I just read your great article while taking a break from an AI article of my own. I am teetering between our collective slide down a slippery slope into a dystopia versus appreciating at least some aspects of the unfolding of this new chapter in the development of human enterprise and technology.

You wrote: “Suppose AI will soon enough surpass the artistic skills of any human artist, by being able to duplicate any human work of art, and to produce art that no human alone could ever create.”

We are already well on our way.

Some scientists (John Wheeler, Edward Fredkin, Seth Lloyd, etc.) suggest that reality is made up of bits of information. And it seems to me that this information is arranged and rearranged into different expressions of art by the human brain and an unknown factor called inspiration. Maybe AI can do this better than human beings. Will this result in AI being the big bully that takes all the good stuff for itself by beating humans to the punch?

I am wondering about your suggestion that AI may create all the art that there is to make. Is it really possible to rearrange all the bits of information into all art for all time? Each time something is created it opens the opportunity to respond to that creation. Not only does the information — or consciousness or life force, if you will — create out of its inherent properties, it also receives information on a constant basis so that it always has something to create with. There is an input and output to the life force.

We may also ask what the idea of art is limited to — paintings, sculpture, computer design, sketches, dance, acting? What is art but the response to something? As long as AI produces new art there will be something to respond to. Will AI keep responding to its own creations or will human beings direct it to stop?

The prognosis for our world civilization in the hands of AI is quite bleak. It’s a scenario of Dr Frankenstein’s monster on megadoses of steroids.