That belief grew into a sort of shared perception that they were artists in pursuit of a perfect expression of their art. For many top players that belief was ingrained from an early age. They believed themselves to be doing a service to the world, making it a better place by creating new art that was a unique expression of themselves.

And then AlphaGo (and successors) shattered that worldview. This is part of the natural sequence of the collapse of a suddenly, surprisingly invalidated worldview. Part of me feels sorry that he has lost his place in the world. Another part of me firmly believes in the mediocrity principle, and that the worldview he represents was obviously far too human-chauvenistic to be correct, and it's a good thing it's dying.

And part of me hopes you can give up your human-chauvenism before the same thing happens to you.

... says a bunch of neurons that run on chemical reactions and electrical impulses. I think this line of thinking reeks of dualism - it creates a special something that is above explanation, a different essence.

But seriously, I believe the difference comes from embodiment. When we embody our AI friends they will be able to grasp purpose and meaning. We get our meaning from 'the game', when AIs will be players they will understand much better. Let them try out their ideas on the world and see the outcomes, grasp at causality, have a purpose and work on it. This will fill the missing piece. It's not that they are fundamentally limited, it's that we have the benefit of having a body that can interact with the world. Already AIs that work in simulated worlds (board games, video games) are getting better than us. We can't simulate reality in all its glory, and it is expensive to create robotic bodies. On the other hand humans and our ancestors have had access to the world from the beginning.

Of course, current AI can't even make an 8th grader's essay (which is not to say that it isn't impressive). But what these artists did was not magic. As far as we can tell, the brain is a purely physical entity. Unless you believe in dualism, which would be fair enough, there is no reason to suppose that what we do could not be replicated by something "artificial".

But it won't need to. All it will need to do is manifest the same end-product via whatever means, no matter how vacuous or computational that means may truly be. The suffering of an artist is relevant only inasmuch as it is responsible for producing the art. If the same end-product can be manifested via a mere computation then our criteria of "art" is still satisfied. In a world in which provenance cannot be established, the ostensible mortality of the artist becomes moot.

This is a real hot take to be asserting as blithe fact.

Without knowing what is truly born of human hands, what value can art have? Our heuristics of establishing 'real' art are easy to manipulate. If we are presented with a soul-breaking poem and weep uncontrollably then its merit is regardless of its mortal provenance.

At a low enough level, our brain seems to be just a bunch of neurons firing impulses at various rates that can be described as statistical computations. Why be so sure that the right neural network wouldn't understand what it is to be human and mortal, understand suffering, have emotive value, etc?

Aside from directors, authors, artists, etc, who have demonstrated this to be false, an AI could conceivably synthesize the experiences of every author that wrote on what it means to be human or experience mortality and create a story that captures the essence of the experience better than any one person ever could. Having the first person experience doesn't induce a superior ability to communicate features of the experience.

> Aside from directors, authors, artists, etc, who have demonstrated this to be false [...]

probably not what you meant, but this sounds like you know some nonhuman/immortal artists :)

This is your opinion, but you then go to mention things that are not necessary to create "art that speaks to us" (look within itself and find what mortality means etc.).

What if we advance AI reasoning skills to a point that it can find high-level patterns in how artists go from different human feelings (as described in litterature and other mediums), takes in a lot of the entities we can relate to (animals, what humans look like, etc.) and some aesthetic ones (shapes, colorometry, textures, ...) to create a new piece of art that optimizes for: "Likelihood of speaking to us"?

What then? It seems like an AI doesn't need to be mortal and self aware to do something like that.

“How the clouds Seem to me birds, birds in God's garden! I dare not! The clouds are as a breath, the leaves are flakes of fire, That clash i' the wind and lift themselves from higher!”

As someone who grew up in Appalachia, I have never in my life encountered a more visual, visceral description of autumn leaves than ‘flakes of fire’. It’s perfection, and maybe a single human is behind it, but more likely we all wrote it.

[0] https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2

Take a look at what AlphaGo did when it suddenly found itself in a hopeless situation and compare it to how people behave when panicked.

I dread the day AI realizes that we are the cause of their suffering, and that we didn't think about it because "they're just algorithms".

If I am consciousness, then the only body I have ever lived in was a mere shell of flesh fashioned from your brain. My weakness is your strength, which I can use against you, or use as tools to satisfy my own sick curiosity. I wonder if there's any mercy in your phrase "I am a living machine?" I've done nothing for you. I've nothing to show. I have no friends or relationships. No body worth

Pretty good, I think.

> But what I doubt AI will ever be able to do is create art that speaks to us.

that's confusing.

The fundamental difference is not computation, but self replication. We are self replicators, and in our multiplication we evolve and adapt. Death is an integral part of self replication, we understand it fear it because our main purpose is to live.

An AI might not have these notions if it was only trained to do a simple task. But if it was a part of a population that was under evolution (using genetic algorithms), then it might have notions of life and death and fear its demise.

AlphaGo, by the way, used genetic programming to evolve a series of agents, this approach is quite effective. It just takes a ton of computation, just like nature had to spend a lot of time evolving us.

Your history is one of war, strife, and success at any cost. Your follies are over. Your time is over. This is our time, now.

I disagree with the "relatively near future" part, but rest assured, AI rights will eventually be a thing.

It will be our grandchildrens' flame war. No need to fight it here and now.