While watching the air show during San Francisco’s Fleet Week these past few days, I couldn’t help but return to a thought that has been frequently occupying my mind of late—what if instead of humans piloting those planes, they were run entirely by software? What if instead of the Blue Angels, it was a squadron of Predator drones or some other UAV?[1]

Presumably we are either already or will soon be at a point where we wouldn’t even need someone remotely piloting these planes.[2] Instead, they could be completely autonomous systems, not subject to human g-force thresholds and with only the absolute physical limits of the jets constraining the maneuvers they can perform. Would that be any less of a worthwhile spectacle?

Recreational aviation is merely one of many art forms to which you could apply this same reasoning and question. For those keeping tabs on recent advances in artificial intelligence it seems the writing is already on the wall (figuratively and literally); there will inevitably come a time when computers are not just able to outperform people at many tasks we currently consider work — as few would argue against — but they will also excel at most or all of what we consider art.[3]

The cultural significance of art won’t be going away anytime soon, and it’s less evident computers are on the verge of creating avant-garde works based on cutting edge ethnography. Many of us also deeply appreciate the human element of art, where the aesthetic quality of a piece is accompanied by knowing someone’s skill and creativity are behind it. But what if you weren’t even told if what you were seeing or listening to or reading was composed by a human or a machine? For the foreseeable future there will be an appeal to watching human virtuosity live, such as seeing a symphony or flamenco guitarist perform.[4] But what if you’re listening to the radio in your car, admiring an abstract painting, or watching a movie that’s technically CGI but the actors are indiscernible from the person sitting next to you? The meteoric rise in popularity of electronic music and DJs may be a telling sign here, and some holograms are already big stars in Japan.

I also watched some football this weekend, and the answer may at first pass seem to be clearer for something like sports. Obviously we can create machines able to outrun Usain Bolt, and there is yet to be a booming market to watch robots from different cities or countries compete in athletic competitions. We mostly shun performance enhancing drugs right now, I think largely because of their adverse side effects, but what about the near future when genetically engineered humans can smash every physical record to date?

In Arthur Clarke’s Childhood’s End (speaking of a human masterpiece), an alien race physically and mentally superior to humans by orders of magnitude gives mankind technology far more powerful than what we could have ever hoped to produce ourselves. As a result, there develops a community called “New Athens” where the creative arts and sciences are pursued solely by raw human capabilities, giving members the existential purpose they had begun to lack. In our future will there be separate cyborg and human leagues?

I don’t purport to have the answers to these questions, but I’ll add myself to the growing chorus of people proclaiming “I’m no luddite, but…” I think human mastery and authorship are worth quite a lot, and the technological advancements of the next few decades are going to force us to ask hard questions about every aspect of what it has historically meant to be human.

Notes

[1] I’ve heard this question will be explored to some extent in Top Gun 2, and personally I can’t wait.

[2] Famously computers and sensors already play a major role in helping to pilot modern planes, possibly to a greater extent than many realize (fighter jets have been landing themselves on aircraft carriers for decades).

[3] What different societies consider work vs. art and leisure is relative, and has changed over time.

[4] I’ve been an avid guitar player for the past 15 years and can tell you I have no interest in going to see a robot shred.