第1段

The Painting Fool is one of a growing number of computer programs which, so their makers claim, possess creative talents. Classical music by an artificial composer has had audiences enraptured, and even tricked them into believing a human was behind the score. Artworks painted by a robot have sold for thousands of dollars and been hung in prestigious galleries. And software has been built which creates art that could not have been imagined by the programmer.

《画家傻瓜》是越来越多的计算机程序之一，据其制造者声称，具有创造才能。人工作曲家的古典音乐曾让观众陶醉，并甚至骗过他们，让他们以为是人类创作了这首曲子。由机器人绘制的艺术品以数千美元的价格出售，并被挂在著名画廊里。还有一些软件被建立起来，创造出了程序员无法想象的艺术作品。

第2段

Human beings are the only species to perform sophisticated creative acts regularly. If we can break this process down into computer code, where does that leave human creativity? ‘This is a question at the very core of humanity,’ says Geraint Wiggins, a computational creativity researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. ‘It scares a lot of people. They are worried that it is taking something special away from what it means to be human.’

人类是唯一经常进行复杂创造行为的物种。如果我们可以将这个过程分解成计算机代码，那人类的创造力又将何去何从呢？伦敦大学金史密斯学院的计算创造力研究员杰兰特·威金斯说：“这是一个关乎人类本质的问题。许多人感到恐惧。他们担心这将从人类的意义上夺走一些特别的东西。”

第3段

To some extent, we are all familiar with computerised art. The question is: where does the work of the artist stop and the creativity of the computer begin? Consider one of the oldest machine artists, Aaron, a robot that has had paintings exhibited in London’s Tate Modern and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Aaron can pick up a paintbrush and paint on canvas on its own. Impressive perhaps, but it is still little more than a tool to realise the programmer’s own creative ideas.

在某种程度上，我们都熟悉计算机艺术。问题是：艺术家的工作何时结束，计算机的创造力何时开始？考虑最古老的机器艺术家之一——机器人艺术家Aaron，它的绘画作品曾在伦敦泰特现代美术馆和旧金山现代艺术博物馆展出。Aaron可以自己拿起画笔在画布上绘画。这或许令人印象深刻，但它仍然只不过是程序员自己创意的工具。

第4段

Simon Colton, the designer of the Painting Fool, is keen to make sure his creation doesn’t attract the same criticism. Unlike earlier ‘artists’ such as Aaron, the Painting Fool only needs minimal direction and can come up with its own concepts by going online for material. The software runs its own web searches and trawls through social media sites. It is now beginning to display a kind of imagination too, creating pictures from scratch. One of its original works is a series of fuzzy landscapes, depicting trees and sky. While some might say they have a mechanical look, Colton argues that such reactions arise from people’s double standards towards software-produced and human-produced art. After all, he says, consider that the Painting Fool painted the landscapes without referring to a photo. ‘If a child painted a new scene from its head, you’d say it has a certain level of imagination,’ he points out. ‘The same should be true of a machine.’ Software bugs can also lead to unexpected results. Some of the Painting Fool’s paintings of a chair came out in black and white, thanks to a technical glitch. This gives the work an eerie, ghostlike quality. Human artists like the renowned Ellsworth Kelly are lauded for limiting their colour palette – so why should computers be any different?

设计《画家傻瓜》的西蒙·科尔顿非常希望确保他的创作不会遭受同样的批评。与Aaron等早期的“艺术家”不同，《画家傻瓜》只需要最少的指导，可以通过在线获取素材提出自己的概念。该软件可以进行自己的网络搜索和在社交媒体网站上进行搜索。现在它开始展现出一种想象力，可以从零开始创作图片。它的原创作品之一是一系列模糊的风景画，描绘了树木和天空。虽然有人可能会说它们看起来像机械制品，但科尔顿认为，这样的反应源自人们对软件制作和人类制作的艺术的双重标准。毕竟，他说，《画家傻瓜》画出的风景没有参考照片。“如果一个孩子从头脑里画了一个新场景，你会说它具有一定的想象力，”他指出。“同样的情况也适用于机器。”软件缺陷也可能导致意想不到的结果。由于技术故障，一些《画家傻瓜》的椅子画作出现了黑白色调，这赋予了作品一种怪异的、幽灵般的质感。像著名艺术家埃尔斯沃斯·凯利这样的人类艺术家因限制自己的色彩调色板而受到赞扬——那么计算机为什么要有所不同呢？

第5段

Researchers like Colton don’t believe it is right to measure machine creativity directly to that of humans who ‘have had millennia to develop our skills’. Others, though, are fascinated by the prospect that a computer might create something as original and subtle as our best artists. So far, only one has come close. Composer David Cope invented a program called Experiments in Musical Intelligence, or EMI. Not only did EMI create compositions in Cope’s style, but also that of the most revered classical composers, including Bach, Chopin and Mozart. Audiences were moved to tears, and EMI even fooled classical music experts into thinking they were hearing genuine Bach. Not everyone was impressed however. Some, such as Wiggins, have blasted Cope’s work as pseudoscience, and condemned him for his deliberately vague explanation of how the software worked. Meanwhile, Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University said EMI created replicas which still rely completely on the original artist’s creative impulses. When audiences found out the truth they were often outraged with Cope, and one music lover even tried to punch him. Amid such controversy, Cope destroyed EMI’s vital databases.

科尔顿等研究人员不认为直接将机器创造力与“我们花了千年来发展自己的技能”的人类创造力相提并论是正确的。然而，一些人对计算机可能创造出与我们最优秀的艺术家一样原创和微妙的东西的前景感到着迷。到目前为止，只有一个人做到了。作曲家大卫·科普发明了一个名为《音乐智能实验》的程序，或称EMI。EMI不仅以科普的风格创作作品，还以最受尊崇的古典作曲家，包括巴赫、肖邦和莫扎特的风格创作作品。观众被感动得流泪，甚至愚弄了古典音乐专家，让他们以为自己听到了真正的巴赫作品。然而，并非所有人都对此印象深刻。一些人，比如威金斯，抨击科普的作品是伪科学，并谴责他故意模棱两可地解释软件的工作原理。与此同时，印第安纳大学的道格拉斯·霍夫斯塔德特说，EMI创作的副本完全依赖于原始艺术家的创造冲动。当观众发现真相时，他们对科普往往感到愤怒，甚至有一位音乐爱好者试图打他。在这种争议中，科普销毁了EMI的重要数据库。

第6段

But why did so many people love the music, yet recoil when they discovered how it was composed? A study by computer scientist David Moffat of Glasgow Caledonian University provides a clue. He asked both expert musicians and non-experts to assess six compositions. The participants weren’t told beforehand whether the tunes were composed by humans or computers, but were asked to guess, and then rate how much they liked each one. People who thought the composer was a computer tended to dislike the piece more than those who believed it was human. This was true even among the experts, who might have been expected to be more objective in their analyses.

但为什么这么多人喜欢音乐，却在发现它是如何创作的时候感到厌恶呢？格拉斯哥卡里多尼亚大学的计算机科学家大卫·莫法特的一项研究提供了线索。他让专业音乐家和非专业音乐家评估了六首作品。参与者事先并不知道曲调是由人类还是计算机创作的，但被要求猜测，然后评价他们对每首曲子的喜好程度。认为作曲家是计算机的人通常会比认为是人类创作的人更不喜欢这首曲子。即使在专业人士中也是如此，他们可能被期望在他们的分析中更客观。

第7段

Where does this prejudice come from? Paul Bloom of Yale University has a suggestion: he reckons part of the pleasure we get from art stems from the creative process behind the work. This can give it an ‘irresistible essence’, says Bloom. Meanwhile, experiments by Justin Kruger of New York University have shown that people’s enjoyment of an artwork increases if they think more time and effort was needed to create it. Similarly, Colton thinks that when people experience art, they wonder what the artist might have been thinking or what the artist is trying to tell them. It seems obvious, therefore, that with computers producing art, this speculation is cut short – there’s nothing to explore. But as technology becomes increasingly complex, finding those greater depths in computer art could become possible. This is precisely why Colton asks the Painting Fool to tap into online social networks for its inspiration: hopefully this way it will choose themes that will already be meaningful to us.