The Potter's Hands

 

Elon Musk predicts that soon, AI will replace all human jobs. He says this does not mean we all go on Universal Basic Income—rather, on Universal High Income. “There will be no shortage of goods and services.”

I have some trouble getting my head around how this can work. And just because Musk is the world’s proven leading expert on technological futures does not mean his prediction is right. Experts are usually wrong about the future. But if he is right, what will people actually end up doing all day?

It seems to me there is one area of human endeavour that AI cannot ever automate. Create genuine art. Sure, it can create commercial art, Hallmark card level “art,” doggerel. But AI cannot, after all, be inspired. All it is every doing is recycling what has already been done by someone somewhere. In writing terms, it will always be boilerplate and cliché. One way to understand art and the aesthetic experience is that it is a direct Vulcan mind tap, a revelation that one is listening to a fellow intelligent soul. You’re never going to get that, and anyone with a functioning sense of beauty will find this apparent. You will get only the soulless suburbs. You will get endless Star Wars sequels. You will get formula. You will get mere prettiness or, at best, mere entertainment.

That said, it is also true that very few real people can generate genuine art either.

Be that as it may, given the apparent fact that everything else can do can be done as well by machines, it seems to follow that the reason we are here on Earth, the reason God created man, is to create art, to produce beauty. Or at least to all do our best to do so. To sit on the clouds or hilltops with our harps or lyres, and sing. It is fairly obvious that this is just what Jesus and the Bible says:

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

That “city on a hill” is the New Jerusalem:

“The city shone like a precious stone, like a jasper, clear as crystal. … The city was perfectly square, as wide as it was long. … The wall was made of jasper, and the city itself was made of pure gold, as clear as glass. 19 The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation stone was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh yellow quartz, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chalcedony, the eleventh turquoise, the twelfth amethyst. 21 The twelve gates were twelve pearls; each gate was made from a single pearl. The street of the city was of pure gold, transparent as glass.”

The completed cosmos is a vast and perfect work of art. God has given us nature, and the potter’s wheel, our minds. We are to perfect it as co-creators, and that is what art is.

If we can’t do it, we can at least try.