Artificial intelligence is a concept science fiction writers and filmmakers have used to explore the human condition in the pages of science fiction novels and blockbuster screenplays for generations. But the rapid adoption of AI systems in the real world raises significant questions about art, academics and integrity.
AI and its role in film and television was explored during the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strikes that played out this year.
SAG-AFTRA strikers’ demands included the requirement film and TV producers must obtain consent from actors before recreating their likenesses with AI; and actors are entitled to compensation at their regular rates for the number of days they would have worked to play the role.
While the strikes unfolded in national headlines, professors and students at Fort Lewis College had their own conversations about the role of AI in art and academics. Some consensus among students and teachers appears to be AI is a powerful tool with practical uses and possible pitfalls.
Lucien Verrone, an FLC junior computer engineering student and journalist for the college newsroom The Independent, said AI is a powerful tool capable of sorting through massive amounts of information, but it is just a tool nonetheless. How one uses the tool is up to that person.
Verrone is working with a predictive AI model called Ultralitics YOLOv8 for a class assignment to extract handwritten genealogical records of a small town in 1870s Italy and sort the details into a comprehensible spreadsheet, with the goal of exploring different applications for the AI model being tested.
YOLOv8 isn’t flawless. In fact, Verrone said it’s rather stupid.
Sometimes, it mistakenly scans text as handwritten information while it’s searching through genealogical records. Sometimes, it scans outside of the designated search area in the records. Verrone has to adjust the AI’s parameters when those mistakes happen.
But its ability to go through columns, tables and data at a much faster pace than a human ever could is really valuable from a productivity perspective.
“Going through by hand and doing all of that, that’s something that somebody could do for a genealogical service or something. But being able to automate that is really powerful,” he said.
Verrone’s project involves a very practical application of artificial intelligence, but Verrone has also explored AI through a lens that’s less black and white. In a story for The Independent at FLC, he talked to professors and other students about the role AI plays in art.
He heard the same things from a variety of students and professors, that AI removes humanity from art.
“Art is this whole process of creating and destroying and changing. It’s an emotional process for the artist and it takes time and dedication. You can see that in the end result,” he said. “Whereas with AI, it’s just a best guess at what that might look like.”
But that doesn’t have to be the case, and it often isn’t.
Many contemporary painters have adopted Adobe Photoshop to enhance their works. Verrone said AI is simply the next step.
“It can’t come up with its own style or its own ideas,” he said. “Just things that other people have made. And that’s part of the human element. Because humans have new ideas and they create things, these sparks. But AI doesn’t. It just sees what’s there and sees what it can make (of it).”
In many ways, AI continues the age-old questions artists and philosophers have bickered over for centuries: what is art?
FLC Center of Southwest Studies director and art history professor Cory Pillen said an easy parallel can be drawn between generative AI and the use of artists’ photography.
“It not only changed how artists were working, you know, you could take a snapshot of something. But it also really encouraged people to think about what the project of art was. If you have something that can create this snapshot of a moment in time, then what's the role of the artist,” Pillen said.
She said the introduction of photography forced artists to stop and reassess their role, the role of this new medium and new artistic possibilities.
Artists had the same concerns about photography others do about AI today, that photography cannot capture the true essence of something the way a skilled artist can.
“When photography first came to the fore and artists started to think about, like, how do we use this, one of the things that photographers started to do was to imitate painting,” Pillen said. “They would set their scenes up like popular paintings at the time, and so there was this sense of replication. Over time, photography started to become recognized as an art form with its own characteristics and its own potential.”
She wondered if that may be something “we're struggling with right now with AI.”
There is always a moment with a new technology where people try to figure out its potential, she said. Could artists around the world find themselves in that moment with artificial intelligence right now?
David Cahoon, FLC assistant professor of art and design, said the future of AI is uncertain.
It could put him out of a graphic design job someday. Or maybe it’s just a fad that will, except for very specific applications, run its course and fade into obscurity.
Regardless, Cahoon said it’s pointless to try and control AI. The cat is out of the bag on that one, he said.
Like others, Cahoon worries about art losing its touch of humanity through the use of AI.
“Fine artists, studio art, it’s coming from within them,” he said. “This is how I’m feeling about the subject. This is my approach, this is my unique (stroke). Whatever it is. Design is a little different because you’re doing it in service of a client or someone’s paying you. That seems more suited to AI.”
Cahoon said AI might have more practical use in a commercial setting. A design company could use AI to scour the internet for depictions of laundry detergent, for example, recreate it and have no need for a designer who would have made the image from scratch.
However, projects that require human expression can’t so easily be recreated by an AI model.
In the classroom, Cahoon said AI is not a substitute for hard work, but again, it can be a useful tool for studious students. The obvious pitfall to avoid is plagiarism.
“I’ve caught students plagiarizing in the past, but not with AI. So I assume it’s just one more tool for them to either use to be shady or use it for legitimately creative purposes, which I think it’s capable of,” he said.
Cahoon said he strongly disapproves of plagiarism, and an honest designer wouldn’t outsource all of their work to AI.
“It comes down to ethics,” he said. “You’re taking credit for someone else’s work. Would you want someone else to take credit for your work?”
Verrone said leaning too hard on AI is only hurting the user.
“I’ve definitely used (ChatGPT) in school, you know? I caught myself once or twice just putting a question in and … taking the answer without reading the explanation or anything like that,” he said. “That becomes kind of a personal responsibility to use that tool effectively in a way that’s going to give you the best outlook, best result, from studying.”
He said AI works as well as a fact-checking tool. Sometimes, he uses ChatGPT to come up with story ideas or work through a particularly awkward sentence.
He shared an anecdote from an interview he had with Matthew Klema, FLC assistant professor of physics and engineering, for his own story about predictive and generative AI.
“He said he has no problem with his students using ChatGPT to study. In the end, it’s on them. He told me he thinks a student can get through a Bachelors program completely using ChatGPT,” he said. “And if they’re clever enough, they wouldn’t get caught. But then he said, ‘If you go into research or any kind of higher education, getting a Masters or something, it’s not going to be able to help you in any way because you’re doing things that haven’t been done before. And it can only produce things based on things that have been done before.’”
Verrone said Klema influenced his mindset about artificial intelligence being an incredibly powerful tool.
“It really is completely on the students not to screw themselves over,” he said. “ … you have to be able to perform and you have to be able to learn these things and synthesize new information and think critically.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
