Even in the last six months, things are changing, and particularly in the creative industries.” “Things that were not possible seven years ago, the capacity of the artificial intelligence is at a different level entirely. “There has been a very clear advance particularly in the last couple of years,” said Andres Guadamuz, an academic at the University of Sussex.

While good contemporary art can be controversial it is our overall goal that a wide-ranging and considered conversation is stimulated.”Īs the peers in the Lords committee heard just before Ai-Da arrived on the scene, AI technology is already having a substantial input on the UK’s creative industries – just not in the form of humanoid robots. Ai-Da in turn challenges the notion of ‘artist’. Ai-Da can be considered within the dada tradition, which challenged the notion of ‘art’. “Ai-Da is Duchampian, and is part of a discussion in contemporary art and follows in the footsteps of Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Lynn Hershman Leeson, all of whom have explored the humanoid in their art. The artwork encourages us to reflect critically on these societal trends, and their ethical implications. In response, Meller told the Guardian that Ai-Da “is not a deception, but a reflector of our own current human endeavours to decode and mimic the human condition. And if the expectations were really high, then whoever sees the demo can generalise that ‘oh, this field doesn’t work, this technology in general doesn’t work’.” “The unfortunate problem seems to be that the public stunt failed this time and gave the wrong impression.

“I can only imagine Ai-Da has several purposes and many of them may be good ones,” said Sami Kaski, a professor of AI at the University of Manchester. Stilgoe was not alone in bemoaning the missed opportunity. “There are genuinely important questions about AI and art – who really benefits? Who owns creativity? How can the providers of AI’s raw material – like Dall-E’s dataset of millions of previous artists – get the credit they deserve? Ai-Da clouds rather than helps this discussion.” We need to get roboticists and computer scientists to help us understand what computers can’t do rather than being wowed by their pretences. “If we want to learn about robots, we need to get behind the curtain, we should hear from roboticists, not robots. 01:52 Robot says AI is 'threat and opportunity' to artists during Lords address – video

Brave robot