Lecture poster
On October 13, Sookmyung Women's University's Renaissance Hall hosted a series of colloquiums organized by SMWU's Humanities Research Institute. This was the last colloquium of 2023, and the topic of the lecture was "Non-Human AI Dependence." The speaker of the lecture, Professor Kim Jae-in of the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies at Kyung Hee University, began the lecture by talking about ChatGPT, a topic of much discussion in 2023. He explained the recent case of writers boycotting webtoons created using AI on a certain platform and said that creators are feeling anxious about the AI Big Bang, which has been triggered by the advancement of AI creative technology. He mentioned that because AI has been incorporated into so many areas lately, it's been an opportunity to observe public opinion about the creativity of AI. He then went on to analyze whether the output of AI can be regarded as truly creative. Based on the ideas of Nietzsche, he argued that humans are different from other beings because they can evaluate themselves and improve. In addition, he emphasized, "Art created by AI can be a product, but the production itself is not a work of art. It cannot have aesthetics because it does not have the ability to evaluate and develop." This implies that not only is AI unable to evaluate a work of art, but it can also never be a creator, only a useful tool. Therefore, it is up to the artist to decide how best to utilize AI, so people should focus on how to deal with it rather than the confrontation between it and humans. After the lecture, Lee Ji-won, English Language & Literature '21, said, "Recently, while watching the scary development of AI, I have been thinking about whether artists can survive in this era. However, after listening to this lecture, I realized that even if AI can create something, it cannot truly work as art. It was a good chance to think about how humans should coexist with AI." As such, the lecture provided an opportunity for students to philosophize about what people can do as only humans in the age of the AI Big Bang.
