He Almost Got It
On Brandon Sanderson's recent talk about AI
Scott (my husband) and I recently watched a keynote where Brandon Sanderson gave his thoughts on the Hidden Cost of AI Art. It was a solid unpacking of how the purpose of art isn’t “the thing,” meaning the final product of what the artist set out to make. The crux of his opinion is that the value of making things comes not from the marketability, or even quality of the product, but from the way the making changes the maker. He wrapped up the speech with the following declaration:
“Well, remember, art is not just the story. It is not just the painting or the sculpture or whatever else you love to create. It’s also the process of creation and what that process does to you. We make art because we can’t help it. It’s part of us.
We understand what it is. We are drawn to it because we are of the same substance. We are the art.”
I intellectually accept that Sanderson had to keep his keynote agnostic for the maximum relatability to his audience. But to do so actually falls short of why this discussion of AI-created things vs. human-created things matters. I don’t contest Sanderson’s point—I think it’s a great one to make along the way. Prompting and letting artificial minds powered by sprawling data centers barf out a song, story, or image doesn’t change the person who asked for the product. Or perhaps, in the worst cases, it does: to make them lazier, or more jaded, or cynical about how they’re gaming the system while other suckers are spending copious amounts of time making something indistinguishable from the thing they hit “enter” and received.
But WHY are we the art? Why are we compelled to create? I believe it is because we, like all children, are wont to imitate our father. And our Father, the one who truly made us, is boundlessly creative.
When God said, “Let there be light,” there was light. But when it came time to make Adam, he didn’t just say “let there be Man.” He formed Adam.
“7 —then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Gen 2:7)
No other creature did God take this time to fashion, like a potter works clay (as the original Hebrew implies.) And absolutely he did not make any other living thing in His image, quickened by God’s own breath. Our connection to God the Father is one of being his not just his handiwork, but his image. He breathed his likeness into us.
And so, we have the intrinsic desire to also fashion things with meaning, and this desire burns hot in the artists of the world. Our art matters because in our own imitative way, we breathe the breath of life into the things we labor over and fashion with practice, toil, and feeling.
When we seek to create in imitation of the God who created everything, we glorify him, and I believe he is pleased with our desire to be like him. And he grieves when we pervert that part of our nature.
We can build altars, or we can craft golden calves.
We can dye yarn for the tabernacle, or we can set up Asherah poles.
We can cast golden lampstands, or we can hammer together a cross.
If we are called to do everything “to the glory of God,” how much more does that apply to acts of creativity? In the act of creating, we explore the meaning behind our desire to create. We infuse what we do with reflections of our own eternal souls.
And so yes, AI “art” costs humanity something when an person chooses to delegate the act of making to a system of code trained on every human work it could ingest before makers got wind of it and demanded a halt. It costs the consumer of the product the ineffable experience of glimpsing the artist’s soul. It costs the individual makers not just the opportunity to be the art, but to connect more deeply to the one who breathed into us the desire to create in the first place.