> people who care about the craft usually care about it telling genuine human stories and celebrating the author as much as the result
No, the human was never a core factor. People who enjoy a van Gogh - or any other work - primarily do so because it has particular qualities they appreciate (no, being human-made isn't an intrinsically appreciable quality; secondarily because many humans instinctively like to possess unique - or "shiny" - things), and the author tends to be a very good means to access other works with such qualities. That "celebrating the author" is just a side-effect, and there's nothing to stop a non-human entity from "telling genuine human stories" (whatever that means).
> why should the machines be compelled to interact with you?
The ultimate purpose of machines is to serve humans, and that's a bit hard to do without interaction. Just as the ultimate purpose of humans - and other living things - is to survive.
> People who enjoy a van Gogh - or any other work - primarily do so because it has particular qualities they appreciate (no, being human-made isn't an intrinsically appreciable quality; secondarily because many humans instinctively like to possess unique - or "shiny" - things)
Speak for yourself. You could show me the exact same artistic image, same exact pixels, but if I know it was made by a human, it will instantly be worth more to me and capture more of my interest. Conversely, having the knowledge that the pixels were created by a machine would make me instantly lose interest in the image.
I think "being human-made" very much is an intrinsically appreciable quality, but you have to include the production of the art as part of the art itself for that to be the case. And I and many other people explicitly do include the production of the art as part of the art itself. Not everyone shares this perspective, but many do.
You said it. Depending on your knowledge of the entity producing the work, you get a different experience. In a vacuum though you'd appreciate the work for it's actual qualities which you find appealing. The potential for appreciation isn't different at all; it's just overruled by stronger feelings regarding the current trend of AI-hate vs AI-love. Like given identical works from 2 humans, if you respect human A and despise human B, then it's a near 100% certainty that you'd appreciate the work attributed to human A and find every possible fault with that attributed to human B. With a fun bit of hypocritic confusion if it's the same work with the attribution going back and forth.
Also the point about humans preferring the unique and "shiny". Human-made things will always be unique (nobody can do the same the the exact same way twice without machine help), while machine-made things are usually not unique but can be made so (and even then a generative routine used to make something unique can be replayed).
I think it all comes down to scarcity, the same thing that's driving pokemon card prices through the roof. That's all there is.
As AI can generate ~any image nowadays, there is potential for an infinite amount of AI art, driving the value of AI generated images to 0, unless artificial scarcity is introduced like in the case of Pokemon cards.
Whereas with humans, there isn't an infinite amount of human art, as only a subset of humans are skilled enough to create good art pieces. Human art should therefore theoretically always be more valuable than any AI art. EDIT: Have to add, human artists always make use of artificial scarcity as well by only making 1-N copies.
I value this scarcity, that there are people insanely more skilled than me, blessed with good genes and environment that are able to create art that didn't exist before in the space of human made art. It creates healthy role models for people to be inspired by. The scarcity or skills aren't artificial, but natural.
You seem to be conflating "intrinsically appreciable" and "intrinsically deducible". We can and do appreciate artworks because of their extrinsic qualities such as its historical background, the works that preceded and succeeded it, meanings given by author etc. So the "potential for appreciation" is indeed higher for human beings with this web of interconnections. The vacuum example doesn't do much since it strips the very thing that gives the artwork its extrinsic meanings that we appreciate. When we step out of the vacuum the balance changes and the works are not equal anymore and I can hardly understand why we would insist on living in the vacuum when we clearly do not.
To your point that this is merely reactionary attitude on the emergence of AI, people have and do still value hand-made crafts such as carpentry over mass-produced furniture.
> No, the human was never a core factor. People who enjoy a van Gogh - or any other work - primarily do so because it has particular qualities they appreciate
I don't follow. How about the 20k year old cave paintings in Lascaux? Are you saying "What you appreciate about it isn't the craft, or the story and history behind it; you care about only some of it's qualities?"
It's an extremely valuable part of history, for historians, archeologists, etc. The people who created those works too can be considered a "work", something to be studied the same as that which they did/made are studied.
OK, and so other artists can be studied too, and aspects of their creativity can be studied, and this doesn't have to be formal but can amount to just liking the artist's creativity. But you said "being human-made isn't an intrinsically appreciable quality".
That word "intrinsic", what does it mean in this context? You're sure it means something?
Sure, anything that can be sensed/known, can be studied.
It means that one cannot experience (look at, listen to, etc) a work and honestly say "I appreciate how this was human-made". There's no quality that can be imbued into a work that makes it discernable as made-by-human, as opposed to made-by-machine, or even made-by-nature (and eventually, maybe even made-by-alien). Not like one can discern and appreciate the lines and colours in a painting, or the tones and energy of a song. The maker of a work is extrinsic to it.
But there's no quality that makes an object discernable as anything at all; it's all theories. You don't absorb facts about reality through a sense organ, you start with a theory - such as "this is hexagonal" or "this was made by a human" - and test it. I diagnose that you are suffering from inductivism.
No, the human was never a core factor. People who enjoy a van Gogh - or any other work - primarily do so because it has particular qualities they appreciate (no, being human-made isn't an intrinsically appreciable quality; secondarily because many humans instinctively like to possess unique - or "shiny" - things), and the author tends to be a very good means to access other works with such qualities. That "celebrating the author" is just a side-effect, and there's nothing to stop a non-human entity from "telling genuine human stories" (whatever that means).
> why should the machines be compelled to interact with you?
The ultimate purpose of machines is to serve humans, and that's a bit hard to do without interaction. Just as the ultimate purpose of humans - and other living things - is to survive.