The preceding paragraph may seem obvious to you, so deeply obvious that the assertion takes shape as an immovable stone at the center of your being. Computers creating art is an upsetting concept mostly because of what it means about humans: They, their feelings, their thoughts are predictable (or at least probable), down to the last letter, down to the last limited thought. If so, an algorithm calculating all probabilities can reproduce all scenarios, can predict all outcomes, and can even tell your story for you before you even know you have a story.

It's all very quantum and post modern. Jorge Borges' short story from over half a century ago, "The Library of Babel" is about an infinite (perhaps infinite) library filled with every story, and every variation of every story. At the end, Borges (or an avatar of Borges) finds comfort only in an idea that there is some overarching meaning to the infinite (perhaps infinite) repetition.

Which is the most human of thoughts, of course, the concept of meaning. Which is also very predictable of humans. Just wait until quantum computing takes off. Just wait until they find that boson "god" particle. Just wait till they flip the Grid this summer, all of which probably won't unmake existence somehow. Meaning, a human desire, as predictable and probable a pursuit as it is now, will become something they'll try to replicate—meaning, the thing itself, and not the pursuit.

And they'll fail, I think.  It should make sense on paper: reality is something humans have yet to fully capture in art or mathematics due to obvious limitations; the right algorithm, then, should produce the most mathematically sound representation of reality and, therefore, meaning, if either of these things exist and are not, merely, human projections. But at least, like quarks and bosons and dark matter, reality and meaning will have an existence in theory, if not by direct observation, in nicely balanced equations, eventually reproducible in text or images via some crafty algorithms.

Here's why I think they'll fail. Aside from the more abstract idea that meaning finding itself negates itself (think of it this way: meaning and proof of meaning are matter and antimatter; when the two meet there is nothing), to produce human art a computer would have to find, feel, absorb reality to the point it is overcome, to the point it sobs for release. A computer perhaps could replicate every possibility but could never transfer the energy art requires to exist in the first place.

Proof? If proof exists of anything, this could be offered up as an example of it. Science Daily's title is apt: Why Musicians Make Us Weep And Computers Don't. The article details a study conducted by neuroscientists comparing brain responses to music played by humans and to music played by computers:

The study also revealed that the brain was more likely to look for musical meaning when the music was played by a pianist.