Do Tech Bros Dream of Electric Sheep?

There’s this one frame from Star Trek: The Next Generation that I always come back to. In it, the character of Data stands in his personal living quarters, showing the painting behind him to his child, Lal: Piet Mondrian’s Painting 1. This is not the only time Mondrian’s work is included in Data’s quarters, and the same painting is seen at various points across the series, and in subsequent promotional materials. It is an intentional addition to the set design, one that signifies Data’s relationship to art.

Lieutenant Commander Data (Brent Spiner) is the operations officer on the Enterprise, the 24th century space ship on which science-fiction TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) is set. An exceptionally complex android, Data is believed to be the only one of his kind when the series starts, knowing very little of his own origins beyond the fact that his creator was human, and that he was made in his image. As such his character arc over the series seven-seasons run (on which I will focus exclusively in this article) centres around two core quests: on the one hand, Data seeks to elucidate the mysteries of his own creation, and on the other, he wants to better understand humans - our instinct, emotions and desires - in the hope he may one day experience this humanity for himself.

One of the key ways Data pursues this quest for humanity is through a constant involvement with art. Throughout the show, he takes on multiple art forms and shows a keen interest in the mechanisms of aesthetic choices and creative expression. He learns to play the violin and the oboe, he picks up dancing and stand-up comedy, he becomes obsessed with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels, and most notably, he paints and he acts. He approaches each of these artistic journeys with the utmost curiosity, studying techniques and art history at length, and seeking advice from his peers - asking them about intention, reception, and subjective experience. Above all, Data wants to understand why humans create, and why they enjoy both making and experiencing art. When he learns to act, reading for Shakespeare’s Henry V and The Tempest under the guidance of Captain Picard (The Defector, S3E10, and Emergence, S7E23), he is invested in understanding the mechanisms through which an actor conveys emotion, and how he can better connect with his characters’ intentions. He asks Picard (Patrick Stewart) questions about the historical context in which Shakespeare wrote his plays, and why his words have stood the test of time. In Data’s Day (S4E11), while preparing for Miles and Keiko O’Brien’s wedding, Data seeks the help of Dr Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) to learn how to dance, so that he may participate fully in the day’ celebrations. Although he does not believe himself to be capable of experiencing the emotion of friendship, being an artificial life form, he still understands the potential for connection that art holds, and how it can act as an offering to loved ones. Learning more about Dr Crusher’s passion for dance, he also takes it as an opportunity to inquire about why humans dance and what they get out of this practice. Of course, many of the scenes involving Data and art are comedic: he writes dry poetry for his cat, Spot, performs technically perfect yet boring violin solos, and (brutally) criticises Picard’s paintings. Yet, his artistic pursuits are never written solely as comedy, but instead form an integral part of his character development: it is through art that Data believes he will finally understand humans, and through art that he believes he may gain some of this humanity himself.

This is further exemplified by the crew’s attitude towards Data’s artistic pursuits. While they may be amused by some of his attempts at creative expression, they are still generally supportive of his efforts, encouraging him to find his own interpretation and artistic voice. They genuinely believe that he has something unique to express, even when he doubts his own capacities to create anything truly original. When he is preparing for the role of King Henry in Shakespeare’s Henry V, Data enthusiastically lists all the classic performances of the role he is planning to study (and replicate), to which Picard replies: ‘You’re here to learn about the human condition, and there is no better way of doing that than by embracing Shakespeare … but you must discover it through your own performance, not by imitating others.’ Data’s involvement with art thus becomes one of the ways the show affirms his humanity, a humanity he is shown to gain access to not by replicating, or even surpassing, human-made art, but through a genuine curiosity and care for the creative process, and a deep desire to learn. These, the show tells us, are the building blocks of art, not perfection or innate genius.

I rewatch Star Trek: The Next Generation often, and as a former art history student and art lover myself, Data’s relationship to art has always felt special to me. In recent months however, I have found myself coming back to it more and more. In the age of AI Evangelism, Data’s relationship to art feels more prescient than ever. 

It feels important to remind ourselves here that Data is not any android. He is in every way an engineering marvel: he is gifted with capacities that vastly surpasses that of humans, both physically and cognitively, and yet he is so complex that even he struggles to create another like him. When it comes to art, his seemingly unlimited processing speed and memory power allow him to master hundreds of artistic techniques and digest thousands of years of creation in seconds. This is partly why he is able to pick up so many hobbies, when most of his colleagues focus on one or two personal interests throughout the show. But if Data could have been written as an android producing the perfect work of art with no efforts, effectively cancelling out the thousands of years of art history that came before him with his technology-enhanced excellence, that would have been missing the point of his character entirely. Data exists as an exploration of what it means to be human, and as such, he is not invested in art as output alone, as a finished object, the symbol of his potential superiority over humans. Instead, his focus is on creativity as an experience, and on art as an act of communion and self-actualisation. He wants to create an original work of art so he can share it with others, so he can build connection and understanding with his peers, and he wants to create that original work of art by going through the creative process himself, to access and further develop his own sense of self.

I’m sure the Tech Bros of the 21st century would love for their AI models to one day be as sophisticated and autonomous as Data is shown to be, yet their relationship to art and creativity stands in sharp opposition to his. In the imaginary of Silicon Valley, art is an asset, it is an investment. That is: art’s only valuable form is its final product. Whatever comes before that - the artist’ training, their research, their exploration, trials and errors - is superfluous. In his segment on AI Slop for Last Week Tonight, John Oliver quotes Mikey Shulman, CEO of AI-generated music company SUNO, saying: ‘It’s not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of practice. (…) I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.’ A statement to which Oliver replies ‘I think a lot of people might actually enjoy making music, it’s probably why they were doing it for the 40,000 years of human history prior to AI.’ But when art is only viewed as a product, the creative process becomes a hindrance. If the point of art is to create an attractive product that can be quickly marketed and sold to maximise return on investment, as Shulman expresses above, then going through the motions of artistic creation is an inefficient use of resources, it’s a waste of time and money, and it needs to be removed from the production line entirely. This is what AI-generated art promises: to optimise creativity out of art. It’s about improving the workflow, becoming ever more efficient and productive. Now we can predict with great precision the time it will take to reach a specified artistic goal, and shrink it to our linking. Creation becomes frictionless and predictable. And I’m not talking here about rabbits on trampolines or AI slop shrimp Jesus, but the slow creep of AI-generated work in film and television, from music composition, to documentary visuals, and voice-cloning, sold as a way to “streamline” and “enhance” the filmmaking process.

This belief system, this Tech Bro’s vision of art, sustains a labour culture in which art workers are viewed as disposable, in which their artistic and intellectual contributions are systematically devalued, appropriated and stolen, and in which their art as a cheap raw material to be mined for greater profit margins. The AI industry at large has real tangible, material impact on our lives: it is threatening our livelihoods, polluting our waters, misinforming us, and overall making us stupider. But we must also interrogate the ideology that has propped up AI generated art as a solution for the creative industries, because it is this same ideology that will be leveraged to justify exploitative contracts, cuts to funding, and layoffs. AI Evangelists love the idea that their products are making art more accessible: now everyone can produce music, and paintings, and films - as if what kept us from making art all this time was our own lack of creativity, and not a severe lack of resources and access to the materials, time and space needed for true creation. What we need is not AI-enhanced scriptwriting, but an industry in which writers can afford to write, and an economy in which people can afford to become writers.

Every time I revisit Data - and his Mondrian paintings, and his Shakespeare plays, and his awkward yet endless love for art - I am reminded of how life-affirming it is to create. The creative process can be difficult, it’s unpredictable, merciless at times, but honouring it is the only way to create anything. And for me, it is the only way to feel fully alive. If the point of art is not to create a product for consumption, as techno-capitalism would have us believe, but instead to simply experience it - to make it, to see it, to hear it - then creativity cannot be removed from art, because it is at its core. It is through the creative process, through exploration and experimentation, that we learn, that we find joy, and frustration, and inspiration, through it that we might connect with each other and ourselves in new ways. To me, it’s wonderful to have a finished work, of course, but it’s wonderful because of two things. One, if you like it, you get to share it with others, and others can connect with it (or not!), and through this sharing experience, you’ll get to be changed and challenged and inspired even further. Or, two, you don’t share it with others - or you do and it flops massively, who cares - but in any case, you still get something for yourself. Your art is your witness to what you can do, it is your proof that you have gone through the act of creation, and hopefully, by the end of it, you’ll know and love yourself a little more. I know I do.

(if you got this far, you’ll enjoy this song)

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