Photographic Turing test

[pico]

Oh. Maybe Nadel was earlier. I know of Chalmers' writing. Never seen him IRL.

[b_hall1]

Well, we won't know whether or not there really is a rover on Mars taking photos until we spend a trillion dollars and thirty years to put a manned mission on Mars...

 

 

Also, let's goggle for turing machine...

[h._p.]

I think, Avijit, that you are falling into the Pico trap. It's pretty obvious that, whoever he is, Pico is a fantasist of the first order. He claims to have done everything and known everyone but I suspect he's some sad, fat old bloke who's never done much with his life and now uses the anonymity of these forums to act out his fantasies. Frankly, I find him funny these days, a sort of human reverse Turing machine. He gathers his material from all sorts of places and is programmed to react viciously to any response to his nasty comments.

 

As you're obviously someone who knows what you're talking about, Avajit, how would you define the border between reaction and consciousness? Do you think there's a sudden change from the automatic reactions of a single cell to the self awareness of the human brain or is there a gradual move as complexity increases, with no discernible point at which instinct becomes consciousness?

[pico]

<b>H. P.:</b> <i> I think, Avijit, that you are falling into the Pico trap. It's pretty obvious that, whoever he is, Pico is a fantasist of the first order. He claims to have done everything and known everyone but I suspect he's some sad, fat old bloke who's never done much with his life </i><p>

Strike two.<p>

<i>Avajit, how would you define the border between reaction and consciousness?</i><p>

In your case, at this moment, I'll guess the reaction borderline is the second pint, when your consciousness winked out.<p>

[h._p.]

Billy, to return to your original post, it occurs to me that there is an interesting question at the end where you ask: "Or would a robot be merely an over the top overly sophisticated shutter button, initiated by the human who turned it on?"

 

I don't know about you but I have this science fiction idea of a robot as an autonomous machine, functioning totally without human intervention, which Isaac Asimov, among others, popularised in the 'forties and 'fifties. So it seems to me that the Turing Test for Cameras might be whether the viewer could detect that a human had not initiated the picture taking. Conversely, one might ask, as you do, whether the viewer would look at the image and say to themselves that it was a completely mechanistic representation and therefor the work of a machine.

 

I think, as Phylo says, that there isn't really any syntax to image making and you could certainly fool a viewer into thinking that a picture was initiated by a machine. Going the other way, I suspect that even a short 'conversation' would reveal the mechanistic origins of the photographer, unless the controlling database of rules was very large, so that the style of photography changed subtly from image to image.

[pico]

<i>So it seems to me that the Turing Test for Cameras might be whether the viewer could detect that a human had not initiated the picture taking. Conversely, one might ask, as you do, whether the viewer would look at the image and say to themselves that it was a completely mechanistic representation and therefor the work of a machine...</i><p>

You don't understand what the Turing Test is.<p>

By your misinterpretation of it, most machines could pass it.<p>

Turn that around - what can a human make that looks exactly what a sophisticated machine can make. When you come up with a 100% handmade Leica, let me know. Best get to work digging for ore. You've a long haul.

[bloosqr]

HP : I dont know to be honest.. if i were guessing there is probably a gradual transition,

which is most likely dependent on the "vagueness" of the term "conscious" .. actually to

clarify i think there is a gradual transition from 'unconscious beaker chemistry' to

consciousness

 

though would also hasten to add i dont think "consciousness" is outside of "chemical

reactions" (including quantum nanotube postulations depending on your fashion sense ) :)

 

btw as Joseph pointed out the robot is already here .. its just a question of gluing a

photo.net aesthetic detector to it .. does greenspun actually ever read these posts? would

this be something he or photo.net would be interested in? I happen to (vaguely) know the

kismet/kosmo robot people (Sherry Turkle is my gf's advisor and i'd guess the STS people

would like this sort of stuff ) ..

 

i will write up a paragraph to forward to her as a project (i do not want to be involved but

i think its a cool idea) if someone from photo.net would be willing to let the project use

the photo.net database as a training set .. Turkle is from MIT if that helps..

 

i was thinking this would be a great thing to try and get someone like canon to sponsor,

but then you might imagine "Canon : we are replacing our customers with robots" might

not be a good advertising slogan :)

 

-avi

[pico]

I take Emergent Behavior to be a term one uses when it is not necessary to describe the

specific means by which certain behavior occurs which is different than it's parts' behavior.

Whether the term is being used to avoid a necessary understanding or not depends upon

the specific discourse. A person who reflexively explains behavior as "emergent" should

be prepared to explain exactly what Emergent means in the case at hand.

 

As to consciousness arising from chemistry, well a chemist could say that and a physicist

might say it arises from physics. Isn't all chemistry physics at the root? :)

[bike tourist]

Getting back to the original question and ignoring the very interesting and informative variations on the theme:

 

"Could a robot making photographs pass a photographic turing test?"

 

Yes. We are talking about a form of art, which has no objective criteria other than what it chooses to accept. There is no technical impediment to the robot's picture taking. The photographic process could be randomized to prevent duplication. Therefor, the robot would produce images. These images would then be viewed by humans who would respond to them by liking them, hating them, or some other feeling somewhere in between.

 

Some, if they felt it improved their social standing as in The Emperor's New Clothes, would pretend to like the robot-produced images.

 

I forget who first observed that if an infinite amount of monkeys were given typewriters, one would write King Lear.

 

The photo-robots could certainly keep my ego in check!

[david.seaton]

I think back to High School introductory photography class, where a quick overview of rule of thirds, exposure, etc. were given and then students were turned loose on the world. Most of what came out of the darkroom a few weeks later was what I call "faux artsy"... ie they used techniques that can make really great pictures (the camera was rotated a little bit, or the main subject was out of focus, an extreme vantage point was used, very over exposed or under exposed etc...) However, these techniques were used haphazardly and with out any real vision, with the expectation that any image that used any of these techniques was "artsy". One could easily build a robot that would then RANDOMLY choose to use some of these effects to various degrees, and produce what would easily get into a High School art show (@ the non-art school I went to, but still).

[jonathancharlesphoto]

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" so in a sense it's not the mechanical photographer that

should be undertaking the Turing test, but the viewer. Seeing a set of 100 mechanically

taken photos we could well pick out 10 "artistic" ones but it is in this selection process which

defines the art. Effectively they are <i>objets trouves</i>.<p>On the broader subject, I

think Turing proposed his test to define intelligence but accepted that it does not necessarily

imply consciousness.

[al_kaplan1]

Here are a bunch of links to robot cameras in places like airports all over the earth. Are any of these images great art? Perhaps not, but an interesting way to kill time.

http://www.webcamplaza.net/master_frame_fix.html?http://www.webcamplaza.net/cams/airport.html