[saynay]

Generation of a "style", even for humans, requires a feedback loop where what was created is incorporated, mimicked, and expanded upon.

An AI whose training model only rewarded images that mimicked 19th-century art would never develop a "style" outside of that. But if you had a model that was trained on 19th-century art, and then provided a critic network that rewarded 20th-century art (as well as 19th), and re-trained the network, I suspect that it would develop a 20th-century "style", as variations that previously would have been rejected under a strict 19th-century criteria will now be accepted.

[V-2]

And it's this expansion aspect that seems crucial to me.

Endless rehashing of inputs can lead to seemingly creative outcomes, but that doesn't mean any actual expansion occurs. New works are created/discovered, but are new underlying principles discovered?

[Tade0]

I recall seeing a Two Minute Papers episode about an AI built to be curious, or specifically - explore routes in a maze where it couldn't predict the outcome.

The easiest way to block it was to present an animated wall. The AI would just stare at it and not go anywhere.

[saynay]

The generation side is actually probably easier than the critic side. I don't know of any network that is capable of determining if something is aesthetically pleasing in an abstract sense, instead they always compare to known examples.

[visarga]

Humans do the same - recombine the same limited vocabulary in new ways to address new goals. We rarely invent original meanings that could not have been expressed before.

[hsn915]

I believe the point of the original comment is to make AI that comes up with its own original style, not one that "reinvents" an already existing style after first being trained on a different already existing style.

[visarga]

Painters get feedback from the public. Would the AI get the same signals? Then it would be able to evolve new styles based on that.

[hsn915]

1) I question this premise. People who revolutionize a field don't do this with feedback from the public. They do it by having a very unique perspective that they bring into being by sheer force of will - usually against great pushback.

2) If we assume your premise is true. The public does not have a preconceived notion of what the art should be like. Presumably you would show them a style of art that they have never thought about before and they will respond positively to it.

[saynay]

The fact that we can say a person revolutionized the field is specifically because their work, at some point in time, got recognized by a larger audience. The fact that an artist had pushback is also context that is used to determine something is revolutionary; you cannot have subversive art if there is nothing to subvert.

[visarga]

I don't agree. For example could Shostakovich's symphonies be composed in a world without WW2 and Stalin? They were major factors influencing what people value in an artistic experience, as well as influencing the composer directly.

Bach composed for the religious people, Mozart for nobility / people who could go to the opera, Beethoven for the romantic middle class who owned a piano, and Shostakovich for the oppressed masses in soviet Russia. The historical context shapes artistic criteria.

You can't make new art styles in a vat (brain in a vat), the process is connected to the world.