Software can be a tool to create art (games for example), but mostly it's about problem solving. Sometimes creative problem solving, sure. But listening to a machine generated song is like the ultimate soulless A/B tested local maximum entertainment whose only goal is to make money. We had enough of that without generative AI, it's not gonna get better I wager.
I don't care much who wrote the code I'm running or if it was AI generated. There's nothing human being shared there, it solves a problem, and all that really matters is that it solves the problem well.
[0]: https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...
What is art? That’s a rhetorical question, because this is a highly debated topic and the answers have changed over time. There was a thousand years where art could not be separated from religious expression. There was a period where only technical mastery was considered important and the artist relatively unimportant. It varies by culture, time period, and even down to the individual.
And once you can agree on something that should be art; there will be disagreements as to whether a particular example is worthy of the title. Is Nick Cave’s “Into my Arms” art? Is the Spice Girls “Wannabe”?
Many years ago at the start of my career I was an engineer of the traditional variety working for a Smart Metering company. There was one analog electrical engineer there who I would best describe as a “mad genius”. His designs were constrained to solve a very boring practical problem, yes, but they were also creative, beautiful, and I would argue, art. Yes you need a degree in electrical engineering to appreciate them, but I guarantee that any such engineer would not fail to be moved by the beauty and elegance of his designs.
> I don't care much who wrote the code I'm running or if it was AI generated. There's nothing human being shared there, it solves a problem, and all that really matters is that it solves the problem well.
Much like with my example of the Smart Meter, the tradesmen installing it could care less about the beauty within. However I do appreciate beautiful elegant code, rare as it is. But name for me any human creative endeavour that is not 99% meaningless, repetitive, soulless drivel?
As for your last question: With games, I see a pretty clear distinction between those designed to quickly make lots of people addicted to the point where they spend as much money as possible, and those that primarily aim to transmit experiences or emotions.
Thinking about other businesses, I guess there's also a distinction between the short term revenue optimising ones, and those that focus on delighting the customer. Thinking about it, I should probably also consider that art, as I think parent suggested. Anything that's being created for a primary purpose other than short term revenue possibly.
So in summary, I suppose whether or not something is art is better decided based on the intentions of the creator, not the tools they use for creation.
Even though, I believe that the use of ChatGPT or any other AI assistant will eventually lead to the creation of inexperienced and unskilled generations of developers.
Using AI to generate "art" will just kill human creativity. Not only will it do that, it will create a new normal, where this AI art will be viewed as standard. Just as we currently have an over-monetized, synthetic music industry completely devoid of quality.
Did the photograph “kill” art? I’m sure this has been asked before, but what is so fundamentally different about AI that puts it into a different category of tool? That’s my argument; not that software development is art, but that tools accelerate the act of creation.