(This content is not generated by AI-- even if it is boring! 😄)
I don't know about you, but for me, reading AI generated content, or looking at AI generated art triggers an intense kind of boredom-- the term ennui comes close. It is not the usual boredom, but a mind numbing feeling that is both painful and numbing at the same time-- or, should I say "soul crushing"?. The closest analogy I can give is the feeling of eating cardboard pieces, instead of actual food.
There is this concept called "uncanny valley" in robotics that tells about the creepy and uncomfortable feeling that we get when robots become increasingly human-like. I think somewhat similar is happening with general AI generated content as well.
Here is my explanation to what is happening. When we read a book or appreciate a work of art, we are not admiring the output, but we are connecting with the creator of the output. When a book deeply resonates with us, we feel a deep connection-- not with the words, but with the person behind the words. Similarly with a work of art. It is the creator's state of mind and their journey that led them there, which touch us through their writings and art.
With AI generated content, there is no person behind and there are no travails that we can associate with.
This is analogous to the difference between outputs and outcomes that I have written in this blog several times. Outputs are what we produce, while outcomes are what we become, as a result. Be it education or economy or raising a family; what we want are outcomes, but what we focus on, are outputs. Much of our grief comes by not bridging the gap between the two.
When we appreciate a work of art or a piece of writing, we are not just appreciating the output or the creation-- but the outcome, or what the creator must have become in order to create this.
As it happens these days, for most of my deep questions, the best clarity (I would not say "answer") has come from Vedanta. And here too, there is an explanation from Vedanta about why we experience uncanny valley.
Vedanta and most other Indian philosophies as we know, has one key point of departure from the modern scientific worldview. They posit that consciousness that gives us our first-person experience, cannot be reduced to material causes. Consciousness is not caused by material interactions, but exists on its own. The consciousness that we experience in our waking state (our ego or the sense of self) is essentially "reflected consciousness" (chidaabhasa).
Mainstream science insists that everything ought to have a material cause, and the question of consciousness is still debated as the "hard problem of consciousness".
Vedanta goes further to say that the only entity that is real is this entity that is variously called Brahman, Samvid, and many other names, which represents existence-consciousness-bliss. It is this entity because of which we can perceive the existence of something, become aware of something, and express emotions.
Brahman is not an entity that exists-- it is existence itself. It is not an entity that we can become aware of-- it is awareness itself. (The explanation in the Upanishads go: Brahman is not something that the eyes can see, it is that by which the eyes can see; Brahman is not something that the mind can imagine, it is that by which the mind can imagine, etc.)
And Brahman is the only entity there is. It is existence itself, and something that is not Brahman is non-existence, which does not exist (duh!).
Based on this hermeneutic, there is this theory of perception by the philosopher Vidyaranya, who lived in present-day Karnataka between 1260 to 1333 CE. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Vijayanagara Empire and served as a spiritual advisor to its rulers. His guidance helped shape the cultural and religious landscape of south India.
Among his writings is this book called DrgDrishya Viveka (or the wisdom of the "seer" and the "seen"-- subject and object). In this, there is a model of perception in Verse 20, that says:
अस्ति भाति प्रियं रूपं नाम चेत्यंशपञ्चकम् । आद्यत्रयं ब्रह्मरूपं जगद्रूपं ततो द्वयम् ॥ २० ॥
Transliteration: asti bhāti priyaṃ rūpaṃ nāma cetyaṃśapañcakam | ādyatrayaṃ brahmarūpaṃ jagadrūpaṃ tato dvayam || 20 ||
It says that when we perceive something (interact with the external world)-- five things happen simultaneously, that are called asti, bhāti, priyaṃ, rūpaṃ, and nāma. Asti is our realization of the existence beyond the perception, bhāti is the way the underlying reality affects our awareness, priyaṃ is the emotion that it elicits in us (every perception is said to elicit an emotion in us, however small), rūpaṃ is the class or category of the object that we perceive and nāma is the label we attach to the experience.
The second part of the verse says that the first three elements and the last two elements are at different levels of cognition. The first three are our experience of the reality that lies behind our transactional reality of space, time, and causation, while the last two (categorization and labelling) are the constructs of our mind. It is the first three that gives us the connection, and results in outcome; while it is the last two that we use to transact intellectually and produce outputs. Unless the first three elements are there in any interaction, there is no connection that we feel. It does not move us. And we end up only trying to organize things intellectually.
With AI generated content, our experience of asti, bhāti and priyaṃ are greatly attenuated, if not completely absent. There is no reality that we experience behind the perception, since the content is just a creation of an artificial mind that is based on predicting the next word or denoising of a signal. We only experience rūpaṃ, and nāma leaving us with a sense of emptiness and ennui, even feeling creepy-- thinking, what just happened-- was that profound writing or not, does this art move me.. or not?
