‘If artificial intelligence creates better art, what’s wrong with that?’ Top Norwegian investor and art collector Nicolai Tangen

theguardian.com:

F or a prolific art collector, Nicolai Tangen is remarkably relaxed about the prospect of masterpieces created by robots. The threat of AI-made paintings, impossible to distinguish from human brushstrokes, has sparked soul-searching and paranoia in the art world, but not with Tangen.

“Hey, if it creates better art that’s fantastic,” says the Norwegian philanthropist, art historian and boss of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund. “If you create something which is even more aesthetically pleasing, what’s wrong about that?”

Tangen’s own gallery, a converted grain silo in the Norwegian seaside resort of Kristiansand, will open later this year to display one of the world’s biggest collections of Nordic modernist art. Tangen has amassed more than 5,000 works by 300 artists. Originals and copies will hang side by side. “There are a couple of cases where we think the art is really beautiful. And we basically made a copy of what we had and hung it there instead. Is it less beautiful to look at? No it’s not. So it’s just about the mindset you have.”

Tangen is less relaxed about the impact artificial intelligence will have on the more than 9,000 companies that the £1.1tn Norwegian sovereign wealth fund – colloquially known as the oil fund – invests in. The wave of disruption has already started scything through the stock market: last month almost £1bn was wiped off the value of the educational publisher Pearson after a US rival warned of a significant spike in student interest in ChatGPT, the generative AI program.

“AI is so unbelievably huge. Bill Gates says it is more important than the computer, internet and so on,” Tangen says. “We will have a lot of stranded assets because of AI, because if you’re on the wrong side of that