Do Androids Dream of God?: An Augustinian Critique of Generative AI

The recent proliferation of ‘Generative AI’ has raised a significant question: can AI generate legitimate art? I attempt to answer this question through Augustine’s theory of numbers and imagination. In his De Musica, numbers name the fundamental principle of beauty, and imagination is the faculty that (re)orders the numbers in one's memory to produce images of beauty. There are significant analogies between this theory of imagination and the operation of the ML algorithm here. However, for Augustine, the problem of our limited sensibilities and perspectives is critical. Our imagination is bound by our desires, and only transcendent love can free one's imagination. I argue that the simulated imagination of the AI is always bound by its limited architecture and the finite desires of its designers and users. Thus, it cannot but generate false phantasms and 'hallucinate.' I conclude by suggesting some practical and ethical implications of this analysis.