Machine learning creates professional level photographs

[The Shadow]

Maybe start living in the real world

[Allen Herbert]

Anyway, back to our discussion.

 

A1 intelligent is evolving. Most forward thinkers in the scientific community are concerned how it will develop in the future: for the good of humanity or otherwise.

 

It is a singularity, we just don't know. But to think it is just a simple machine which we punch binary code into is naïve.

[Allen Herbert]

Once upon a time we were a little shrew thing. Then it evolved.

 

Once upon a time there was a simple machine thing that just added up numbers. Then it evolved.

 

Once upon a time a being of infinite powers created humanity. He created humanity in his own image.

 

Once upon a time humanity, created in the image of the infinite being, created its own life using the creativity of the infinite being which humanity was given in the likeness of the infinite.

 

Forever A1 just a tin can or something else? What does the evolution of the tin can tell us? It is evolving.

[The Shadow]

Once upon a time a being of infinite powers created humanity.

I think about it differently. My take is that humans created the idea of or imagined a being of infinite powers. This kind of myth goes way back and recurs in many forms with powerful beings appearing in many guises. Such myth has its own power and the human ability to create such myths is among the earliest signs of both philosophy and creativity. Myths both explain the world and show the wonder of imagination, not to mention symbolism. It is with that imagination and sense of wonder that humans explored the oceans, explore space, and now develop AI. With knowledge and imagination, humans are creating a technology system so complex, sophisticated, and untethered to its maker. It is suggestive of amazing possibility, some of which may demand a healthy dose of fear or at least care while much about it is revolutionary in the best of senses.

[leo_papandreou1]

The power of modern hardware to (enable humans to) fit mathematical functions onto enormous quantities of data (the only real progress AI has made since its inception), while useful and consequential, is hardly the computer we know "evolving" into something it fundamentally isn't or a singularity struggling to be born. Machines remain exactly as smart as they've always been and dumber than every living thing. Seriously, guys, to date and into the foreseeable future, "artificial" intelligence is leveraged human intelligence, and computer art is human beings making art using a computer. Even if you believe in a fantastic remote future for machines, it does not follow a quasi-thing like 'art' will intersect ontologically with a quasi-thing like 'intelligence' inside a literally alien being of exotic materials, and then in such a way that a squabbling ape barely evolved from its food would (if it could) recognize either in it.

[The Shadow]

a singularity struggling to be born.

Yeah, I don’t think it is either! That phrasing sounds faux spiritual and a little sickly sweet, tbh.

Machines remain exactly as smart as they've always been

Machines have become exponentially more sophisticated than they once were. My current cell phone is a lot smarter than my first flip phone was. You might be buying the wrong brand if yours isn’t smarter than one you had a decade ago.

is hardly the computer we know "evolving" into something it fundamentally isn't

Agreed. It’s the computer evolving into something it IS.

dumber than every living thing.

Some living things are way overrated. There are occasions when I much prefer rocks ... or sand.

computer art is human beings making art using a computer.

Certainly, human beings can and do use machines to make art. But we don’t happen to be talking about that. We’re talking about AI systems being programmed to do things beyond the specific intentions of those programming them. When a human uses a machine to make art, the human forms a specific intention of the desired result and uses the machine to accomplish that result. AI art is not remotely like that. The human has no idea what the machine will come up with and is not in that kind of master-slave relationship with the machine, getting the machine to do the human’s specifically-intended bidding. The human programs the machine to compute well beyond that human’s own specific intents and computational limits.

[leo_papandreou1]

You know what else can exceed a human's intents and computational limits? The way watercolor flows on a piece of paper.

 

Certainly, human beings can and do use machines to make art. But we don’t happen to be talking about that.

 

Yes we do, and there is no plausible sense in which a combinatorial explosion of outputs means that we don't.

[The Shadow]

You know what else can exceed a human's intents and computational limits? The way watercolor flows on a piece of paper.

I know. And it’s that unknown and accidental character of art that both human art and AI art have in common.

 

If the way watercolor flows on a piece of paper can exceed a human’s intents and computational limits, then that’s an example, at least in part, of the art NOT owing itself fully to human control and ownership. A lot of art is not and cannot be owned in exactly the same ways, if at all. On the other hand, I’m sure plenty of great photographers, painters, and sculptors have experienced chance, accident, and even randomness in their work and still put their signature on it even while embracing those less or even non-intention-inspired elements. This tells me that “ownership” and human intention are not the sole or foundational elements on which notions of what is art and how it can be created can hang their hats.

[The Shadow]

But intention and the will to express, depict, or illuminate something about and of the world and ones place in it is a necessary ingredient of art.

No, it’s not. Plenty of people recognize art in nature and nature didn’t have an intent or will to express itself. As a matter of fact, a lot of art is created when people get their own wills out of their way.

[The Shadow]

necessary ingredient of art

There are many and varied ingredients that go into art and no one, two, or three of these ingredients are necessary for art. Anyone may blissfully decide that this or that ingredient is the key to the secret sauce but that would just be arbitrary rule-making ... art has to have this or that. It often feels good to come up with definitive answers to not so definitive concepts like art but, ultimately, such restricting and forced answers are no solution at all. The answer to “What is art?” that I’ve found more satisfactory than most is in the experience of it, whether as maker or viewer. Listing necessary ingredients does away with so much of its wonder and power. What ingredients are necessary for love, for fear, for loneliness? I don’t find it a terribly beneficial or even coherent way to look at these things, certainly not when they get tethered to “necessity.”

[The Shadow]

the facts

... according to one nobody ...

 

What a lot of humans don’t realize is that stating that something is a fact doesn’t make it a fact. Repeating it doesn’t make it a fact. Being more adamant and petulant about it doesn’t make it a fact. As a matter of fact, the more ego and petulance behind the statement of so-called facts the more reason there often is to be at least skeptical that they are facts.

Edited April 14, 2019 by The Shadow

[The Shadow]

The truth is more important than the facts. —Frank Lloyd Wright

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. —Arthur Conan Doyle

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires. —Hilary Mantel

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unlock his powers. —Erich Fromm

If I am a fool it is, at least, a doubting one, and I envy no one the certainty of his own self-approved wisdom. —Lord Byron

Now, these are just quotes, suggestions, not proof of anything, not proofs of anything about art.

 

I think facts are important in mathematics and many practical matters. I want to know for a fact the stove is not hot before I let my two-year-old go near it, assuming I’m not into letting her learn this the hard way.

 

I don’t think there are fact-based definitions of art ... or love for that matter.

 

A definition of art masquerading as fact is akin to an oxymoron. Even as I embrace a variety of definitions of art I am aware of them not as facts but as placeholders.

 

Art is, in my opinion, at least in part the future. The future is the unknown. No one who has ever tried to tie down what is art or what ingredients supposedly constitute art hasn’t had the future pull the rug out from under them. Making any ingredient or group of ingredients a necessity for art simply means you’ll be dated in no time.

[inoneeye]

I would take any opportunity to explore and learn from a collaboration with an AI creating art. I think that the more we humans step back from the front end and unleash AI from human comparison, creating fewer human imposed restrictions we are likely to need a rewrite of the dictionary definitions of creativity and Art. So less programing using human history and examples and concentrating on freeing the AI from human experience might be very illuminating.

[leo_papandreou1]

Here's how a computer makes art using an AI. Human finds something to say and a concept with which to say it. Human identifies a promising source of non-uniform data. Human gathers data, transforms and encodes it. Human writes an algorithm to process data. Human visually interprets result (1s and 0s). Human evaluates result for artistic merit. Human tweaks some parameters and repeats. Here's what the computer is inspired to express at every stage in this process: heat.

[leo_papandreou1]

Also, it's not true the human has no idea what the computer will come up with. The AI in the article that started this thread, for example, produces landscape photo thingies. There may be some surprising details (I dunno, a donut lake?) but so what, digital paint flowing over the digital page, the overall look will be modulated by the data and algorithm. Human beings are more surprising, it's just that we expect them to be.

[leo_papandreou1]

I do not mean to minimize the accomplishments of AI in art. As my inadequate outline above should suggest they clearly derive from a ton of expert work.

 

Not that I feel inadequate or anything, "f8 and be there" is hard enough, the most important thing remains finding something to say and a concept with which to say it.

[inoneeye]

... because all the computer knows is the data you feed it- it might pick up a biased view of the world with biased results ... then it surpasses human knowledge and surprises us. What I look forward to is AI created art as humans take a step back from the machine and give it the freedom to travel its own path (teach itself) which I think will happen or has begun with an AI like 'alphago zero'. All alphago can do is play go. There are set rules for the game of go but a mind boggling number of optional moves. Alphago found unimagined (by masters) moves/ strategies. It surprised pretty much everyone.

Making art is not as easily defined. It is exciting to consider what AI will conceive. new moves.

[leo_papandreou1]

My rule I just made up: don't bet against computers at anything that admits child prodigies. Things like sociology seem safe (LOL @ a 5 y.o. Karl Marx).

[inoneeye]

Art and creativity require a large amount of abstract thinking which is precisely what an A.I. can’t do.

to be sure. But where is the line. That is why I think it is so fascinating being present during the beginning of AI and questioning if AI can/will create art.

[inoneeye]

Well, the line is consciousness.

 

... time will tell with AI. animals have consciousness and some believe are capable of abstract thinking. I find myself wondering about that line, even more now with AI.

Edited April 16, 2019 by inoneeye

[mjferron]

Right back at ya.

 

Driverless cars. They’re the wave of the future, soulless as they are. A day will come when they will likely be safer than cars driven by humans, especially if the oh-so-soulful humans continue texting and applying makeup while driving. Having a soul doesn’t mean having “good” intentions just because it means having intentions. There are plenty of unsafe and stupid souls driving cars. So, I don’t particularly care whether what’s driving the car is a soulless program/mechanism, as long as it’s safe. Whether it “intends” to prevent an accident or is programmed to do so doesn’t matter to me. I’ll take the safe route.

 

Though a programmer may intend for the AI system to make art, at a certain point the programmer has no intention or even a guess as to what art the machine will make. The machine will be closer to the art than the programmer. The programmer programs the machine to go well beyond the programmer’s ability to specify the results of his own work.

 

You’ve heard of Frankenstein, who built the sympathetic monster who humans simply couldn’t understand? There’s a Truth for you. And I’d posit that the monster had more good in it, though soulless, than a lot of the people with souls who went after it.

 

Goodness is not merely a matter of intention. It can be found in results. Though it’s up to those with souls to judge something good or not, it’s not only the actions of those with souls that produce good. Nature produces good, which humans then recognize as good. Machines produce good as well, sometimes by being programmed to go beyond what a human is actually capable of, like driving emotionlessly or without the possibility of human distractions.

 

Now if I decide to have a few beers at the local Pub and let said driverless car take me home am I safe from a possible DWI? I never have more than I beer when out as it stands.

[Supriyo]

Now if I decide to have a few beers at the local Pub and let said driverless car take me home am I safe from a possible DWI? I never have more than I beer when out as it stands.

 

Notice the phrase "A day will come" in his text. That day hasn't come yet.

[Allen Herbert]

@Any future that’s dependent on more automation as the means to alleviate personal responsibility is no future at all' Phil.

 

The thing is Phil we are a very dependant species biologically or technology speaking. Did you know that 47% of your body is made up with little microbes without them...well. How would you do without your smart phone or how would the majority of ports be run without A1 intelligence. Just a example. Of course your never ending thoughts are that A1 is just a number crunching machine with the limitations that implies.

 

Why back in time deep blue defeated the world chess champion. The programmer's taught it to play chess. and then it moved on from their simple understandings of chess to be something else.

 

The reality is automation runs the world and behind it is a form of A1 intelligence..

 

The big question is whether it will form a self awareness or what many call a soul. With the advent of quantum computers, and their massive processing power, the possibility is more likely than not.

 

The magic of humanity is our imagination. What we imagine we create whether Art or Technology which really are birds of a feather.

 

Both the creation of imagination.

[Allen Herbert]

[Allen Herbert]

Methinks my friend you are lost in the days.

 

Strange, indeed, when your photography is so much about the creativity of imagination .