tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post2820523057496769657..comments2024-03-18T07:23:32.809-04:00Comments on Gurney Journey: Image ParsingJames Gurneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01870848001990898499noreply@blogger.comBlogger91125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-77758450859683913952013-01-06T20:05:05.765-05:002013-01-06T20:05:05.765-05:00WOW! Bravo! Bravo! Well done… and with sincerity a...WOW! Bravo! Bravo! Well done… and with sincerity and respect too! <br />(I just finished catching up on ‘The Journey.’) <br />While I’m no TechnoNerd, as a street-wise muralist and dilettante autodidact I am very much enjoying the conversation and well-made points. <br />As to a much earlier part of the discussion…<br /> <br /><br />It seems that what the camera started to do, the computer will inevitably accomplish. Not just animators and illustrators have felt the bite already, but also background and set painters as well as billboard artists and sign-painters (all highly skilled and talented artisans) have gone the way of John Hennery’s mighty hammer. That said, there will always be a place at the table for Leonardo, Buonarroti, Von Rijn, Matisse, Du Champ, Ai Wei, and all those talented shaman/artist/tricksters who flatter, entertain, and challenge us by reflecting back to us our humanity with genius. (As for the rest of us… Que sera sera, let us dance and sing while the sun still shines! Would you like fries with that?)<br />Point 2: Prove you’re not a Robot.<br />‘Sentient meat does-not-equal sentient silica.’<br />As you have noticed, Blogspot in its infinite wisdom, asks us to prove we’re not robots, not that we’re not zombies. A zombie is a Human without sentience (or a fleshbot), so I would say a zombie would be the meaty equivalent to a non-sentient-robot. <br />Zombie = fleshbot = Robot. <br />While there may not be any robots contributing to this blog (yet), there may be many zombies. (I’m suspicious of all those ‘anonymous’ posts, and many of the pseudonyms;) Which reminds me:<br />@ Kev: your link to your website on the blogger I.D. gives this message:<br />[Reported Attack Page! This web page at www.conceptart.org has been reported as an attack page and has been blocked based on your security preferences.<br />http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=101106<br />Attack pages try to install programs that steal private information, use your computer to attack others, or damage your system. Some attack pages intentionally distribute harmful software, but many are compromised without the knowledge or permission of their owners.]<br /><br />Back to it…<br />A sentient robot would be, in many ways, far superior to a human in terms of strength, ability, sensitivity, computation, memory, etc. etc., while not being a ‘living’ creature in the same sense as an organic, mortal-critter… In essence a wholly separate category of being.<br />Therefore: Sentient meat (does-not =) Sentient silica. <br />(Hey! Check it out. I’m doing math with concepts!) ;p<br /><br /><br />Point C:<br />What is not at all trivial are the implications in real time, or near future time, of these developments in robotic technologies for use by the rich, powerful, and possibly not so well intentioned sentient-beings, guvments and guvment type military agencies, and weapons manufacturers. The potential for abuse and misuse is staggering when you start considering nano-technologies, drones-as-surveillance, and drones-as-weapons. You don’t even need to get close to strong AI or sentience for the implications to be staggering! Once we stick our fingers in that mess there’s no turning back. Resistance is futile! (We’ll soon be looking back from a brave new world order at the quaint and naïve days of plein-air painting with our furbies.)<br />Qe sera sera, let us dance and sing while the sun still shines! -RQ<br />Robertohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01751501281929627657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-24200959549751852013-01-03T16:31:14.661-05:002013-01-03T16:31:14.661-05:00Antonio,
I'm feeling your last post was a bi...Antonio, <br /><br />I'm feeling your last post was a bit more rhetorical than your previous ones. I understand you need to disengage from the conversation, but some of the points shouldn't stand and I feel they should be addressed whether you answer or not.<br /><br />I am not moving goalposts, as you accuse. If you want to believe that a photograph is qualitatively the same as a Velasquez, your argument has already been won to your mind. <br /><br />If you want to believe that taking a photograph into photoshop and running a few filters on it makes it a work of art, your argument has already been won to your mind. <br /><br />No, I wasn't fooled by Vangobot's renderings into thinking they were done by a human. I did think they looked nice. And I would not have been surprised, outside of the context of this discussion, to have found out they were by a human. However, it is obvious that they lack compositional thought and emotion, so regardless of their author, I wouldn't have had much to say about them.<br /><br />I prefer to take your argument at its most meaningful, its most powerful. Which is to say, that a machine will one day be able to create art equivalent to the best creative works of art man has made. Not the cheap junk.<br /><br />The main requirement of this question is to try to derive the qualities present in the best works man has made. And then think about how a computer might compete.<br /><br />The "master" integration of a mind's sensations is a personality, a worldview, a pattern of thinking, which has a unique mood... a signature of a soul, its own vocabulary of conception. Nobody knowledgable who looks at a Mort Drucker drawing will mistake it for an FR Gruger drawing. Instead of glibly dismissing such a point, ask yourself why not? <br /><br />Fyi, the entire brain is functioning by sensations, whether we feel these sensations or not. Just look at the architecture.<br /><br /><b>Again all that remains is to claim the juice is essential. So we are back to the same argument. Although we could probably make a neural net that uses proteins, by the way. But then I bet you'll say we miss something else.</b><br /><br />Put your finger in water. Lift it out, blow on it. Put it in a light socket. Put a match to it. Put it against a vibrating tuning fork. Squash it between the pages of a book. Amazingly sensitive this meat-stuff, ain't it? Same piece of meat feels the unique qualities of every different thing you put against it. kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-39240446639972953982013-01-03T13:36:33.569-05:002013-01-03T13:36:33.569-05:00WWick, exactly, that was my point 2 above. However...WWick, exactly, that was my point 2 above. However kev defines art, people will respond to what people will respond. Whether a dumb PC can make art that convinces people is an empirical question.<br /><br />> It is my mission to destroy >these culture vultures <br /><br />I won't stand in the way of a man with a mission!...;) But I do wonder what you'd do if the PC fooled you in a blind test. I mean, look at that landscape with the duckies. If a friend came up to you and said "I just did this" would you scream "robot!" immediately (if you didn't have the photo to compare to)? And would you say it was all that awful, or would you just pat him in the back and say "keep working, you'll get somewhere"? Come on, it's a nice little trivial plein air painting like so many others made by fleshbots.<br /><br />Back to issue 1, WWick's comment just reminded me that holograms are a pretty good analog for some of the aspects of how our brain stores information, memories, sensations, etc, all in a jumble that isn't located anywhere specific...and yet holograms are pretty amenable to a mathematical understanding and engineering production.<br /><br />Also: You keep saying that some things are qualitative, as if that put them beyond maths, but in fact much of maths is qualitative. Please do not mistake maths for accounting. Math is not just about numbers.<br /><br />As for synthesis, I can have a zillion different sensors on a robot, pouring data into an artificial neural network that responds by firing artificial axons, and the pattern of firings that results is a synthesis quite analogue to what you describe. Only it isn't happening with real neurons, it isn't using proteins and all the other juice. Again all that remains is to claim the juice is essential. So we are back to the same argument. Although we could probably make a neural net that uses proteins, by the way. But then I bet you'll say we miss something else.<br /><br />You say the brain computes "in sensations", but in a final analysis, at a lower level, the brain is a bunch of neurons and other stuff performing physical processes. Somehow, from all of that, sensations arise in our mind. If we create analogs of the physical stuff that happens in the brain, who knows what can arise from those analogs. Sensations of some entity? Maybe yes, maybe not. Again, same argument.<br /><br />Also, sensations are the superficial layer. There's a lot going on in the brain that can in no sense of the word be described as "sensations", so I really disagree with the contention that the "brain computes in sensations". Just think of one of those famous patients of Oliver Sacks with brain damage that have sometimes no awareness of complex processes that the brain keeps executing. Those cases really speak for a modular mind, by the way, and for the conscious mind as a pretty clueless outer layer.<br /><br />By the way, we don't start with sensations, we start with a few cells replicating themselves in a puddle and somehow after a few months those dumb cells engineer a being that has a mind. Seems hopeful to me.<br /><br />Anyway, I fear I've been rephrasing the same argument for the last couple of rounds. I think that from my side at least there's not much to add, and I have a deadline coming up, so I think I'll call it a day.<br /><br />Thanks for the discussion, Kev (and James, and everyone else), it's been fun. I'll keep peeking once in a while but I probably won't say anything more for a few days at least. Cheers!António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-32887905421028002072013-01-03T11:21:11.355-05:002013-01-03T11:21:11.355-05:00WWick,
1. I don't understand how you plan on ...WWick,<br /><br />1. I don't understand how you plan on converting a bunch of data into art that "says a lot about someone's future grandmother." Says a lot of what? Data points? Is art a spread sheet to you? And how are filters going to help?<br /><br />2. Filters, sophisticated or otherwise, don't make art. Otherwise every kid who plays around in photoshop is making art by applying unsharp mask to a photo. In order to understand (or should I say, believe) why applying a filter doesn't make art, one must have a logically coherent understanding as to the difference between art and not-art. And it has been the mission of a million culture vultures to destroy the ability to make such a distinction. It is my mission to destroy these culture vultures because they are perpetuating cultural ignorance.<br /><br /><b>Does a painting produced this way suffer for not having been modulated by the complexity of human thought?</b><br /><br />The issue is not just complexity, but the brand of complexity. You need to spend some time thinking about how a work of art can encode thought and emotion. Yeah, there's codes... but they're built of completely understandable concepts. Concepts and conceptual artifacts we have innate facility for. This is an enormously deep matter that is getting very shallow attention here. You cannot get away from the question of human encoding. And it keeps tracking back to the problem of sensation. Thought is built of sensation and sensation is emotional. <i>So how does sensation build thought?How does sensation become knowledge?</i><br /><br />Until the centrality of that question sinks in, we're all just talking past each other. <br /><br />Art is not a filtration. It is a synthesis.<br /><br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-9790577035618811832013-01-03T10:38:13.131-05:002013-01-03T10:38:13.131-05:00James has a point. Let's put aside the argumen...James has a point. Let's put aside the argument whether a machine can possess a human-like mind and just think about what kind of mind it can have and what sort of art it could produce. It may not be able to reformulate Kev's thoughts about his grandmother, but it could be fed an awful lot of useful data - images, video, documents, maps, GPS data, medical records – even DNA samples and all that might one day say a lot about someone's future grandmother. Hooked up to a Vangobot with a plethora of sophisticated filters to choose from, I have no doubt such a machine could produce a decent painting, at least one that many people define as decent in the conventional sense. In fact, hundreds of randomized versions could be produced, limited only by the amount of money one would have to spend on materials. And that's not counting sculpture via CNC machines or 3D printers, or other modes of artistic expression such as video, holograms, or 3D graphics. <br /><br />Does a painting produced this way suffer for not having been modulated by the complexity of human thought? A computer may be comparatively dumb, but a painting is even dumber in that it can't think it all, feels no pain, senses no joy. No matter what goes on in the human mind, the human painter must express feelings by way of visual codes, and in turn, one has to in some way be visually literate to feel it. To what extent that those visual codes can be aped by a computer may depend on who's looking. But if one sees art as a communication between one human and another, the machine-produced art is simply a dead end. If we come to love robots like we do our fellow humans, well, that's another story. I'm not holding my breath. I must say though, I do like Antonio's observation that Google is already asking us to make that distinction in the comment box.WWhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05873450855450455884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-88238516681282215822013-01-03T08:33:54.887-05:002013-01-03T08:33:54.887-05:00I think you mean the emotions you get from your me...<b>I think you mean the emotions you get from your memories more than you mean your memories</b><br /><br />No, the point is and was that such things are all tangled up. It is common form of thought to have a visual memory running like a movie in the mind, tied with a memory of smell , and talking, and along with an emotional tone that is non-specific, etc. Such a thing isn't something you can build with math because it begins as a synthetic mental event. It isn't organized or arranged out of some logical necessities, some necessary sequelae from first principles, if you know what I mean. It isn't built from some diagram, blueprint, or rule set. It is built from synthetic imprints, if anything, with symbolic emotional values.<br /><br />The brain has an unbelievable capacity to take imprints. It is impressed by all five sense all day long. Our experience is constantly being synthesized from this incoming data. And this data is analog, unpredictable, and everywhere. The ability of meat to respond to electricity and chemicals, to touch and light, to warmth and cold, to smells and sounds... this is quite the sensitive substance. <br /><br /><b>it may contain the process that would command a fan to whirr, and, in that sense, there is an equivalence between the two</b><br /><br />No, I don't agree with your characterization of that as equivalent. A command is not an encoded event. And I disagree with your overall comparison. You keep neglecting that the brain doesn't just compute,<i> it computes in sensations. </i>Thought isn't just 0s and 1s flying by a mechanical sensor that only picks up 0s and 1s. Thought has meat, chemicals, and electricity interacting. The idea of computational equivalence isn't the issue, because sensations have qualitative content. And art is a qualitative business.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-81117968619181961172013-01-03T05:52:15.421-05:002013-01-03T05:52:15.421-05:00Of course "mathematizing an emotion" (an...Of course "mathematizing an emotion" (and I think you mean the emotions you get from your memories more than you mean your memories) won't be writing an equation for it. There is this weird notion of what mathematics is. (by the way, maths isn't all number crunching and equations - you can make maths with pictures, for instance! maths is about playing games with rules; and about the creation of interesting rules also, but I diverge into dangerous territory; trying to define maths is like defining Art - maths is what maths does)<br /><br />Let me play a game around your question.<br /><br />Suppose I come up to a computer and tell him: I think I can make an equivalent of you in a ticket tape. The computer might be sceptical; he might say "look, what I do depends on how my electrical circuits fire, it is all about silica and electricity meshing together interestingly", and also "how can you ticker-tape the delightful heart-warming (or CPU-cooling) sound of my fan going off?", or the way old memories fade away from my RAM when I reboot, or the way broken jpegs still linger in my hard disk in spite of having their references erased? And the computer might be right, except that we happen to know that in fact he isn't, at least in a sense: all computers are equivalent to a mathematical turing machine that can in fact be modelled (in principle, although horribly inefficiently) by a ticker tape on which we do simple operations. Of course the ticker tape won't have a fan to delightfully whirr (the analog of the grandma smile in this little game) but it may contain the process that would command a fan to whirr, and, in that sense, there is an equivalence between the two. In a computational sense, it doesn't matter if the computer is made out of chips or made out of ticker tape or made out of pebbles - some people have fun, in fact, creating turing machines within larger systems, be it with physical objects, be it simulated inside computer games themselves.<br /><br />Now of course I don't know - and that is the whole question - if the coming together of chemicals, carbon, and electricity has something fundamentally different that changes everything. Maybe it *is* fundamentally dependent on the building blocks in a way the computer isn't dependent on chips and electricity. Certainly "meat" is hugely complicated. Also, there is the notion of equivalence - our "computer equivalent" might be quite underwhelming in many regards even if it can be made. You can imagine the computer looking at his computationally equivalent ticker-tape and simply not accepting that the sense in which it is equivalent is the important sense. He might simply refuse to recognize it as an equal even if it could make the same calculations: "it is just mimicking me!". Again I am back to my previous answer: you have to try it out and see both how far you get, and what you get when you go that far.António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-34007904970128905032013-01-02T18:34:11.735-05:002013-01-02T18:34:11.735-05:00kev, I apologize but I am over my alotted time tod...kev, I apologize but I am over my alotted time today, I have some work to finish urgently, and I don't want to answer you thoughtlessly. I'll answer tomorrow when I can parse you properly.<br /><br />Cheers!António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-41994539435521083902013-01-02T18:30:07.841-05:002013-01-02T18:30:07.841-05:00James, I think you sure can be on both sides of th...James, I think you sure can be on both sides of the fence at once. I feel the love-hate thingy for computers quite often. I used to love to program my own games when I was a kid and at the same time I hated the little fiddling with parenthesis and whatnot and all the bug hunting that comes with programming the dumb machine that never guesses what you mean. I prefer to think about programming rather than do it, most of the time! :D<br /><br />Same with maths, really. I love beautiful maths, but I cannot stand repetitive and careful number (or symbol) crunching. I'm the kind of guy that cannot balance a checkbook because I get distracted midway. And I always have errors in my calculations. Sometimes I just want to throw it all out the window. But then I see a really pretty piece of math and I get all fuzzy :) <br /><br />And regarding art and computers...I love the concepts, and admire all the work, but I'm the kind of guy that in photoshop just uses the brush and the color picker. Cannot stand fiddling with filters and all that. Layers are my limit. But that doesn't mean I cannot appreciate when other people do complex digital work. It's a bit like scientific illustration - I learned it, love it, admire the people who do it, but I know it is not for me. Or perspective. I teach it, but when it comes to my drawings, I just wing it. I feel both the need to know it, and the need to not rely on it. Same with color theory. There's an appreciation for precise knowledge, and a pleasure of not feeling tied to it while actually drawing.<br /><br />So yes, I understand the feeling of being a techogeek Luddite :) - and oh, yeah, I'll be there to fight you for possession of the last box of real, dirty crayons! :D<br /><br />>My ancestor Goldsworthy Gurney was attacked by Luddites<br /><br />Damn, you have the coolest family tree ever! :D<br /><br />>P.S. Love your work with Urban Sketchers.<br /><br />Coming from you that really warms my heart! :) Thank you so much for being kind to my doodles. :) <br /><br />By the way, speaking of machines, art, and urban sketching, I started carrying an android phone for night sketching about a year ago (before that I used a nintendo ds). It is really cool for making color studies when you have no lights around or you can't really deploy your gear (I usually carry watercolors and a clip-on reading light, but sometimes it is just too fiddly). And you only use the brush and the color picker on the phone app! Simplicity rules! :D<br /><br />Thanks for the link to the video!António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-16701529858013973722013-01-02T17:23:50.364-05:002013-01-02T17:23:50.364-05:00Hi Bill!Hi Bill!kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-64590788840609591152013-01-02T17:22:18.144-05:002013-01-02T17:22:18.144-05:00Antonio, you can know the truth of that first asse...Antonio, you can know the truth of that first assertion by thinking about how information and meaning are encoded in linguistic communications... versus what kind of information is contained in a mathematical expression. Quantization of information is a highly lossy operation, firstly because there are only certain aspects of understanding that are quantizable. Everything else is qualitative. And secondly, in order to mathematize some thought, we must consider all the non-math aspects as noise to be ignored in order to hone in on the mathematical signal... or some mathematical signal we recognize. (math having its forms.) <br /><br />So firstly, we must begin with a quantizable thought. Then we must strip away all connotation, the specifics, and aesthetic aspects until the thing is reduced down to a mathematical essence. <br /><br />Now what equations or formula or algorithm should you begin with to reformulate my thoughts of my grandmother? How do you begin to calculate and remodel the dim memory I have of her voice? The texture of her hair? The smell of her perfume?<br /><br />You see, math begins <i>without</i> the substances that build out the thought.Whereas a mathematizable thought, already has the quantization built into it, or else you wouldn't be able to distill it down and find the mathematic foundation within it. <br /><br />Cognitive Module Theory: If you think about the implication of mirror neurons, you don't need cognitive modules. Nor is there any evidence for cognitive modules as such. So why believe in it? <br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-80897624829955206812013-01-02T17:21:22.258-05:002013-01-02T17:21:22.258-05:00I am going to agree with James. This has been a gr...I am going to agree with James. This has been a great discussion. It usually has merit when Kev is involved. Antonio I must say I really enjoy your viewpoint here. billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02616075975131350091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-86493794553268946502013-01-02T17:11:46.568-05:002013-01-02T17:11:46.568-05:00Antonio, Agreed!
> "I'm about to defec...Antonio, Agreed!<br />> "I'm about to defect to the Luddite side of the fence!" <br /><br />Is it possible to be both a Luddite and a technogeek? Because that describes me. My ancestor Goldsworthy Gurney was attacked by Luddites and had to give up his steam carriages in 1830. I'm part of that tradition of engineering, but I'll also be the last guy standing with paint and hog bristles.<br /><br />Re: Silicon-based comedy: http://liambean.hubpages.com/hub/Standup-Comedian-Robot-at-Technology-Entertainment-Design-TED<br /><br />P.S. Love your work with Urban Sketchers.James Gurneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01870848001990898499noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-51345876408207032382013-01-02T15:52:57.315-05:002013-01-02T15:52:57.315-05:00James,
sure, I guess that computers really will s...James,<br /><br />sure, I guess that computers really will shine not in emulation of us but where they can augment our possibilities or complement them. I'm glad you called it "image making" rather than art, as this makes it safe for discussion; and in that respect we already have examples, mostly in 3D, where computers really help to make huge group scenes, for instance, that would be really hard to do by hand. Finite automata are great for that, with flocking algorithms, physics simulations and the like.<br /><br />And yes, data visualization is a huge deal. <br /><br />> (kind of a super souped up Furby) <br /><br />Now you scared me! :D I'm about to defect to the Luddite side of the fence! Please just don't bring up clippy! :D<br /><br />>There are already robotic >stand-up comics that respond to >the audience and actually keep an >audience laughing.<br /><br />I haven't seen this. Do you have a link?<br /><br />>They are on the verge of becoming >the kind of companion minds<br /><br />That is it right there! António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-77295231883265783082013-01-02T14:56:16.773-05:002013-01-02T14:56:16.773-05:00ps: It come to mind that Bertrand Russell used to ...ps: It come to mind that Bertrand Russell used to say about some philosophers "of course that is just a kind of madness", or something to that effect. In the cases he referred to, I remember that I sort of agreed (in a not too serious way - rather than madness I'd say silliness). Is that the kind of thing you are referring to? Is the "great project whose heroes have failed" a reference to Russell's Principia mathematica?<br /><br />By the way, Russell was mostly being humorous. His take on Nietzsche was hilarious; I had to laugh, and I was a big fan of Nietzsche at the time (that faded somewhat along with adolescence).<br /><br />"His general outlook remained very similar to that of Wagner in the Ring; Nietzsche’s superman is very like Siegfried, except that he knows Greek. This may seem odd, but that is not my fault."António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-24931083315751128692013-01-02T14:48:34.620-05:002013-01-02T14:48:34.620-05:00Fascinating discussion, you two--I'm learning ...Fascinating discussion, you two--I'm learning a lot from both of you. Suppose we grant that the human mind and the computer mind are fundamentally different, and that the computer may—or may not—eventually match at least some of the human mind's most subtle accomplishments. It already has surpassed the human mind in a lot of categories (such as computation speed), of course.<br /><br />Doesn't that leave us with another question: How will the symbiosis between these two kinds of minds aggregate around art? Keeping in mind that computer programs are themselves works of the human imagination, will you both grant that some forms of imagemaking that will be consumed by humans may be accomplished by computers at a level that simply cannot be matched by humans? I'm thinking, for example, of those abstract music visualization programs, which blow away what human animators were able to create by brute force in Fantasia.<br /><br />Or there might be computer-guided responsive home companions (kind of a super souped up Furby) who can tune into the mood of the home user and crack really funny jokes based on the day's news, or make up a song and teach the human companion to sing it in harmony. There are already robotic stand-up comics that respond to the audience and actually keep an audience laughing. Isn't that art of the most subtle and human kind? What can we expect in 50 years if such technologies continue on their course? <br /><br />Whether a computer can match a human's style of representational painting is probably not the highest use of AI--as many have pointed out, it's a relatively trivial exercise. My point is that it doesn't really matter if robots eventually think and perform things that we're good at. They are on the verge of becoming the kind of companion minds that as humans we can relate to in ways that we're only beginning to imagine.James Gurneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01870848001990898499noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-27444557201971988172013-01-02T14:01:27.305-05:002013-01-02T14:01:27.305-05:00>Math is formalized thought. Thought is not org...>Math is formalized thought. Thought is not organicized math<br /><br />kev, I get what you mean. People have thought about it. "The things you can think in mathematical terms may not be identical with the things you can think". It gets discussed over and over (take Hofstadter's "Godel Escher Bach" for instance, for a popular delivery, or a number of others). The only difference is that you state it as if you knew it to be certain, while for most people it is a hypothesis. Where you get your proof I just don't know.<br /><br />Stating a thing as being true does not make it true, no matter how elegantly you state it. It is a hypothesis.<br /><br />>And I don't believe in the innate >cognitive module theory.<br /><br />It's not for believing. It's a working hypothesis. It is for testing. You are free to come up with a better one and test it too.<br /><br />> I think its just another way for >nominalists to pretend the >thought problem does not require >a metaphysics<br /><br />er....no...it's a hypothesis. It is for trying to solve something. If you think you can solve it with metaphysics, then you try that instead. Nobody will stop you...<br /><br />Really, you seem to believe that people get a lobotomy or something when they take a phd in maths. Sorry, but it isn't like that. We aren't part of a cabal and we aren't hell bent on some grim quest that only validates us if we accomplish some far-off objective of mathematizing the whole world, or something. It is not like that. We have fun working on problems we enjoy (if we're lucky). That's all.<br />Sure, we may sometimes think of crazy goals like strong AI or "curing cancer", but that is not what we usually discuss. We discuss small problems we enjoy and can actually handle right now, like making a robot that paints landscapes from photos, or navigates a room, or whether a mutation on gene XYZ is related to a specific cancer, or whether some algebraic curves are related to others. We won't die if the whole world isn't "mathematizable". We won't care. There is no master plan.<br /><br />And we don't all come from some sinister factory, complete with pocket protectors and taped up glasses. We are a varied bunch: my thesis advisor is a bit of a mystic who just loves metaphysics and keeps going on and on about Jung and his yoga classes; I spend most of my time drawing and being a dilettante on 100 things instead of working on my math; we don't spend our time locked up in labs either nor do we have anything against the flesh - we are healthy human beings who have sex lives, climb mountains, and occasionally jump out of airplanes. <br /><br />We're just dudes, man. :p<br /><br />We certainly don't pay homage to some devious cult or political cabal and I don't quite get what the maths department had to do with kicking out any metaphysicians. I don't get what that cabal is supposed to be, who the "heroes of the movement" are, what they failed at achieving, and really, what you are talking about right now.(put up some links or something!)<br /><br />We are dudes solving problems that interest us. I don't get what grates you so much about that. If you think we are solving the wrong problems...what stops you from working on the right ones?<br /><br />You're just baffling me now. I promise, I never kicked a metaphysician in my life! :D<br /><br />António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-77209835324458310692013-01-02T12:42:13.260-05:002013-01-02T12:42:13.260-05:00Math is formalized thought. Thought is not organic...<b>Math is formalized thought. Thought is not organicized math</b><br /><br />I took me years to come to the above insight. Give it a lot of consideration. <br /><br />On Kant and words: Kant was a pioneer, but was wrong about a bunch of stuff and I hold no brief for him. (C.S. Peirce is a fellow who much better understood the terrain.) And I am very critical of the ability of words and text based language to convey thought and to properly symbolize the world. Text systems are the worst symbolic systems we've developed... but they have become ubiquitous because they are so easy to build out and use. <br /><br />Painting is a much subtler and deeper way of communicating thought than text, but it is unbelievably hard and time consuming and it can't hope to match the breadth of scope that text-based language manages so easily.<br /><br />Chomsky and his ilk proceed from text based language as their source material, which I think is a big mistake because it is such a sloppy, limited symbolism with such awkward and changeable rules. The field of linguistics has a lot of problems which bleed over into the AI field. Part of my issue with scientism is due to the alliance made in analytic philosophy between the math people and the word people to the exclusion of the idealists, the conceptual people. It was these analytical/positivist fellows who used politics to cast out metaphysics as useless and mad, only to have their project fail without it after all the originators went to their graves as heros of the movement. (And now we have 3 generations of people who have been needlessly trained to react against the existence of truth. And this is effecting the clarity of mind of untold numbers of people trained through academia.) <br /><br />And I don't believe in the innate cognitive module theory. I think its just another way for nominalists to pretend the thought problem does not require a metaphysics built out of meat, chemicals and lightning interacting promiscuously. <br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-73681722859020873052013-01-02T11:23:02.830-05:002013-01-02T11:23:02.830-05:00> If you try to create intelligence >without...> If you try to create intelligence >without creating the processor, you >have fenestration without a >building. <br /><br />I agree with that. I assume that intelligence will come only at the top of one big pile of cognitive modules. I'm actually more interested in consciousness than intelligence. That is what really makes my (meat-)head spin. :)<br /><br />>Secondly, the brain isn't just >meat, its also chemicals and >electricity.<br /><br />When I said "meat" of course I meant the whole biochemical package. So you do think that there is something essential about the building blocks themselves. I wanted to be clear on that, so thank you.<br /><br />>Math is formalized thought. >Thought is not organicized math.<br /><br />That may very well be true. Or it may not. I dunno.<br /><br />> When you appreciate that, you >appreciate the degree to which >the problem is intractable. <br /><br />I think your contentions are reasonable, I just don't know why you treat them as certain. The fact is we are ignorant about it. We don't know if meat (etc) is essential or not, and we don't know whether or not math is isomorphic to human thought. We just don't know because frankly we don't know enough about either maths, brains, biochemistry, or intelligence. The interesting thing about trying to get AI is precisely that we may learn a lot about all those things even if we fail. It it the process of discovery that matters more than whether we can achieve strong AI. We are sure to achieve *something interesting* on the way.<br /><br />So, I think it is reasonable to think it may be impossible to get strong AI because "meat" is essential and/or because math is not isomorphic to thought. But, to paraphrase etc etc above, I'd temper your enthusiasm for the powers of philosophy with a healthy appreciation that it has often in the past proved short on predictive power. Words are limited, they have too many holes. Wasn't it Kant who "proved" that the mind could not conceive of a geometry where the axiom of parallels was violated? Yet we soon had non-euclidean geometries. Philosophers of the word juggling type have been setting boundaries for math since Zeno (and probably before that) and those word-made boundaries keep retreating further and further. I'm not saying they'll retreat forever, but only that I would put little trust in any specific word-formed barrier to hold. The language of Math may be limited, but ordinary speech is notoriously so. As I said before, I'll believe we reached the barrier once I bump into it. Is that unreasonable?António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-9736526839583254442013-01-02T10:34:39.531-05:002013-01-02T10:34:39.531-05:00Put another way: do you, or kev, have any reason t...<b>Put another way: do you, or kev, have any reason to believe that there is something in meat that makes it fundamentally superior to silica as a building block of intelligent t machines?</b><br /><br />Firstly, intelligence is not foundational to human thought. Imagination is the foundation. And the imagination runs an emotional program. And in this program of organic symbolic processing is where the conceptual digestion happens. If you try to create intelligence without creating the processor, you have fenestration without a building. <br /><br />Secondly, the brain isn't just meat, its also chemicals and electricity. And what makes each of these 3 elements (meat, chemicals, electricity) so necessary is their fluidity of form and promiscuity of interaction with one another.The brain is like the process of evolution housed in a skull , predicated on apprehending reality symbolically and built of meat, chemicals and lightning. (Whoah!)<br /><br />Furthermore, given the necessity of chemicals and electricity for cognition, it would not surprise me in the least that each has ranges of symbolic qualia. The organic symbolism of the mind is its own unique system of information evaluation which is far more complex than the forms of math. Math is merely one poetic method by which the symbols of the mind can be organized to appreciate the world. Math is formalized thought. Thought is <i>not</i> organicized math. When you appreciate that, you appreciate the degree to which the problem is intractable. <br /><br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-58498379256817663912013-01-01T23:27:17.201-05:002013-01-01T23:27:17.201-05:00> It's just that I feel any >enthusiasm ...> It's just that I feel any >enthusiasm should be tempered with >a healthy appreciation for the fact >that at this point in time no human >intelligence can even begin to >attempt to do that, and that it's >far more complex than chess or >music.<br /><br />Agreed on all counts. I don't know that it can be done. I just think it is not unreasonable to think it may.<br /><br />And now I am off to sleep and to dream of electric sheep ;)<br /><br />António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-68602061410105086112013-01-01T23:11:00.567-05:002013-01-01T23:11:00.567-05:00António,
No need to apologize; as far as I'm c...António,<br />No need to apologize; as far as I'm concerned, it's all lighthearted fare. Sorry if that wasn't apparent.<br /><br />It may well be that some years from now AI artists will pump out original artwork in any periodic style or imitate any artist on demand or even create unique mashup combinations. It's just that I feel any enthusiasm should be tempered with a healthy appreciation for the fact that at this point in time no human intelligence can even begin to attempt to do that, and that it's far more complex than chess or music.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-44079811239158389262013-01-01T23:09:30.043-05:002013-01-01T23:09:30.043-05:00TLDR: the way to find the limits is by bumping aga...TLDR: the way to find the limits is by bumping against them, not by arguing with vague words about where they must lie.<br /><br />António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-61652423535278910122013-01-01T22:58:49.475-05:002013-01-01T22:58:49.475-05:00>Beyesian probability calculations >are stil...>Beyesian probability calculations >are still completely dependent on >what kind of inputs you put in >and their quality, and how the >problem is understood by the >user,<br /><br />Sure. <br /><br />> and it doesn't have >anything to >do with emotion or >sensation.<br /><br />Who said it did? I said the same myself, and I said an inductive reasoning being (*in this sense of the word*) wouldn't go anywhere. I said it would need goals, or emotions, or something like that.<br /><br />If you use the word induction in a way that includes emotions, then we are saying the same thing. I'm using the word induction in the way it is usually used in logic, or even in the dictionary, but I'm ok with whatever definition as long as you explain it. <br /><br />>When I say induction, I don't >mean in the statistical sense. >You aren't getting this. I mean >an induction of truths which are >predicated on sensations which >have been innately understood as >emotional symbols in the context >of all the other emotional >symbols in mind, which have been >built up over time into an entire >structure of recollectible or >sublimated experience. Put >simply: This ain't math.<br /><br />Ok then. Defined like that, I agree (I said the same thing above! We need pre-defined emotional structures, or something like that).<br />So we are just differing on words again. Except that: I'm not sure all that can't be made into math. And don't accuse me of scientism again: I'm not sure it CAN be made into math either. I am just keeping an open mind about it. I ask what do you call the "-ism" that makes *you* so sure it can't be put into math. I am keeping both possibilities open, and going with the constructive one until it proves a dud.António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-7051896767406161392013-01-01T22:46:58.476-05:002013-01-01T22:46:58.476-05:00>Another form of scientism... >thinking that...>Another form of scientism... >thinking that words that come into >science from common usage, actually >started in scientific usage. <br /><br />Hmmm...no. I just stated I didn't get what you meant and I told you what I understood by the word. You are free to define it as you want, but you have to tell me what you mean.<br /><br />I tried to put it another way: why is meat different from silica?<br /><br />We have different languages. When I use a word like "state space" because I am used to it and James asks what it means I try to define it as simply as I can. All I am asking is that you do the same so that I can understand your point. Please understand it is equally frustrating from this side. I see you multiplying terms with each post and I have to try and understand what you mean each time. It all seems like vague words to me, but I do try to understand you, and I do try to find the meat behind the words I don't get.<br /><br />Also, you keep insisting about the scientism thing. I don't get that. I learned some tools and that of course shapes my way of thinking and speaking. You want to call it an -ism, go ahead, but I am open to using any tool to understand what I can, it doesn't have to be maths. I could spend the rest of my life *not* doing maths, if you must know. I could spend my whole life doodling and I'd be happy. But we are discussing AI and you want me to take maths out of the picture? How do I do that without changing the subject? I simply don't know any other tool that works for AI half as good. And your tools seem to be about proving that we cannot do stuff instead of proving that we can, so even if I got them I could only use them to argue the negative case. But you are doing that already, so what's the point? :)<br /><br />António Araújohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059765930331992020noreply@blogger.com