AI is important, but art is where to find real, human intelligence
Updated: Sep 10
I don’t talk much public policy here in Fives Studio, but it is an immense relief to be surrounded by and creating original art while AI “content” is on the rise.
Mostly because I have found an antidote to being too soaked by “fake.” The relief and happiness I get during my painting sessions I have likened to deep sleep, ordering my focus to limited, essential tasks. I don’t get adequate deep sleep but I understand its value. My brain’s default is to be frenetically moving from topic to topic, yet in front of a canvas this is shut down is channeled. Distractions are tuned out, I’m hyper fixated, and even meals and hunger are forgotten. (For those who know me, that alone speaks volumes.)
The misplaced pearl-clutching about Artificial Intelligence aside, it is blissfully comforting to be only tangentially exposed to this chatter and already know how to solve for side effects from AI-generated “art.”
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I suspect the benefit I have found in oil painting is transferable, and is exactly what my fellow humans will need to maintain balance as AI becomes a regular fixture of daily life. Like myself and my art studio project, we are going to crave authentic, raw truth that resonates with the human soul. And a lot more of it.
Artificial Intelligence can be a lot of things, and it will undoubtedly make humanity better, but it isn’t real. It is right there in the name. “Artificial.”
People are going to continue to want the expressions that can only come from human emotions—things that silicon chips and Large Language Models can never truly understand.
The true language of the human heart can’t be spoken by AI because it doesn’t have an actual heart. It cannot comprehend the paradox of a love-hate attachment, the heavy complexity of nostalgia, a broken heart, or the illogical love we hold for a long-dead relative. It cannot understand the instinctual willingness to die for a grandchild who hasn't even been conceived yet. What is innate in us, and isn't taught exactly but known and orders our ethos and pathos as strongly as any law, It’s deeply felt, and won't just go away because of tech that is smarter than us.
Think of how joy spreads among people who have never met, conjuring an empathy that is encoded deep inside our DNA. Love, hope, selflessness and shellfishness. Thes are the messy, beautiful fragments that form who we are, executed, observed, and recorded. Data that is connected and cross-referenced inside an eight-pound brain while we sleep.
Through art, we process profound pain, happiness , and undeserved suffering, discovering solutions to problems we may never actually face. An AI can read historical accounts of American GIs liberating death camps, but it can never feel the quiet shock from remembering the faded tattooed number on your grandfather’s friend’s forearm . Its coded logic will never grasp how victims and survivors manage mercy or anger, how a person can be thankful for a tragedy, or why someone might fear their own success.
Even if a chatbot can repeat back an experience learned from a synthetic recreation of a hundred billion scenarios, every individual human remains a completely unique vector of their own. I literally love it when I place paint in an order that has never been seen before, evoking feelings of disgust to delight. Felt emotions that are entirely human. Flaws and all.
So you can rest assured: all Fives art is, and always will be, created by my own meat sack. The ideas, the inspiration, and the colors are driven strictly by human intelligence. Even, maybe, especially, when broken.
I am deeply grateful I found painting and began Fives Studio—not just as a way to unearth my own lived experiences, unwelcome despair, and desperate hopes, but to tap into the connected universal spark that lives in everyone.
Make no mistake, I am a strong believer in innovation, American ingenuity, and the need for the United States to lead the globe in freedom based technology. I know the potential benefits of AI for humanity are innumerable, if done right. I also know there are interests who simply want to stoke people's fears to derail progress and drive chaos. Like free speech, this technology can absolutely go awry. But just like speech, the answer to bad speech isn't less freedom—it's more speech, more information, and more truth.
So when the you wake up with a AI hangover after a chatbot and automated agents dominate your day., don’t ask Alexa for a cure, walk in the grass or find yourself an expressive outlet like I did. Real intelligence doesn’t have to be perfect or flawless, but something that is truthful to the human soul.
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