Given that some of Steven Spielberg’s biggest movies (hello A.I. and Minority Report) have dealt with the future of technology, it makes sense that Stephen Colbert would ask him about AI’s changing relationship to art — especially now we’re living in a world where Netflix has been criticized for putting out an animation featuring AI-generated background art.
Although he initially seems enthusiastic about the possibilities of humans using different tools to create art, he quickly clarifies that art generated by artificial intelligence makes him “very nervous”.
“You’re basically taking something you created, and you made, which is the computer, and giving the computer autonomy over your point of view and yourself as the human person,” Spielberg says in the clip above.
“The soul is unimaginable and is ineffable. And it cannot be created by any algorithm. It is just something that exists in all of us. And to lose that because books and movies and music is being written by machines that we created, and now we’re letting them run with that? That terrifies me.”
