■Our reporter Wu Jinjiao
How many unique butterflies can you draw in one minute?
The answer is, 120 or more!
With the help of the algorithm evolution program of the virtual butterfly, some artists have created more than one million different butterflies in just a few months.
But let go and let the AI process the artwork freely, and you will get images that are even more absurd than dreams.
With the help of artificial intelligence, some artists make new combinations of old construction wastes and design new country houses, but let AI design and combine construction wastes by themselves, but they get ridiculous 3D printing equipment.
When artists are equipped with AI assistants and enter the era of high productivity, is AI also changing our aesthetics?
In the world of human-machine symbiosis, the intervention of artificial intelligence in art can bring more diverse aesthetics and diverse creations, but the influence of artificial intelligence will also be reflected in our aesthetics.
Whether it is in the field of design or in the field of artificial intelligence, when interviewed by reporters, the unanimous view is that data is true and algorithms are good, which is the eternal aesthetic standard in the field of artificial intelligence.
Unleash human creativity with artificial intelligence
Today, AI is no longer simply a scientific research content that is kept on the shelf in the laboratory. It not only flies into the homes of ordinary people, but also "infiltrates" some niche fields across borders.
Combined with the popular GAN (generative adversarial network), now AI can not only play Go, talk to people, but even "dance words and ink" and become a painter.
In October last year, the Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the School of Design and Innovation of Tongji University launched the first domestic art organization to promote and incubate creators and works related to intelligent algorithms - Aichang, to promote artificial intelligence art works.
"I have to admit that in terms of production efficiency, machine-generated content (MGC) and artificial intelligence (AI) have shown the ability to surpass humans." Zhang Zhoujie, a digital artist and associate professor at the School of Design and Innovation, Tongji University, was deeply touched by this.
Since AlphaGo's victory in the field of Go in 2017 shocked the world, he has begun to introduce artificial intelligence into artistic creation.
"An artist can only create a few thousand works at most in his lifetime. If the help of artificial intelligence can be used, the creativity of the artist will be released to a greater extent." He even believes that artificial intelligence art will be the future 10- An important art form in 20 years, artificial intelligence will be the right-hand man of the artist in the future.
In fact, in the next 10-20 years, with the rapid development of machine learning, artificial intelligence will inevitably be widely used in various fields and become an important tool.
Zhang Junping, a professor at the School of Computer Science and Technology of Fudan University, told reporters that because of its high efficiency and low consumption, AI will replace repetitive work, simple mental and physical work in the future. Then the scope of application will be wider.
"AI cannot completely replace humans"
The specific efficiency is not as good as that of AI, so what is the advantage of humans in the competition with AI?
Zhang Junping's words are straight to the point: what artificial intelligence does is to learn and follow old data, but in the imagination of things that do not exist, artificial intelligence is far inferior to human beings.
In short, humans have a "creative mind" that machines don't.
"After the continuous iteration of the artificial intelligence model, the total number of virtual butterflies I created has far exceeded the number of existing butterfly species in the world." An author of Aichang told reporters.
His goal is to make it possible for everyone to own a one-of-a-kind electronic butterfly collection.
But some people questioned: there are no two identical leaves in the world, and these virtual butterflies cannot be strictly counted as creations.
In the opinion of some experts, artificial intelligence has a "pseudo-creativity", that is, random production or statistical imitation.
They are usually performed based on learned models.
For example, after studying a large number of literary works, only one program can randomly generate millions of works, which can be imitated and assembled to form a collection of poems or anthologies.
But at the end of the day, it's not meaningful creation, because machines don't understand what they create.
"AI can never completely replace human beings." Professor Wei Shaonong, Dean of the School of Design, East China Normal University, said that the reason why the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso can become classics is not only the skills of the paintings, but also the presentation spiritual core.
“All the works that can touch people’s hearts throughout the ages have analyzed the complexity of human nature and transformed the inexpressible feelings of people’s hearts into art forms that can be expressed. These profound understandings and keen perceptions of the world and people’s hearts are machines that learn through input data. The unattainable." In layman's terms, these works can derive aesthetics and emotions, and have the power to reach people's hearts.
And these are precisely what artificial intelligence lacks at this stage.
Zhang Junping added that artificial intelligence is still in its infancy.
Therefore, only human beings can achieve cross-domain information fusion across datasets, and combine multi-disciplinary knowledge to create more meaningful things.
But in this regard, the computer still has many shortcomings.
Aesthetics also need to get rid of algorithmic siege
AI can open up the creative imagination space of human beings, but when AI enters the field of artistic creation, data towards truth and algorithm towards goodness are still the constraint framework of AI creation, which also affects human aesthetics.
Human aesthetics has physical aesthetics on the senses, which is the preference left by natural selection, and humanistic aesthetics based on human life experience and social and historical development.
"The formation of human aesthetics is a very complicated process, and it is difficult to create beautiful works simply by relying on AI." Wang Changbo, a professor at the School of Computer Science and Technology of East China Normal University, analyzed that in terms of technology, the emotion and beauty of AI are obviously not the current ones. technology can achieve.
Because it is difficult for AI "painters" to follow the thinking of human artists, it will produce some paintings with low artistic level, and even some weird and terrifying paintings.
However, when AI becomes a part of creation for a long time, it will inevitably have an impact on people's aesthetics.
At this time, it is more necessary to constrain and guide AI.
Because, when we use intelligent algorithms such as machine translation and language generation models, the output of machines has begun to interfere with human creation, and even deviate from the expected track.
"After all, the number of machine training is far beyond the controllable range of human beings, so the art works of AI automatic iteration will be so absurd." Zhang Junping said.
In the eyes of experts, there is no right or wrong in the tool itself, the so-called right or wrong refers to the people behind the algorithm.
The Turing Award winner and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Yao Qizhi has repeatedly mentioned in an interview with reporters that super AI must be altruistic, humble and dedicated.
How to design a controllable super artificial intelligence is still an important issue.
"Behind the cold algorithms, there is a need for authors with humanistic care." Professor Wei Shaonong also believes that the intervention of artificial intelligence in art can bring more diverse aesthetics and diverse creations.
"But no matter when, creators must always insist that data be true and algorithms be good, rather than humans being led by algorithms, including aesthetics."