What Makes Art Great? - Nabeel S. Qureshi

Some notes toward an answer

What Makes Art Great? Some notes toward an answer Nabeel S. Qureshi May 03, 2026 525 55 125 Share Shakespeare is excellent, whereas AI writing is — at least, for now — dull. AIs can now write much of our code, review legal contracts, and perform various impressive feats; they have achieved gold-medal-level scores at the IMO. But, as of this writing, I am not aware of a truly interesting AI-written poem or even essay. Why? This breaks down into two questions: What makes texts good? Why is it difficult for AI to do that? 1 This essay will focus on question 1, and is thus mostly about aesthetics.

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