Yeah, I feel that. I tell myself they're only tools, really no stranger than time <-> frequency domain transformations to someone unfamiliar with the fourier transform.

Yet there really is something disturbing about seeing a computer resurrect so much of the mind of an artist who's been dead for nearly a century. I know the GPU doesn't understand what it's doing, but did Monet?

When I paint I don't really understand. There may be occasional moments of clarity, I like to think that I make deliberate choices based on the emotions and thoughts within me that I'd like to reflect to the people experiencing my art, but... Honestly am I so different from a neural network?

I am a neural network. Much of what goes into creating a piece of art is based on intuition, on experience and practice, pathways eroded into my mind from years of thoughts traversing the same landscape. The art I create is unique to me, not in that it cannot be reproduced but in that every action I take is a reflection and an echo of all the moments remembered and forgotten that create me.

How much of Monet's mind is in a GPU in Berkeley?