Photographic Turing test

A previous post in the forum about photography as a language, and seeing

brilliant phographs of Mars from the Spirit and Opportunity rovers (some

perhaps automaticly taken?) have come together into a startling thought:

 

Could a robot making photographs pass a photographic turing test?

 

If you are not familiar with the Turing test, it is a test which blindly pits a

human versus a machine in a communication match. If the person can talk with

the machine and the machine passes itself off as human (ie able to respond

accuratly to human conversation input) it passes the Turing test. This test is

generally the accepted confirmation of Artificial Intellegence. So far as i

know.....no machine has passed the test yet.

 

I myself belive that our own minds are nothing more then the functions of

biological machines, as our brains are made from basic natural elements that

work with in the bounds of physical law. I believe a mechanical brain, fasioned

by whatever means, if it is able to accuratly recieve input and "compute"

answers that allow it to pass the Turing test, then it too will have the

function of a MIND.

 

Is it perhaps possible that a robot could make photographs at its own

discretion and algorithmic judgement of composition and subject, and pass those

photographs off as being created by a human conciousness thereby passing a

photographic Turing Test? Or would a robot be merely an over the top overly

sophisticated shutter button, initiated by the human who turned it on?

I dunno Billy! But those robotic vaccuum cleaners do a great job!

 

They have a fixed aperture and work in really low light.

Any human could surely make photographs without any content, subject, intent of

composition,...in such a way that they would be seen as ' could have well been made by a

computer ' so in that way a computer, even if it's not passing the photographic turing

test, could easily make photographs that could have been made by a human.

The question whether or not a computer would pass a photographic turing test starts from

the ( wrong ) point that photography is a language with a strict set of rules to follow in

order to understand or make use of the language but photography isn't a language.

Sure, you can communicate through photography and express ideas but photography

doesn't stop being photography when it's done by a computer without the intervention of

a human, whether or not the resulting photographs mean something or absolutely

nothing.

Phylo's got a good point. The crux of this question is in the watertightness of the analogy. The process in the Turing test is a dynamic interaction. Are we talking about some kind of to and fro between the human tester and the (hidden) robot photographer? How would the test be initiated? I'm not saying it's not a valid idea, we just need details.

<i>I myself belive that our own minds are nothing more then the functions of biological machines, as our brains are made from basic natural elements that work with in the bounds of physical law.</i><p>

Could they work any way other than through natural means? For your amusement, you might enjoy reading Roger Penrose's muse wherein he suggests we should look to the nanotubules of the brain to find if they can sustain a quantum state long enough so that the brain is "in touch" with quantum reality. (Penrose is a Platonist). Others have chimed in with the same thought, for example Stuart Hameroff.<p>

Unfortunately, the turing test is not applicable to the case you propose because there is no way to evince meaning or experience through the outcome - a problem in part due to the human beings who will judge; they would have to agree among themselves upon the goal and outcome so that the problem would be narrowed down to something quantifiable and almost certainly trivial.<p>

A better test would be for a number of robot-photographers to work among themselves to determine goals and outcomes. That's where language works.<p>

FWIW, certain programs have passed the Turing test - and it is amusing. One was a program playing a Rogerian psychiatrist and the other program mimicked a paranoid-schitzophrenic. And the ultimate chuckle is to have them talk to each other. (It is easier to model dysfunction than proper function.)<p>

There is a "fun" variation of this that would be a good trick and very easy thing to code

up.. since Philip Greenspun is a nerd at MIT perhaps he could get one of the AI lab kids to

code it up. (1) The photo.net forum provides a great "rating" system of 7.0->1.0 images

which could be used to build a neural net .. which basically is a "training" mechanism to

make a program "distinguish" the highly rated photographs from low rated photographs ..

once the program is trained (and tested (done exactly how you would suspect, trained on

1/2 of the data, tested on the other 1/2) ) .. you can build a robot that goes around

randomly taking photos (perhaps using a auto-low res recording mechanism aka robotic

eyes (also trained) to predict whether a photo taken of the scene will be highly rated or

not.. and after it takes the appropriate set of photos and rates them.. it will submit to

photo.net (anonymously!!) and the users will decide appropriately..! If it does better than

your average photo.net submitter the coders have done a reasonable job in the 'photo.net'

turing test

 

For extra credit, the same robot will do basic manipulation in photoshop (via scripts) to

further enhance the rating... (as a start you can imagine contrast/saturation)

 

I could code this up actually.. but this would be a good project for an undergrad/grad

student somewhere..

 

-avi

Phylo, i believe photography or any image making IS a language, as it is a form of communication. But you are right, we have to make an assumption for this question. How clearly or unclearly communication is carried out in photography is up in the air...but that was all the topic of a post from a few days back...

 

As for the machine/mind thing...I might take a look at that Penrose, tho still, i think a functioning-mind-machine-robotic-camera could get in touch with whatever quantum states he speaks of, especialy if our brains are capable of doing so. Quantum states are still within the realm of physical law, even if we can't wrap our mathematics fully around it yet, (else we would not be here now).

 

Avi has a great proposal! That way there will be some kind of learned commonality of a photographic language. I heard of a similar thing being done not so long ago where a program learned succesful POP songs and was used to judge whether or not a newly recorded song would make it or not.

Sounds like a thrilling project!....i swear i should've gone into engineering

<i>I could code this up actually.. </i><p>

Oh could you?<p>

It is that simple, eh?<p>

Hi sorry i didn't mean that to sound as arrogant as perhaps it came off.. if i did it myself it

wouldn't work at all obviously but it would be passable :)

 

Just so you know I am a faculty member in a physics department (not at MIT!) (basically

doing computational/numerical/theoretical biophysics) .. which is to say i dont code at all

anymore but i do enslave graduate students to code for me :)

 

While we don't use NN type tricks in our line of work, its very popular in a lot of 'heuristic'

fields (and many that should not be that heuristic, like chemistry, economics) .. the code

to do the pattern matching in this day and age is very easy and there are many examples

of doing just that on pictures out there, so it would just be a case of replicated someone

elses work and moreover there are a lot of NN libraries out there that you can use Gluing

it to a robot/camera is somewhat more work but i'm sure there is someone in one of the

Eng. departments who could sort it out..

 

In all seriousness i think if you hijack an available NN/picture analysis code it would take

a weekend, even w/out that NN code itself isn't really that complicated .. its just glorified

curve fitting.. you know..

 

Incidentally, I'm not a big fan of penrose but that is a discussion for another time probably

:!

 

-best,

 

-avi

btw an aside (i just went back and read the your post a bit closer)

 

my research is actually on understanding (classically) how complex protein networks work

(i.e. receptors, proteins interacting) .. the generalization to neurons is straight forward and

is a current project (though we are about 10 years away from having the computational

power to do this properly). the generalization to multiple neurons is also straight

forward..(though we do not nearly have the computational power, particularly on the scale

of the mind). QM does not come into play at all, nor does it need to as far as I can tell.

Perhaps, in the end this line of thinking is all for naught and penrose and his possee are

right: we need "QM nanotubes" to vaguely, and non-specifically magically endow

"consciousness" to such a simulation.. but its an interesting game btwn penrose and

everyone else :)

 

Btw not to be obvious, the only thing QM gives you is nondeterminism. Why

"consciousness" needs non-determinism to be conscious is not particularly clear in any of

penroses work, and regardless, even if "consciousness" was dependent on non-

determinism/random behavior, it would be far simpler for biology to use classical thermal

noise than having to get fancy and use "QM nanotubes" as its source .. particularly as there

is good evidence that thermal noise/stochasticisty plays some role in simple biological

processes already.

<i>Btw not to be obvious, the only thing QM gives you is nondeterminism. Why "consciousness" needs non-determinism to be conscious is not particularly clear in any of penroses work, and regardless, even if "consciousness" was dependent on non- determinism/random behavior, it would be far simpler for biology to use classical thermal noise than having to get fancy and use "QM nanotubes" as its source .. particularly as there is good evidence that thermal noise/stochasticisty plays some role in simple biological processes already.</i><p>

Why one or the other? Why not both qualities?<p>

But we can save this subject for another time. To give an inkling of what I'm dieing to ask you: what puzzles me is Penrose's description of the single-celled ameboa and how it "behaves" (avoids pain/precursors to certain damage, and feeds) when it has no nervous system, but it does have microtubules (admitedly functional for reproduction) - so he wonders if the little critter is functioning in accord with a quantum space. That's his Platonic take on it.<p>

But I'm mired at the moment in work, programming and can't give it more time. Perhaps another time? Please?

You didn't sound at all arrogant, Avijit. As someone who spends a lot of my time coding, I can see where you're coming from. Once you know where the pieces are, gluing them together isn't that hard, unless you're aiming for bullet proof code, of course.

Would you believe that several such systems have been created over the last few years. The most famous is probably "Lewis" from Washington University in St. Louis.

 

http://www.cs.wustl.edu/MediaAndMachines/Lewis/

 

Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.

It can be both, and quite honestly.. *everything* is really quantum in reality.. by

everything i mean the idea of two chemicals coming together and making a new chemical

(i.e. any basic chemistry which of course includes biological chemistry) is really a quantum

process and can't really be treated classically at all. However penrose doesn't mean

"quantum" in that sense, penrose means quantum in the "collapse of the wave function/

non-determinism" sense ..

 

in the same way really the person from I think arizona state who is currently making waves

among philosophy circles (whose name totally escapes me at the moment but he is

australian) who apparantly has resurrected dualism by some magic quantum process.. This

line of thought seems to link (in a way i do not really understand, which is perhaps why i

am so skeptical) that collapse to "human consciousness" .. Microtubules are used for

transport and cytoskeleton rearrangement.. i may be wrong but i've never seen really

non-classical behavior from things that big or tubules (other than chemistry) .. there is not

exactly big delocalized electrons hanging all over microtubules i dont think

 

Interestingly, chemotaxis ..(as per your amoeba question) aka avoiding and being attracted

to chemical phenomena and/or danger etc can easily be explained by "simple" chemistry

and transport .. that is its just receptors, and protein-protein interactions.. these are

models of "chemotaxis" by thinking of what the biology is doing .. and no need for

neurons ... purely classical in fact

 

Neurons are *a* way to gain memory .. and well more versatile .. but not the only way. As

an aside actually it was Turing who actually first realized the complexity of "simple"

chemistry and transport phenomena leading to "surprising" behavior aka "turing patterns"

(A famous example here is very simple chemistry and transport leads to "leopard spot

patterns" ) .. everything else is really just an extension of his work actually..

 

 

I guess w/ regards to it being "both" at the end of the day its not really clear to me what

one is gaining by having this aspect of 'quantum phenomenon' necessitate consciousness

other than the fact that thinking of ourselves (and our thoughts) as 'clocks' in a practically

deterministic world seems to make people a bit squeemish .. but if it seems to describe

all the behavior i would bring up occams razor and say there is no need to introduce any

more complications until its absolutely evident that one has to, and i'm not really sure we

are at that stage yet.

<i>"... pass those photographs off as being created by a human conciousness thereby

passing a photographic Turing Test?"</i>

<br><br>

The point of the Turing test is not whether the machine can pass off its response as being

convincingly human, as much as whether or not the human can catch the machine out:

i.e. use the interaction to elicit from the machine a response which would not convincingly

have been given by a human.

<br><br>

Programs that have been claimed to "pass" the Turing test have invariably been given a

restricted version of the test.

<br><br>

Turing's test ("The Imitation Game"), published in 1950, appears in <i>The

Mind's I</i>, an interesting anthology by Hofstadter and Dennett which appeared in

1981. The test is quite subtle, or at least more so than is commonly credited.

<b>H. P.</b><i> [...] As someone who spends a lot of my time coding, I can see where you're coming from. </i><p>

COBOL? What do you code that is original? Tell us.<p>

--<br>

Pico - who did once write some COBOL but I swear I never compiled it.

<b>avijit ghosh</b><i>.

It can be both, and quite honestly.. *everything* is really quantum in reality.. by everything i mean the idea of two chemicals coming together and making a new chemical (i.e. any basic chemistry which of course includes biological chemistry) is really a quantum process and can't really be treated classically at all. However penrose doesn't mean "quantum" in that sense, penrose means quantum in the "collapse of the wave function/ non-determinism" sense .. </i><p>

Penrose has agreed to that. He has written so. Simply saying that all chemistry is (somehow, not explained by yourself) related to QM is not making a case at all because your statement is dismissive without a rationale to consider the specifics.

"Penrose has agreed to that. He has written so. Simply saying that all chemistry is

(somehow, not explained by yourself) related to QM is not making a case at all because

your statement is dismissive without a rationale to consider the specifics."

 

I am not really sure what you are saying. Penrose has agreed to what? Anything having to

do w/ electron flow is inherently QM in nature, the common examples include bonding

processes. This is not the kind of QM Penrose is talking about when he invokes "nano-

tubules/microtubules" The "nanotubules" for Penrose are supposed to be something akin

to quantum dots i.e. delocalized electron densities whose "collapse" confers some sort of

behavior with regards to consciousness.

Actually let me follow up. I do not think you need to invoke the rather non-intuitive nature

of QM to get consciousness. Penrose believes you do. Thats why he sees "QM collapse/

non-determinism" as the underlying agent of bacteria chemotaxis, neuronal behavior and

so forth. Why you do, as far as I can tell, has never been explained by Penrose to at least

the satisfaction of me. You might argue that I am saying the equivalent but opposite

statement and therefore making an assertion on that is equivalent to penrose, but I am

not. I am saying you do not "need" QM to invoke conscious, but that does not imply "QM"

can not have anything to do w/ consciousness. Penrose is making the positive assertion

somehow wave collapse has something to do w/ consciousness so the onus is on him not

me. Plus he is more famous so its up to him to carry a good argument :)

Probably the SNOBOL and SPITBOL programers didnt have time to worry about such issues.

<b>Kelly Flanigan</b><i>

Probably the SNOBOL and SPITBOL programers didnt have time to worry about such issues.</i><p>

I do go back far enough to know SNOBOL. In fact, I have the first edition of the manual. It was typewriter done and then photographed. The Big Orange Book. I'll be putting it on that auction site after January 1.

avijit ghosh:

 

Good points, and I am not in a position to represent Sir Roger Penrose. The statement that I recall regarding Roger, QM and another science was pointed to a biology professor who claimed that her discipline was not a part of physics. (It must suck to be her.)<p>

Regarding the 'collapse', please consider that organic forms sustain the outcomes for a long time and therefore create a kind of contiguity for the quantum outcome... for better or worse! <p>

On a completely unrelated vector - I must admit I am a Penrose fan and possibly the worst reasons. I was a "lecture thief" at Oxford. I'd sit outside classrooms and listen in, avoiding expense and exams. :)

Its okay both my GF who is a borderline "philosophy of science" type and my cousin

(whose advisor was Searle) and I have a habit of getting into many terrible drunken

debates that are somewhat akin to this :)

 

If you like Penrose, you would like this modern dualism debate. It is really interesting

actually .. it has a lot of similar parallels.. i think i was struck by it as I didn't realize there

was any such thing as a dualism debate in the modern age.. ! (such is the arrogance of

materialist physicists :))

 

Oh now i remember the guys name is *David Chalmers*. Really fascinating reading.. very

much in the penrose camp .. weirdly (or not) he actually was a math. /cs undergrad and

got his ph.d. w/ Hofstadter over at Indiana. He is now at arizona state directing the

"consciousness center" or something.. He has apparantly made serious waves to the

extent that there have been nytimes articles written on him.

 

p.s. f77 all the way :)

<i> He is now at arizona state directing the "consciousness center" or something.. </i><p>

Ah jeeze! You aren't refering to Lyn Nadel are you? He's the guy who gave the nod to Gary Schwartz to study afterlife phenonema. No? I don't mean that in a bad way.... although Gary... he believes in mind reading so easily that it seems to be his fundamental given belief, and THEN he becomes a skeptic!

<p>

What an interesting place this has become.

<p>

Okay, I'm outta here to work in the shop. Building a camera. Someting tangible.

No no.. <a href="http://consc.net/chalmers/">David Chalmers</a>

 

here is an old nytimes article from about the time period he first started making waves

 

<a href="http://www.imprint.co.uk/nyt.html"> http://www.imprint.co.uk/nyt.html</a>