Refik Anadol on How AI 'Imagination' Elevates Memory With NFTs

On June 25, 1949, the British neurologist Geoffrey Jefferson gave a lecture to the Royal College of Surgeons of England entitled The Mind of Mechanical Man. It may be surprising that machine intelligence was the subject of much debate in Jefferson's time, with some describing the 1904s as the period in which artificial intelligence was born following the development of cybernetics. Jefferson's ideas about the intersection of human and machine were ahead of their time and even impressed the great Alan Turing with their prescience and clarity. "[N]ot until a machine can write a sonnet or a concerto because of thoughts and emotions felt, and not by the chance fall of symbols, could we agree that machine equals brain -- that is, not only write it but know that it had written it," Jefferson said in his lecture. "No mechanism could feel (and not merely artificially signal, an easy contrivance) pleasure at its successes, grief when its valves fuse, be warmed by flattery, be made miserable by its mistakes, be charmed by sex, be angry or miserable when it cannot get what it wants." Whether they know it or not, critics of artificial intelligence's application in the art world -- and by extension, the world of NFTs -- employ a version of Jefferson's argument when they decry that the technology takes something away from the creative "soul" of artists and their work.