On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, Dave Griffiths wrote:
DG> > author. AARON's success was that cohen didn't just program it - he
DG> > brainwashed it, which i like very much as it brought out that very
DG> > important subjective aspect to AI...
DG>
DG> I guess it make a bit more sense in that context. However, intelligence
DG> (or the appearence of it) comes from something reacting to the world,
DG> and I think it's hard to claim AARON has much to say about AI when it's
DG> so linear - it would be a much more interesting experiment to make an AI
DG> art critic, I'm sure it's out there somewhere :)
DG>
yes, there are AI art critics - more about that later...
not sure what you mean about linearity, but remember AARON is a 30 year
old project so the discourse around AI was a bit more limited at the time
it started...
but i guess i've probably responded more or less to your question in
previous mail: i.e., i think what it says about AI is that AI's
intelligence is the product of its human programmers (because AARON shares
its *programmer's* aesthetic sense.) it makes this very point about the
subjectivity/bias/humanness of algorithms. for me, that's interesting on
two levels: a) forces people to question their assumptions about AI
(which are usually that it's mechanical/mysterious/incomprehensible and so
therefore, we're forced to be submissive toward it) and b) forces people
to question how often humans behave like AI's (presume to think
independently but in fact behave as conditioned.)
DG>
DG> a computer will always output the same thing given the same input, no
DG> matter how complex the algorithm, as it's entirely, utterly, boringly
DG> deterministic. thats why we're so odd. or are our inputs just much more
DG> complicated? etc etc...
DG>
hee hee hee.. yes, this is my favorite question. how often do people make
"independent" decisions influenced by a strong and targeted conditioning
(programming)? this is a question relevant to political propagandizing,
among other things... and why use of the word "deprogramming" has expanded
beyond the realm of outcast religious cults.
as to AI art critics - i can think of at least one off the top of my head
(gabor papp's conoisseur)... and there are also AI academics
(postmodernism generator), AI politicians (bush bot), AI bloggers (blog
bitch), and more... have a look through runme's artifial intelligence and
text manipulation sections for other funny/critical approaches to AI...
but what's interesting about most of these is that the critical point they
make is not how much AI's can act like humans, but how much humans can act
like AI's...
cu,
-_at_
Received on Thu Nov 11 2004 - 21:00:24 GMT