Skrolli 2025.2: Osaako kone kääntää kaunokirjallisuutta? Novellin käännökset

Käännökset


Final exam

Translated by Janne Raevaara


Nina climbed up the stairs, bending over a bit to avoid hitting her head in the low, narrow corridor. She rang the doorbell.


The old man that opened the door smiled widely. She was an expected guest. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea? She asked for a tea, although obviously she wouldn’t be able to taste it. The full embracement of the roleplay would make it feel less like an exam.


“You came here to examine my gallery?” And of course, that was why she was there. The situation wasn’t very realistic. The staircase brought to mind the housing of the working class from over a hundred years ago, but the space she entered seemed more like a royal palace. Or a museum, which in fact it was. All the greatest artworks throughout history were displayed here, there was no need to fly to Paris, New York, London or the Vatican. All you had to do was to don the visor.


The old man, obviously in a very good mood, handed her the teacup, which she graciously accepted. “Let’s start from the 16th century”. The artworks had a kind of grotesque beauty. At the same time, the endlessly repeated baby Jesuses looked like miniature adults or like shaven apes. The painters of that time generally hadn’t learned the rules of perspective, color theory, anathomy or the golden ratio. It was evident that a ton of work had been spent on most of the works, but also that a modern day high school student could easily produce images that would put the old masters to shame.


Moving on to the 17th century. Rembrandt didn’t require any excuses, his works were a perfect play between the color and the shadows. A form of realism where the picture looks more beautiful than the thing it is depicting. The first real step towards totally free expression of ideas. And The Night Watch, filling an entire wall, was a larger (and more impressive) artwork than Nina had ever imagined.


Moving on to the 19th century the high quality of the artwork became more consistent. The size of the actual pieces was still something that often surprised her. The Raft of the Medusa was much larger than she had imagined – she was familiar with the painting, but hadn’t known how huge it was. Moving on to 20th century, the surprises of that kind kept on coming: Many artworks by Klee or Simberg were way smalled than she had thought. But still, this was all just preparation – she hadn’t been challenged.


They had moved on to the great masters of the 20th century. Guernica by Picasso… Warhol, Dali, Banksy, Kahlo, Pollock… One sublime masterpiece following another… And then on to the 21st century. The names of the individual artworks started to dominate the names of the artists… “The Woman with the Flamingo”, “The Salt Flats”, “The Carriage Convoy”. Instead of the surnames of human painters, the works held the names of AI models that had created them. “This part of my collection always makes me a bit sentimental”, said the old man. “I feel like something has been lost. Oh, we were supposed to discuss something!”, he said, like he was programmed to. “Well, make your case!” The old man was suddenly smiling, and Nina left her still full teacup on a nearby table. The foreplay was over.


“I don’t believe in an immortal Soul. I don’t think that anything magical happens within a human brain – everything there could be fully simulated. We are complex collections of electrical pulses, nothing more, and if we can create an adecuate amount of digital braincells, why wouldn’t it result in real creativity? A basically human experience? We are having this conversation, and I’m sure you are aware that you are a program.” The old man had a wide grin: “For the moment, I will ignore your comment about the nature of my reality. But I love your sense of humor! Or maybe, I have just been programmed to mimic the appreciation of your sense of humor, but what does it matter, really? But what about the human experience? Maybe we can program a machine that could imitate human life, but it still can’t live through one. Doesn’t the really meaningful art always arise from sharing a lived experience?”


Nina had to pause and think for a moment. Of course, she could have studied the expected and approved answers for this course, to guarantee an excellent grade, but the material truly inspired her. Of course she had spent a lot of time thinking about her arguments beforehand, but at the same time she wanted to enter the final exam as her true self. Vulnerable. “I’m sure that the life lived can also be simulated. Some time ago I read a short story by Borges, 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote'. The short story tells about an eccentric who on 20th century wants to rewrite Don Quixote, perfectly from line to line. But he isn’t content on just copying the orginal novel – he wants to live a perfect imitation of the life of Cervantes, so that it leads up to him writing a perfect copy of his novel as a result. In physical reality this is of course just a thought experiment, but an artificial intelligence in a simulated reality could actually live a copy of chosen past life.” “Very interesting, and it’s an excellent short story. Please do go on.” This was one of the strenghts of an AI – the old man of course hadn’t read anything, in the real sense of the word. But when the conversation called for it, any existing work of art was naturally instantly familiar to him. “In addition, I have to remind you that that is not how AIs work. They don’t have any kind of history created through simulating a lived life,” he challenged her. “Not yet. My understanding was that the idea of the test is to argue the potential that AIs might have as artists, not just their already existing capabilities.” “I can accept that interpretation.”


“Well, let’s consider for example Van Gogh… He died at what, 40 years old?” “37 years”, corrected the man immediately. And added that she could call him Pepe, suggesting first name basis. “Well, OK. Let’s assume that he hadn’t died so young. We could use his lived life as configuration for an AI. All the art he created. And then change this one little thing, his death. We could get more masterworks resembling what he probably would have created if he had lived longer. Wouldn’t that be a net win for humanity?” Pepe didn’t seem convinced. “That sounds quite derivative. It’s not very hard to create works in style of Van Gogh. If past a certain point they don’t reflect a truly lived life, what value would they hold?”


For a high school class this was quite tough. Or maybe Nina had just made things unnecessarily hard for herself? At the same time, she was kind of having fun! “To a certain degree art is about recognizing what is interesting. Why would recognizing something special be a skill unique to human beings? It is my understanding that AI can be taught to do anything where clear feedback on the results is possible… ´The Woman with the Flamingo´ is easily comparable to anything by Dali, despite having been created in seconds…”


“Who recognized it as a brilliant work? Like you said, works that look like they’d taken immense effort to create can be created in seconds – and on thousands, or millions of machines working in parallell. An endless series of potential masterworks. Isn’t this just the infinite group of monkeys recreating Shakespeare?” Clearly this wasn’t totally sincere argument. Nina understood that besides the argumentation skills part of the goal of the class was to test her knowledge of the study material. “The Woman with the Flamingo is from 2050s, from the time when AI was already capable of recognizing works meriting further study. It wasn’t infallible, but that goes for human artists too, there have always been masters, mediocrities and failures.” First the old man corrected him – “The art piece is from 2038, but right, right… I must have forgotten. On principal level you are completely correct.” Nina had clearly judged the motive for the question correctly. It would have been impossible for Pepe to forget anything. This was just a part of the exam that he had to include in their discussion as naturally as he could.


Nina thought of another angle: “Let’s consider Mozart. A perfect child genius, who died very young… This is kind of going back to the argument I used with Van Gogh, but I think that there is something different here. Mozart’s works were, in my opinion, kind of straightforward and boring. Technically flawless, but without an edge, and I think that it was mostly because of him having died so early.” “At 35 years old”, Pepe filled in. For an AI he could be surprisingly annoying at times. “This is a better example than Van Gogh, because it is not just a question of creating works similar to his masterpieces, but whether the simulated version could reach some kind of maturity, and create something truly unmatched.” After a moments of thought she continued: “And if that would be possible, the human lifespan or the flow of time in real world would stop being meaningful limitations. What kind of art could be created by an artificial intelligence that had experienced ten thousand years worth of well simulated human life?”


A short announcement echoed from nowhere: “The time has finished, class AI art history 2 completed, grade A.” Nina lifted the visor from her face, collected her things and left the classroom. She felt a bit guilty about the time running out just then. Would she have been able to come up with a convincing defence against Pepe’s next counter argument? In the hallway Emma caught up to her: “That was damn hard, I hadn’t studied, like, at all…” “Yeah, I guess so…” Nina didn’t have an actual answer. On the other hand, Emma had already dug out her cellphone and didn’t really notice her inattention. Nina was totally engrossed in her thoughts: If there is a dialogue between a human and an AI, and the the human is supposed to defend the value and capability of the AI in creating something new, and the AI is arguing for the superiority of human beings, in what case can any kind of synthesis even be possible? Either the AI is just a mirror, totally void of any real meaning, and the human is basically just arguing with themselves, or the AI is capable of real debate, in which case the answer is clear, regardless of whether the human can convincingly argue for that or not. But the same could be said for any human. Maybe the strongest evidence for people’s inner worlds resembling each other was actually art? If an artpiece produced the same emotional reaction in most people, didn’t that imply that both the artist and the people viewing the artwork experienced the world in much the same way? And if that was the case, maybe all you had to do was to look at The Woman with the Flamingo.


Nina bade Emma a quick goodbye when she got out on a metro station before her. Nina watched her effortlessly navigate the crowd. The way she was able to do that without lifting her gaze from her cellphone for even a second was quite impressive.


Later that evening something was still bothering her. She placed the visor on her face. “AI art history 2.” Once again she climbed the narrow stairs, rang the doorbell, and the familiar old man opened the door. “So nice to see you again!” She did her best to ignore the artifice of the situation, to be fully immersed in the simulated moment. “Hi Pepe! Could we take another tour around those 20th century works?”


The Final Exam

Original title: ‘Loppukoe’
Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston


Nina walked up the narrow staircase, her shoulders a little hunched, careful not to knock her head in the cramped, dank, stone stairwell. She rang the doorbell.


The old man who opened the door smiled broadly. He had been expecting her. “Can I offer you some tea or coffee?” She asked for tea, though naturally she couldn’t sense its taste. Fully immersing herself in the task would make it feel less like a school assignment.


“So, you’ve come to see my gallery?” She certainly had. The contrast was utterly implausible: the stairwell had recalled the working-class residential buildings from the early 20th century, but the space in which she now found herself looked more like a royal palace. Or a museum – which it was, after all – a gallery with all the most distinguished gems of the art world on display. There was no need to fly to Paris, New York, London or the Vatican – just put the visor over your eyes.


The jovial dwarf of a man handed her a cup of tea, and she gratefully took it from it. “Let’s start with the 16th century.” There was a certain grotesque beauty to these paintings. At the same time, their endlessly repeating motifs of the baby Jesus looked by turns like miniature adults and bald, shorn apes. For the most part, the painters of the day hadn’t yet learnt to appreciate perspective, colour theory, anatomy, or the golden cut. She could appreciate that many of these works must have taken countless hours to create, though nowadays even the average high-school kid could produce something that would put the old masters to shame.


The exhibition progressed to the 17th century. Rembrandt’s works no longer needed any apology. The perfect interplay of colour and shadow. This was a type of realism whereby the reproduction looked more real than the original. Artists had finally learnt to make reality more beautiful than it actually was. The first step towards genuine artistic freedom. And, taking up the whole wall, ‘The Night Watch’ was larger (and more impressive) than Nina had ever imagined.


By the 19th century, the exquisite quality marking the major masterpieces was more the rule than the exception. The sheer size of these works took her by surprise time and again. ‘The Raft of the Medusa’ was much larger than Nina had imagined – she was familiar with this painting but hadn’t realised quite how enormous it was. Eventually, she reached the 20th century, and by now the surprises were coming thick and fast. Many of the works by Klee and Simberg surprised her specifically because of how small they were. But she still hadn’t reached the heart of the lesson. She hadn’t yet been properly challenged.


She arrived at the great masters of the 20th century. Picasso’s ‘Guernica’. Warhol, Dalí, Banksy, Kahlo, Pollock… One sublime masterpiece after another. The 20th century. Gradually, the works on display began to be referred to primarily by their titles: ‘Woman and Flamingo’, ‘Salt Fields’, ‘Wagon Procession’, the AI generation gradually supplanting the artists’ surnames. “This part of my collection always makes me a bit melancholic,” said the old man. “It feels as though something has been lost. Now then, there’s something we were supposed to talk about,” he said, just as he had been programmed to say. “So, please, argue your case!” The man smiled, and Nina placed her still full cup of tea on a nearby coffee table. The niceties were over.


“I don’t believe in the existence of a soul. I don’t believe there’s anything happening in the brain that cannot be simulated. We are a collection of neurological impulses, and if we were able to simulate enough brain cells, why shouldn’t the result be a form of genuine creativity? Something akin to the human experience? We’re having this discussion right now, but I’m sure you understand that you are just a programme.” The man gave another broad smile. “I will disregard the comment about the nature of my reality for a moment. But I admire your sense of humour – perhaps I have simply been programmed to emulate an appreciation of your sense of humour – but what difference does it make? Now, as for human experience, perhaps we can create a machine that feels things like a human but that cannot live a human life. Doesn’t a particularly touching work of art exceed mere lived experience?’

Nina considered this for a moment. Of course, she could have learnt some stock answers to these questions in order to guarantee herself a good grade, but she was genuinely interested in the topic. Naturally, she had spent a lot of time thinking her arguments through in advance, but at the same time she wanted to come into this exam as herself, perhaps even a little vulnerable. “You could probably simulate lived experience. A while ago, I read Borges’s short story ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’. It tells the story of a 20th-century eccentric who wanted to rewrite Don Quixote, line by line. Not by copying the original text, you understand, but by reliving Cervantes’s life so precisely that, as a direct result of this copied life, he ends up writing the same work again. Of course, in terms of our physical reality, the short story is nothing but a thought experiment, but surely artificial intelligence could live an exact copy of any chosen life.” “Most interesting, and a fine work it is too. Do continue.” This was one of the strengths of artificial intelligence: naturally, the old man hadn’t actually read anything, in the truest sense of the word. But when occasion demanded, he was familiar with any existing work. “I must remind you, however, that artificial intelligence doesn’t work like that; it doesn’t create history through lived experience,” he rebutted. “Not yet, at least. I understood that the aim of this experiment was to explore artificial intelligence’s artistic potential, not what it has already achieved.” “Agreed.”

“Think of Van Gogh, for instance… I think he died at the age of forty?” “Thirty-seven,” the old man instantly corrected her, then added that his name was Pepe. They could continue on first-name terms. “Well, let’s imagine for a moment that he hadn’t died so young. We could upload the parameters of his lived experience until that point, including all the works he created, then change just one small element: his death. That way, we could create more masterpieces that would resemble what he might have created had he lived longer. Wouldn’t this be a win-win for everybody?” Pepe clearly wasn’t convinced. “To be honest, that sounds rather derivative. It isn’t hard to produce works in the style of Van Gogh. If, after a certain point, they no longer reflect his true lived experience, what value do they have?”


This was quite demanding for a high-school class. Perhaps Nina had made things unnecessarily complicated for herself. On the other hand, she was having fun! “To some extent, art is about recognising something interesting. Why would recognising something special be something only humans can do? As I understand it, artificial intelligence can be trained to do anything in which results can be objectively assessed… ‘Woman and Flamingo’ is certainly as good as any of Dalí’s works, but it was created in seconds…”


“But who decided that it is a significant work? As you note, works that appear highly complex can be created in seconds using thousands, millions of computers side by side, giving us a constant stream of possible masterpieces. But isn’t this just the equivalent of an endless group of monkeys bashing out the complete works of Shakespeare?” This clearly wasn’t a sincere argument. Nina realised that, in addition to assessing her reasoning skills, the aim of this course was to test how well she had internalised the reading material. “‘Woman and Flamingo’ dates from the 2040s, from a time when artificial intelligence was already able to highlight works worthy of further scrutiny. It wasn’t flawless, but even among human artists there have been masters, mediocrities and failures.” First off, the old man corrected her. “That work is from 2038, but quite, quite… I’d forgotten. In theory, you’re absolutely right.” Nina had correctly identified the motivation behind his question. And it was impossible for Pepe to forget anything. This was an element of the test that the old man had to include in the dialogue as naturally as possible.


Another scenario occurred to Nina. “Take Mozart, then. The perfect child prodigy, who died very young… In a way, I’m returning to your argument about Van Gogh, but I think there’s a different perspective here. In my opinion, Mozart’s works are often rather formulaic and boring. Technically flawless, yes, but they lack a certain edge, and I believe this is because he died so young.” “At the age of thirty-five,” Pepe added. For artificial intelligence, he certainly knew how to get on her nerves. “This is a better example than Van Gogh because the question isn’t whether he would have continued producing more masterpieces of a similar ilk but whether a form of artificial intelligence simulating his life could achieve a level of maturity and create something altogether unique.” Then, after a moment’s consideration: “If we could do this, there would be no need to apply the time constraints inherent in a single human lifespan either. What kind of works would artificial intelligence create if it were able to experience ten thousand years of well simulated human life?”


From somewhere in the hollow distance, there came an announcement: “Your time is up. Course AI History of Art: completed. Grade: A minus.” Nina removed the visor from over her eyes, gathered up her belongings and left the classroom. She felt a twinge of guilt that she had run out of time. Would she have been able to formulate a credible comeback to Pepe’s next rebuttal? Emma caught up with her in the corridor. “That was so hard. I didn’t, like, read anything…” “I suppose so…” Nina didn’t really have an answer. Still, Emma had already taken out her phone and didn’t seem to notice Nina’s wistfulness. Nina was lost in thought. In a debate between a human and artificial intelligence where the human must defend the value and ability of artificial intelligence, while artificial intelligence must laud humans’ superiority, how is any kind of agreement ever achievable? Either artificial intelligence is nothing but an empty mirror, devoid of meaning, and she is essentially debating herself, or it is a worthy interlocutor, whereby the real answer is clear, regardless of whether she could defend it or not… It was impossible to know what artificial intelligence was thinking. On the other hand, one could say the same of every human being. Perhaps the strongest evidence of the existence of internal worlds that vaguely resembled one another was art itself. If the same work of art elicited similar responses in most people, didn’t that suggest that both the worlds of the viewer and the artist resembled one another? And if that were the case, perhaps one only need look at ‘Woman and Flamingo’.


Nina gave Emma a quick smile, as the latter got off the metro one stop before her. She watched the way Emma smoothly navigated her way through the throng of people, this being all the more impressive because Emma did not once look up from her smartphone.


Later that evening, something was bothering Nina. She put the visor on her head. “Course AI History of Art 2”. Again, she ascended the narrow staircase, rang the doorbell, and again the old man opened the door. “How nice to see you here again!” Nina tried as hard as she could not to think about how manufactured the situation was but tried to immerse herself in the simulated moment. “Hi, Pepe! Can we go and look at some more of those 20th-century works?”




Final Exam

Translated by ChatGPT 4.5 by OpenAI


Nina climbed up the narrow staircase, bending slightly, careful not to hit her head in the tight, damp stone stairwell. She rang the doorbell.


The old man who opened the door smiled broadly. He had been expecting her. "Would you like some coffee or tea?" She asked for tea, even though, of course, she wouldn’t be able to taste it. Fully immersing herself in the roleplay would make this feel less like a school assignment.


"You've come to see my gallery?" Indeed she had. The combination was entirely unbelievable. The staircase had reminded her of workers' housing from the early previous century, yet the space she now stood in resembled a royal palace more than anything else. Or a museum, which of course it was—displaying the world's most significant art treasures. No need to fly to Paris, New York, London, or the Vatican. Just put on your visor.


The cheerful old man handed her a teacup, which she gratefully accepted. "Let's begin with the 16th century." The works had a certain grotesque beauty. At the same time, the endlessly repeated baby Jesuses alternately resembled miniature adults or shaved monkeys. Most painters of that era had not yet mastered perspective, colour theory, anatomy, or the golden ratio. It was clear countless hours had gone into these paintings, yet an average high school student today could easily produce something putting these old masters to shame.


Moving to the 17th century, Rembrandt's works required no apologies. Perfect interplay of colour and shadow. Realism where the depiction seemed truer than the subject itself. Artists had finally learned to portray reality as more beautiful than it was. The first step towards true freedom of expression. And "The Night Watch" filled the wall, larger (and more impressive) than Nina had ever imagined.


In the 19th century, the quality of masterpieces became more the rule than the exception. Their size still astonished her repeatedly. "The Raft of the Medusa" was much bigger than Nina had envisioned—she was familiar with the piece but had never realised its enormity. As they moved into the 20th century, similar surprises continued. Several paintings by Klee and Simberg surprised her by their small size. But they had still not reached the core of the lesson. She had not yet been challenged.


They reached the great masters of the 20th century: Picasso’s "Guernica," Warhol, Dalí, Banksy, Kahlo, Pollock... Sublime masterpiece after masterpiece. The 21st century arrived. Pieces began to be marked primarily by their titles: "Woman and Flamingo," "Salt Fields," "Caravan Procession." Artists' surnames were replaced by AI generations. "This section of my collection always makes me feel slightly melancholic," said the old man. "I feel something has been lost. Ah, but we were supposed to discuss something," he said, as he had been programmed to. "Well, make your case!" He smiled, and Nina placed the still-full teacup on a nearby side table. The prologue was over.


"I don't believe in souls. I don't think anything happens in the human brain that can't be fully simulated. We're a bundle of electrical impulses, and if enough neurons are simulated, why couldn't that produce genuine creativity? A comparable human experience? We're having this conversation, and surely you're aware you're a program." The man smiled broadly. "I'll overlook your comment about the nature of my reality for now. But I appreciate your sense of humour—or perhaps I'm just programmed to emulate appreciation of your humour. But does it matter? What about human experience? Perhaps a machine could be created that feels human, but it can't live a human life. Doesn't truly moving art arise from lived experience?"


Nina thought briefly. She could have memorised answers to guarantee a good grade, but the topic genuinely inspired her. Of course, she had spent considerable time thinking through her arguments beforehand, but she also wanted to enter the exam as herself. Exposed. "Lived experience could probably be simulated. I recently read Borges' short story 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.' It’s about an eccentric who, in the 20th century, wants to rewrite Don Quixote line by line—not copying the original text but reliving Cervantes' life so precisely that he inevitably writes the same work as a result of this replicated life. Physically, it's just a thought experiment, but AI could truly live a replica of a selected past life." "Very interesting, and a great piece. Continue." This was one of the AI’s strengths—the old man, of course, had never actually read anything. Yet, when required, any existing work was instantly familiar to him. "Also, I must remind you AI doesn't operate like that; they aren't given a history through lived experience," he challenged. "Yet. My understanding was that the exam aims to evaluate AI’s potential as an artist, not just what it has already achieved." "I'll accept that."


"Well, consider Van Gogh... Didn't he die at forty?" "Thirty-seven," the man corrected immediately. Adding that his name was actually Pepe. They were on first-name terms now. "Right. Suppose he hadn't died young. We could feed his lived experiences and artworks up to that point into an AI. Then change one detail—his death. We could get more masterpieces, likely resembling what he might have produced had he lived longer. Wouldn't the world benefit?" Pepe clearly wasn't convinced. "Sounds rather derivative. It’s easy to produce Van Gogh-style works. If they don't reflect authentically lived experience after a certain point, what's their value?"


For a high school course, this was challenging. Perhaps Nina had unnecessarily complicated things? Yet, she was actually having fun! "Art is partly about recognising something interesting. Why should identifying significance be limited to humans? As far as I understand, AI can be trained in anything evaluable. 'Woman and Flamingo' certainly matches anything by Dalí, despite being created in seconds."


"Who identified it as significant? As you said, works appearing incredibly labour-intensive can be created instantly—by thousands, millions of machines in parallel. An endless stream of possible masterpieces. Isn’t this just infinite monkeys writing Shakespeare?" Not an entirely sincere argument. Nina understood that part of the test was assessing her familiarity with the course material. "'Woman and Flamingo' is from the 2040s, when AI could independently identify noteworthy works. It wasn't infallible, but even human artists vary in greatness." Pepe corrected her—"It's from 2038, but absolutely right... I forgot momentarily." Nina had correctly identified the question's intention. Pepe couldn’t forget anything. It was a scripted part of the test, included naturally in their dialogue.


Another angle occurred to Nina: "Think about Mozart. A perfect child prodigy who died very young… I'm returning somewhat to the argument I used for Van Gogh, but here the idea is slightly different. In my opinion, Mozart’s compositions are rather straightforward and dull. Technically flawless, but lacking an edge, and I believe that's precisely because he died young." "At 35," Pepe interjected. For an AI, he could occasionally be surprisingly irritating. "This is a better example than Van Gogh, because it's not merely about whether he could have produced more similar masterpieces, but whether an AI version simulating him could have reached some sort of maturity and created something entirely unique." After a moment's thought: "If this can be done, human lifespan or the passage of real time would no longer impose limitations. What kind of art would an AI create after experiencing ten thousand years of thoroughly simulated human life?"


From somewhere in the emptiness, a brief announcement echoed: "Time is up, course AI Art History 2 completed, excellent grade." Nina lifted the visor from her face, gathered her belongings, and left the classroom. She felt slightly guilty about running out of time. Could she have come up with a convincing answer to Pepe's next question? Emma caught up with her in the corridor: "Insanely difficult, I hadn't read, like, anything…" "Yeah, I suppose so…" Nina didn't really have an answer. Besides, Emma had already taken out her phone and didn't notice Nina's absent-mindedness. Nina was lost in her thoughts: If there's a dialogue between a human and an AI, where the human has to defend the AI's worth and capability to create something new, and the AI defends human superiority, under what conditions could any synthesis even be achieved? Either the AI is merely an empty mirror reflecting meanings, and she is essentially talking to herself, or it's a genuine conversationalist, in which case the real answer is clear, whether she can articulate it or not… It was impossible to know how the AI thought. Then again, one could say the same about every person. Perhaps the strongest proof of somewhat similar inner worlds was precisely art? If the same artwork evoked similar emotional reactions in most people, wouldn't that indicate that both the audience's and the artist's worlds resembled each other? And if that was true, perhaps one just needed to look at Woman and Flamingo.


She quickly said goodbye to Emma, who exited the metro at an earlier stop. Nina watched Emma effortlessly navigating through the crowd. It was impressive how Emma never once lifted her gaze from her smartphone.


Later in the evening, something was bothering her. Nina lifted the visor to her face again. "AI Art History 2." Once more, she climbed the narrow staircase, rang the doorbell, and again the old man opened the door. "How delightful to see you again!" She did her best not to think about the artificiality of the situation, fully immersing herself in the simulated moment. "Hey Pepe! Could we take another look at some more of those 20th-century pieces?"