How Are Art Historians Using Ai?

Amanda Wasielewski’s book, Computational Formalism: Art History and Machine Learning, examines how the rapidly advancing technology of Artificial Intelligence (AI) affects the domains of art history, collecting, and the art market. Wasielewski argues that there is a conflict between art historians and computer scientists due to mutual misunderstandings about each other’s fields, and she seeks to reconcile this by exploring the strengths and weaknesses of AI in art analysis. She also discusses how AI demands that humans reduce their tolerance for ambiguity to accommodate the objectives of the program, as seen in the example of a challenge-response test designed to identify cars in a mosaic of nine photos.