The Enactive and Interactive Dimensions of AI: Ingenuity and Imagination Through the Lens of Art and Music.

Dualisms between mind, body, and nature have shaped cognitive science and AI, but advanced AI systems that create art or music prompt calls for a shift in values toward AI ethics, rights, and personhood. While discussing agency and rights is not wrong in principle, it misdirects attention in current circumstances. Questions about artificial agency can only follow a genuine reconciliation of human interactivity, creativity, and embodiment. The authors contribute to embodied and enactive approaches to AI by exploring interactive and contingent dimensions of machines through Japanese philosophy. A key takeaway is that AI and machine learning systems should be recognized as powerful tools or instruments, not as agents themselves.

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Abstract

Dualisms are pervasive. The divisions between the rational mind, the physical body, and the external natural world have set the stage for the successes and failures of contemporary cognitive science and artificial intelligence.1 Advanced machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) systems have been developed to draw art and compose music. Many take these facts as calls for a radical shift in our values and turn to questions about AI ethics, rights, and personhood. While the discussion of agency and rights is not wrong in principle, it is a form of misdirection in the current circumstances. Questions about an artificial agency can only come after a genuine reconciliation of human interactivity, creativity, and embodiment. This kind of challenge has both moral and theoretical force. In this article, the authors intend to contribute to embodied and enactive approaches to AI by exploring the interactive and contingent dimensions of machines through the lens of Japanese philosophy. One important takeaway from this project is that AI/ML systems should be recognized as powerful tools or instruments rather than as agents themselves.