Beauty through an Artificial Eye

Beauty is a well known quality we perceive that needs no introduction. From dawn of humanity, humans have found, enjoyed, described, analyzed and even created beauty. Humans see beauty in many things, from the softness and the tenderness of a flower to the bright orange color of a sunset and from a smiley face of a woman to a poem or a painting about her.

However, in this article I like to talk about another aspect of beauty. Can beauty only be perceived by humans? Can another intelligent and conscious being (AI) perceive beauty? Do these beings perceive beauty in the same things as human? These are the questions that this article tries to discuss.

Philosophy of Beauty

The nature of beauty is a widely talked theme in western philosophy. It has been taken in to argue even in ancient Greek philosophy. In fact, it is one of the fundamental aspects in the philosophical aesthetics.

The most popular question about beauty is the question of whether beauty is a subjective or objective quality. Most early philosophers like Plato or Aristotle believe that beauty is an objective quality. But later around 18th century, philosophers like David Hume argued that the beauty is a subjective experience. But though the beauty can be considered as a subjective quality we can see that most of the things that we see as beautiful tend to be common or has common qualities. But these commonalities do not necessarily prove that beauty is objective ether.

Evolutionary Aesthetics

Evolutionary aesthetics suggests that the basic aesthetic preference of humans has evolved in order to enhance survival and reproductive success. According to this theory the factors like color preference, preferred mate body ratios, shapes, emotional ties with objects, and many other aspects of the aesthetic experience can be explained though theories of evolution.

For example, for the humans’ aesthetic preferences to landscapes can be a concept developed by humans through evolution, which helps humans to selecting a good habitat to live in. Also in the same way the beauty of the human body is connected with the human reproduction. Even art forms like music can be considered as products of evolution. The field of Evolutionary musicology studies this relationship of music perception and production and evolutionary theory.

So, according to this theory the reason for seeing beauty in certain things can be a concept which is hardwired into our brains by evolution. And this theory can explain the commonalities in the objects that each person sees beauty in.

Beauty according to AI

If we consider beauty as an experience that intelligent and sentient beings perceive, then the strong AI which is sentient and intelligent like humans may be able to perceive it too. But this may not work if the perceiving of beauty is only a quality of human intelligence and AI have another type or a mechanism of producing intelligence. Although may be the type of intelligence (or sentience or consciousness may be) that AI posses will be able to create their own concept of beauty (or something similar to the concept of beauty) according to the mechanisms it have.

For humans, beauty can have a strong relationship with emotions. This may also be applied to AI. But the requirement here is that AI must be capable of producing emotions. And that will depend on the architecture and the evolution process of the AI’s mind. So what will be the emotions of AI? If the AI has an architecture that is similar to humans, then like humans the AI will also have set of desires. And these desires can generate more complex emotions. So now this becomes the question of AI’s desires. For humans, desires are about the survival or attending the basic needs (ex: food). So for AI their desires will be about their needs. When they have these desires more complex emotions will be constructed around these desires depending on their mental architecture. But whether humans can understand these emotions is a bit of a question. Even we can understand the desires of AI, it will be little hard to understand the emotions of AI since they are more complex than basic desires. And that makes it harder to understand their concept of beauty. And the things that they see as beautiful may not be beautiful to us. Also, the things that we see as beautiful may not be beautiful to them.

As I explained earlier in Evolutionary Aesthetics section beauty can also be a concept we developed through evolution. This same principle can also be applied to the AI. AI’s perception of beauty can be a concept hardwired into the AI’s brain, which they developed through their evolutionary process. If this is so, in order to understand the AI’s concept of beauty we should be looking into the evolutionary process of the AI. If the evolutionary process of AI is complex and fast, then the AI’s concept of beauty can be more complex than humans . Other than that if AI has the ability of self-modification or control over their evolution, that also will make their concept of beauty more complex. Their perception of beauty and also their Art forms would be more complex and will even be based on different principles than humans due to this difference in evolution and also because of their increased intelligence .

Beauty can also be a planted or hardwired idea in the AI’s brain by humans. If this is true, then the AI will see the beauty in the same things that humans see the beauty in (or they will see the beauty in what we want them to see beauty in). The current attempts in AI research to give the AI the ability to create art is kind of doing the same thing. But I think the AI will alter or change these ideas and make their own ideas about beauty. They won’t necessarily change or remove the planted ideas. But the ideas can evolve according to the evolution of the AI’s mind. Also the AI sometimes doesn’t have the same conditions as the humans to see beauty in a certain thing. For an example, we can see the beauty of a woman and AI can have a planted idea of the beauty of that woman. But we cannot accept that the AI has the same attraction (may be biological) towards that woman like us humans.

So like this the concept of beauty in AI can be a bit different than the human concept of beauty. But I think that they can evolve into perceiving beauty in their own way. And I think that is truly beautiful.