There is a famous philosophical theorem: if an infinite number of monkeys typed on typewriters at random for an infinite amount of time, eventually they would accidentally type the collected works of Shakespeare. 

This isn’t a statement about the genius of monkeys, but about the nature of literature, and by extrapolation art at large, a reminder to us that great pieces of art like Romeo and Juliet are at root, a priori, inherently (etc) really just permutations of spaces, letters, and punctuation marks, jobbled together into a current of communication: a code — a code which would potentially emerge if it were possible to employ infinite monkeys typing at random on typewriters. Just in the same way, a painting is really just a collection of colors applied to a field; a sonata is really just a collection of timed noise frequencies arranged in a pattern. 

I often think about this when I am working on my own pieces of writing. I think how at the end of the day everything I write is a permutation of spaces, letters, and punctuation marks. What you’re reading now is meaningless unless you understand English. Meaningless spaces and letters and punctuation marks. And because my pieces tend to be relatively short, I think how they are more likely than others to be produced by the Infinite Monkey Theorem. I bet the monkeys wouldn’t even get close to working for infinity before they typed this short essay out, accidentally. 

In the moment a language is invented, all of the potential sequences of that language are also invented. As soon as the English Language developed its symbol bank to include every symbol in Romeo and Juliet — as soon as that moment occurred — that’s when Romeo and Juliet was also invented in the World of Potential. As soon as every one of R+J’s symbols was invented, it then became possible to write it. 

What I mean by this “World of Potential” is a real honest metaphysical, fantastical plane that I think exists sidelong to ours. Think of anything you’ve written, painted, sung or whatever — in the moments before you created it, was it possible to create it? Of course. Then isn’t it clear that that combination of words, colors, music, etc already existed as a combination before you put it on paper? 

Every piece of art exists in the World of Potential before it is written or painted or sung, etc, waiting to be plucked by a passing traveler there. All the artist does is arrange the material into its iteration, translating it from the World of Potential into the World of Tangibility. 

Practitioners of the arts are more like explorers or miners than they are artists, and their “arts” are less art than “discoveries.” 

When I write a poem I uncover a permutation of language that already existed in the World of Potential but was yet undiscovered by an agent of the World of Tangibility. Everything that I will write in the course of my life already exists: my masterpieces (though I doubt there will be any); my better-left-unwritten (which are profuse). All there waiting in the World of Potential.

For a painter or a mathematician or a songwriter — who gets the sense they have a lot ahead of themselves, still left to be mined from that other world — it can be frustrating, knowing their work lies ahead, unsure where to begin digging. The gold seam is here somewhere in the world. Who will have the no-how and work ethic to discover it? This is the struggle of the permutation artist. Work ethic, because we are digging, digging, digging through permutations.

The difference between the monkey and human being is the human being understands the symbols on the typewriter, but the monkey does not. Therefore the human being is more practiced at exploring the World of Potential, since, after all, the human invented the elements which give that World its life. But the infinite permutations found there are still outside of grasp, still undiscovered, undocumented. 

A.I. is an interesting development in the permutation miner’s battle to find the seam of gold. It stands to be our greatest tool — like a rota-tiller, or dynamite — and at the same time it contends to ruin our reputations, since we are still living at a cultural moment in which the use of A.I. is taboo. It is taboo because of our notions of authenticity of art. In order for art to be artistic, it needs to be produced by a living, breathing artist, a human being. It must be made by a human being. If artificial intelligence were to paint Malevich’s Red Square, there would be nothing to pull from its abstraction — no possibility for the painting’s abstract notions of interpretive lines, that this simple red square is actually about communism, or feminism, or imperialism, etc — and the A.I. square certainly would never sell for 60 million. 

People need humans to make their art because they need to feel that the art is an expression of their own humanity. If the art is not made by a human, it cannot be an expression of their own selves. Isn’t this a truth which belies the tacit inclusion of a hive mentality? Or an Oversoul? Art made by other people, we agree, is still art made by ourselves. 

However, if a painter were to use A.I. to generate abstract art, but then trick the viewer into believing it were produced by the artist themself, would the viewer be any less delighted? Would anything be lost? Only if the artist were discovered. In which case the artist would be a fraud, a doper, and be stripped of their medals like Lance Armstrong, or Barry Bonds. A.I. will soon be seen like this, as a form of artistic doping. 

The notion of separating the artist from the art is impossible because the most crucial thing about art is that a human made it. Art is not the mirror held to reality — it is a painting of the interior of a human held up to the human who craves a painting of a human’s interior. Humans do not know how they feel, most of the time. Art teaches the human how they feel. If something inhuman makes the art, it cannot be art, it is something else, an imposter feeling, a wrong feeling. All human feelings are more human feelings than an A.I.’s synthesized feelings. 

It would be interesting if culture ever eclipsed the notion I have described above, if culture were ever capable of accepting the art in its objective rather than its subjective, if art could ever be severed from artist genuinely, because it would allow more permutations from the World of Potential entry into our World of Tangibility. Ultimately, I think, something will change about our view of authenticity, but we are very far away from it still. 

What will begin to happen in the coming decades will be an augmentation of A.I. into the miner’s life of artists, that artists will begin to use A.I. to do the hard digging. Artists, then, will become curators of what A.I. can produce. A great artist will be less a craftsperson — A.I. will do the crafting — than a tastemaker, praised for their taste. We already see that nature in some cultural figures, like Rick Rubin, or Jeff Koons, who resemble CEOs more than they do artists, and are yet responsible solely for the tastefulness they filter from elsewhere.