[ramblerman]

If a computer makes up a joke and it's funny does it count? I think it does.

Art is a lot like humor, it works for people because it just 'works'. That is what matters. Not the hard work, and 'genius' of the creator behind it, that's just vanity.

Would bohemian rhapsody not count as art if it was made up by a machine?

[alexandrerond]

No, it wouldn't count. Because then we would have some thousands of bohemian rhapsodies. An art expression would perhaps be the whole bunch of works together (if you managed to give them a sense of being), and the artist would be whoever devised the program that created them. But individually, it would be have the same art value as those pictures sold in IKEA. Beautiful yes, but not art by themselves.

Edit: art is not art because "just works" or because it's likeable. Art goes way beyond what just works or the search for beauty. See the Viennese actionism for example: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-viennese-actionism.htm

[riquito]

> No, it wouldn't count. Because then we would have some thousands of bohemian rhapsodies.

The computer broke after completing the work: now does it count? I don't understand your idea of art, isn't there beauty in the result? You give different value if the same result has been reached by a computer, chaos or a human?

Do you have to know how the piece has been produced to decide if it's art or not?

[pegasus]

Yes. A rock that's been pleasingly shaped by desert winds is not considered art. But if we'd later find out that it was actually a man-made artifact, it would become a candidate for this label.

[tbirdz]

So then the computer software that generated the joke would be considered the work of art instead of the jokes that were generated? After all, the software was man-made, even though the generated output was computer-made.

[ramblerman]

Hmm, I always find it weird that specifically the visual arts suffer from this. It's a lot easier to agree on music and dance (not liking it per se, but what constitutes an artist).

Yet, go to a modern art gallery and someone will try to convince you the potato he stuck on a coathanger is 'art'. usually with the same fluffy explanations you are offering here.

[donpark]

Answer depends on whether we're looking only at the end product, ignoring the process, but common convention is to qualify the end product name using words like artificial or drawn by an elephant to reduce confusion and to differentiate.

[romaniv]

If a computer generates 100000000 unfunny jokes and one that seems funny, does that count?

[jkaunisv1]

It's not very different from how I learned to tell jokes. My brothers heard a lot of terrible jokes before I figured out timing and other aspects of humour.

If it makes you laugh, it's a good joke. What does the origin matter?

[romaniv]

You're not making an argument that Pikazo generates real art. You're making an argument that humans don't make real art. This notion has absolutely no interesting implications for AI. It's like saying "language is relative, so any output of Google Translate is just as valid as what you think is valid".

[alexandrerond]

:D only if its really really funny