> How did Van Gogh know he was making good art when he cut off his ear...

I wouldn't know, but I'm not sure what that point illustrates?

I'm fairly sure Van Gogh had a pretty good idea how his art was different/stood out from what existed, and could articulate why he did it a certain why (i.e. why it was good, to him at least). I'm far less certain about some random person with no art background typing a prompt being capable of the same analysis/understanding (that's also why 99% of AI art so far is transparently derivative).

To be clear — my point isn't that AI-art is bad or whatever. It's that it could displace/change the nature of what making art is about, and that incidentally it might require new skills or more extreme versions of existing skills, making the fear of the disappearance of "artists" overblown (and as a corollary making the idea that anyone can become capable of creating meaningful art exaggerated as well).

> It really doesn't feel like art is something that can be formulated and constrained as such. And it never was. All of those are techniques to effect certain results to convey the emotion or the idea. If the computer already does the technique part, what's left to the artist is to imagine, feel and express.

Right, but "expression" isn't something trivial, that's the point. If the prompt is "Harbor scene", there's a billion ways to realize that. Someone would presumably have to have the vocabulary/knowledge to navigate that space and produce something worthwhile in the end.

There's probably something to be said about the amount of control the artist gets on the output as well. The more we try to reintroduce post-hoc adjustments to e.g. an AI-generated image, the more we make "new art" look like "old art" (i.e. requires significant specific technical knowledge, albeit with different tools that paint and brushes).

Maybe it hits a balance, maybe it just goes back to the same situation as before.

> And you can be sure that people will differentiate themselves. Like how they did in every age before. Moreover, those who had a talent for art, but not a talent for all the techniques and the tricks that goes into making that art happen, will now start making art.

Yup, that's another important point. AI just becomes the new normal. But it will take skills to stand out given that new tool set. AI generated "art" will be seen the same way we see children doodles.

> If an AI is generating Shakespeare-level writing, and no one is capable of assessing its quality, then that's Shakespeare-level writing and its good.

Eh, disagree. If people had no knowledge of what poetry existed in the past or no understanding of it (think average college freshman essay), it certainly wouldn't follow that AI-generated crappy nursery rhymes would become Shakespeare-level poetry.

> Let's face it: Most of the 'high quality' criteria comes from our beautification and exaggeration of the arts of the past. There isn't any objective formula that is used to assess the 'quality' of any art.

That's why I made the point about curation.

If there's no "objective" quality to art, it's entirely narrative-based, whether on a past canon, or some sort of manifesto/principles something should stick to (think of modern art movements).

The job becomes completely different — it's not about the technical details of the work itself, but about how it's inserted in a larger cultural phenomenon ascribing certain values to art itself or certain principles in particular.

> If art creates thoughts and emotions in you, its good art.

To the person creating it, maybe, but then we're definitely talking about something different than ("high") art the way it's been talked about in academic discourse for the past ~2500 y. There has so be at least a common perception about the value of a piece of art for it to be considered as such.