Asghar Farhadi and beyond: how much of human creativity can AI take on?
Speaking at Brand Week Istanbul, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi argued that artificial intelligence cannot entirely replace human creativity, saying “AI has no subconscious.” So is it the presence of unconscious processes that makes us human, or the sediment of a life that is embodied, relational, laden with shame and irreversible?
I love Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s approach to creative work. That approach is also the core thesis of his films, which have moved me deeply. It goes like this: according to Farhadi, every person carries within them an “emotional treasury”, full of investments made since childhood. But as we grow up, we forget the code that opens it. What we call creativity is the effort to find that code again. For the same reason, Farhadi criticises filmmakers who make films about things they have never experienced, simply “because producers and festivals like them”, for staying inside a “media atmosphere”.
And so it was that Farhadi took the stage on the morning of Wednesday 4 November at Brand Week Istanbul event, for a talk titled “Paralel Hayatlar” (Parallel Lives), moderated by Zeynep Atakan. Named after his latest film, the talk focused mainly on Farhadi’s artistic work, but towards the end Zeynep Atakan asked a question everyone wants answered these days. In short, the question was this:
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