# created ```dataview LIST WITHOUT ID file.link FROM -"windsurf" WHERE file.cday = date(this.file.name) AND !startswith(file.folder, "windsurf") SORT file.cday ASC ``` # modified ```dataview LIST WITHOUT ID file.link FROM -"windsurf" WHERE file.mday = date(this.file.name) AND !startswith(file.folder, "windsurf") SORT file.mday ASC ``` --- # [[diary and thoughts]] #thought #diary --- # Review of AI Paper 25 Jun 2025 #refereeing I like this paper, the range of different research areas (simulation metaphysics, creativity theories, and value-alignment work) makes it more interesting than the average paper on AI art in 2025\. I have two main comments. First, while I like the *Containment* / *Confrontation* / *Construction* structure, I worry that the subject is changed once we go from *Containment* to *Confrontation*. In the first paragraph of the *Confrontation* section it says: The containment strategy focuses on the [[current state]] of generative AI, but the existential worries feed on speculation about what AI art and artists could be when fully developed. Suppose that they could exhibit intentionality, [[executive agency]] and initiative... My concern here is that the subject has been changed: we are now no longer talking about AI in the world in Spring/Summer 2025, but some hypothetical entity with, or at least with simulations of, capacities like forming new intentions (creativity, agency etc.). But if this is what is being considered, then I don't think the two worries introduced at the beginning of the paper are really worries at all: We worry first about our losing what we take to be our monopoly on making art. Then we worry that, having lost that monopoly, we thereby lose what makes us exceptional. Isn't the first problem better understood as a worry about 'losing our monopoly on making art *to non-agentive (and/or) non-[[intentional systems]]*'? If Star Trek-style aliens landed and mentioned that they made art, we would not be too surprised to learn this, nor that worried about losing our monopoly on art. If we managed to make AI systems that indubitably have agency, intention, and perhaps other [[mental states]], then I think we would be similarly unbothered. The real worry, it seems to me, is that we might lose our monopoly to generative AI systems that exist *right now*, as they make things that can at least [[look like]] art, but don't have any [[mental states]], or only have them in some very minimal, rarefied way. \_\_\_ My second point concerns [[the relationship between]] two central claims that emerge from the *Confrontation* and *Construction* sections. These two claims seem to conflict with one another, but this appears to be an issue of clarity rather than a genuine contradiction. The *Confrontation* section argues that the fundamental metaphysical substrate of an artist (i.e., whether they are made of atoms or bits) is irrelevant to our aesthetic engagement, provided the entity can be interpreted within an artistic practice. The section concludes with the strong claim that it makes "no difference". The *Construction* section, however, argues that the specific physical and psychological constitution of an artist (e.g., a machine body, a non-human [[cognitive architecture]]) is highly relevant because it is the very source of new and different [[aesthetic values]]. Here, the artist's specific constitution is not only relevant but is precisely what we should cultivate. While these two arguments are compatible, this is not apparent from the text as it stands. Specifically, the unqualified claim towards the end of the *Confrontation* section—that an artist’s nature makes “no difference”—does not fit together well with the *Construction* section’s premise that we should want to construct different sorts of artists precisely because their difference can be a source of future [[aesthetic value]]. The paper could be strengthened by clarifying [[this distinction]]. For instance, [[the author]] could explain that the *Confrontation* section shows why the *metaphysical category* of an artist (biological vs. artificial) does not affect their status as a proper subject of aesthetic interpretation, while the *Construction* section shows how the *particular features* of an artist's embodiment (e.g., having different sensory inputs) can be a source of new aesthetic possibilities. **Bits and Pieces (typos etc.)** * Sometimes authors get first name as well as surname, is this deliberate? If it is, I couldn't work out the reason behind it.