In the Age of AI, Creating Experience Is Where Human Value Lies

In 1950, the British mathematician Alan Turing proposed a thought experiment called the "Imitation Game". Today it is known as the "Turing Test".

In it, a questioner tries to tell a human from a computer through text-only exchanges. If a computer could hold a conversation so natural that it could not be distinguished from a human, could that not be regarded as intelligent behaviour? That was the question.

This way of thinking carries over to today's AI. AI can now write, draw, compose music and reproduce many kinds of creative activity.
That is exactly why I feel we now need to ask: "Is the finished work where the value lies?"

With a painting, you can look at a single finished picture and judge its technique and beauty. But what did the artist think, try and attempt to express on the way to that work? That process holds a hidden story that the finished piece alone cannot measure.

There is the act of taking the thoughts, questions, experiences and not-yet-formed images within oneself, and giving them concrete shape through trial and error.

That is why I find value in individual experience.

I recently published books. It is a different means of expression from painting, but in weaving together my own experiences, and the experiences and time born from meeting friends, into the shape of a book, there is no essential difference in the human act of creation.

Precisely because we live in an age in which AI makes all kinds of expression possible, I want to value thinking for myself, starting things, writing, painting and bringing something into being. The value of a work does not lie only in its finished form. I believe there is real value, too, in the thinking and creative process of the person who set out to bring that work into being.

〈My books (in Japanese)〉

「仮面インフルエンサーがダンジョン配信中、うっかりラスボスをペットにする」 (A Masked Influencer Accidentally Makes the Final Boss a Pet While Streaming a Dungeon)

「クロノスとカイロス」 (Chronos and Kairos)

「午前０時の郵便局」 (The Midnight Post Office)

「AI探偵と壊れた記憶の街」 (The AI Detective and the City of Broken Memories)

「最後の観光客」 (The Last Tourist)

「お前、どこの県民なんだ」 (So Which Prefecture Are You From?)

「IF ― 世界はまだ、間違っている」 (IF: The World Is Still Wrong)

「エピメテウス」 (Epimetheus)

「2028年のAIが生み出す未来とは」 (The Future Created by AI in 2028)