, and the difference between life and death was so thin, and yet, the art was produced. And is it ever striking! 

Why? Why take the time to do this when just survival requires so much? 

At some point isn’t it art that separates us from the beasts?

Thinking About Thinking About Birdman

Thinking About Thinking About Birdman

Of course you’ll notice the “meta” in the title to this blog. For those of you who have not seen Birdman, this refers to the fact that the movie evolves around actors in a play, ergo, the acting about the acting.

Now to be honest, this movie did not get my full attention because I have a 3 year old and an 11 month old so 2 hours to do anything without interruption is 1. Rare and 2. If it does happen, it happens later in the evening and this blogger gets up at 4:45am everyday so in-depth analysis of a movie at night is low on the priority list. 

Translation: I fell asleep. 

However, I watched the end (last 15 minutes) the next day and came away with the following:

The movie would be great for an undergraduate aesthetics class as it asks the question, “What is art?” And, for me, the movie delves into this further by asking, what is the process that is necessary and sufficient for someone to be called an artist? 

Ask yourself if you think the music of Britney Spears qualifies as art. Most of us don’t really think so and if you massage the idea a little bit you find that the answer is that because she doesn’t really “bleed” for it, unlike those artists we know that do bleed, and do so in obscurity, for a long time.

Now ask yourself why we have this prereq that the artist bleeds. Why can’t there be artists that are genuine and authentic, yet the art comes easy for them. That seems to rub us the wrong way. Why?

In the movie, Michael Keaton bleeds, literally and figuratively, for his art but is seen as the talentless action hero from his days past as Birdman. The antithesis is Ed Norton, who is shallow, pretentious, and phony but has critical success. 

There are subplots and sub characters that all serve to drive the essentials questions of what is art and who can be called an artist. The movie does a wonderful job making you think about possible answers.

What qualifies as art and who qualifies as an artist?