Mark's Blog: March 2017

The Ubiquity of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Computers have come a long way in a short space of time. Software competes against human endeavour, and has become stronger, e.g. chess and Go. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now a commonplace phrase, and produces creative output in, inter alia, literature, poetry, music and art. It’s not unreasonable to assume that with time these outputs will supersede human output in quality and quantity.

Introduction

In 2700 BCE Man was reliant on tools for daily survival, such as the spear for hunting, tools for making and containing a fire, and a tool for trade computations, i.e. the abacus.[i]

In the modern day, reliance on tools has not reduced, and one wonders if existence without said tools is even possible. When the handheld calculator was invented in 1967, little did anyone guess future events.[ii] For example, the square root of 4 is 2; the abacus confirms it. The square root of 2 is 1.414 and a bit. That ‘bit’ was calculated in 2010 to be 1 trillion digits, and later calculated to 10 trillion digits.[iii] It seemed unnecessary, but … Man is curious.

With regards the game of chess, in 1996 World Champion Gary Kasparov lost to a computer, named Deep Blue.[iv] This was a remarkable moment in computers, programming, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and related words only to be found in OMNI magazine.[v] There was talk that Man was well and truly on the back foot.

Since then chess software (known as chess engines) has developed. The current World Chess Champion, Magnus Carlsen, has a FIDE rating of 2835.[vi] The top 3 chess engines have chess ratings as follows:

Computer Chess Engines	Rating
Houdini 4	3277
Stockfish 6	3318
Komodo 9	3340

These chess engines can even play each other, and have been doing so at the World Computer Chess Championship for the last 22 years. The results of the last 3 years have been:[vii] [viii]

Year	Computer Chess Engine winner
2014	Junior
2015	Jonny
2016	Komodo

And in further news, the 2500 year old Chinese board game Go, has a new champion. In early 2016, for the first time, the engine AlphaGo beat the human then-champion Lee Se-dol.[ix] Back foot indeed.

Communication

When driving in one’s vehicle and using a GPS, a common feature is a voice instructing the driver when and where to turn. These are pre-programmed verbal cues corresponding to an algorithm.

In a more complicated development, there is a computer program whereby one types in any sentence, and the software verbalizes what you wrote.[x] This is known as text-to-voice. One can also instruct a page of writing to be delivered through voice, even an entire text.

Getting more complicated, one can verbally instruct one’s Smartphone, and receive audible confirmation, for example, the intelligent assistant named SIRI, found in Apple products.[xi]

Crossing the Rubicon

In 1950 Alan Turing developed the Turing Test.[xii] It is a test of computer ability to present intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, a human being. Put otherwise, if you are in a written conversation with someone, can you tell if the other side is human or a machine?

In 2014, a computer named Eugene Goostman, passed this test, which no computer had passed before.[xiii]

There is currently a program named CleverBot which allows one to type in questions and statements and receive, what appear to be, coherent replies.[xiv] Try it out.

There has been much development in the realm of presenting a verbal statement and receiving a verbal reply, like a conversation. These programs, in human mannequin form, are known as androids, and even have names: Erica,[xv] Bina48,[xvi] Nadine,[xvii] Jules,[xviii] Sophia.[xix]

This verbal riposte is entertaining; one almost believes the banter is meaningful. At a certain point of development it will be meaningful, probably first to one’s pets, then to children, perhaps even to the uninitiated. Here’s the rub: It’s always other people who are fooled, and the android will always be a clumsy automaton, or will it? Man is curious.

A vital ingredient for AI complexity is required: Creativity.

Literature

I writhed with joy, which I experienced for the first time, and kept writing with excitement. The day a computer wrote a novel. The computer, placing priority on the pursuit of its own joy, stopped working for humans.

This is the final paragraph of a short story submitted for the Japanese third Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award, titled “The Day A Computer Writes A Novel”.[xx] What is notable about this competition is that judges are not informed which novels were written by humans and which were “created” by human-computer teams.[xxi] This short story, not a winner although it passed the first round of judging, was robot-written.

To press a button and obtain a manuscript exists even in the realm of non-fiction. Automatic essay generation exists, whereby you input the title, specify topic keywords, word count, research depth, bibliography, and within a few seconds the work is auto-written.[xxii] [xxiii]

NaNoGenMo started as a casual competition in 2013, with the requirement to write programming code during the month of November that generated a 50,000 word novel. Now in its fourth year it’s going from strength to strength. In 2015, 500 entries were received.[xxiv]

If software can identify aspects of an author’s style, it’s possible, well, probable, that similar output can be generated. This is the intent behind a Google project to predict and replicate the works of famous dead authors, such as Dickens, Austen, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Melville.[xxv] Sounds kind of like a good thing.

Poetry

Given the following 2 poems, which one was written by a human?

My adult oblivion[xxvi]

What muse and for love thus removed it, upon

My hand, others drag this thought to waft my

Name— drew. Oh, and trembling terror

Brings him fainting before thy path not have

Never fled, and there to thought's, my boast, without

One on a ring of men, three as finishing

Fate all bare sense of thee how hastily.

Oh may keep one thought of grave-damps o'er,

But only live the palmer bent on my

Lovers gone, if some palace-floor, diverse

From what sweetness, which conceal'd chips called to

Me that floats valley-fountain I wear too

Calm and absent all, my adult oblivion

Yield, at once on the kingdom of thy call

The second poem:

Leaning up[xxvii]

Is it and leaning up the fruit lingers

In night with thy love, I desperate and to

Take at my secret influence thus to

The wise souls stand further road will not say.

Let us to be christ is changed was of thee,

And what a death shall know thee withdraw their

Scheme lost saints, and injury their ears. At

Our two transform'd my foot’s dark, and precious,

And yet perplexed into the lustre spent,

And all my palm-tree something that censures

Life-angel justified follows where

Nothing hindereth o I may less truth

And such who in armour mail'd green wave appears,

And sickness if thou wert. Sonnet to do.

See the endnotes for the answer. To make it simpler, which of the following 2 sonnets were written by a computer program aka robot?

Sonnet 1[xxviii]

This is the same harsh angle of the sun,
this is the same so deadly humid heat
I felt that week your ending had begun,
reflecting from the glass along the street,
the shattered bits of accidents or trash,
the careless cost of greed obsessed with speed,
the same damned world that made your system crash
and sprout that cancer like a roadside weed.
I walked those mornings to the hospital,
eyes downcast, sweating, breathing in the fumes
of fast Columbus traffic, senses dull,
or so I thought, but now this heat exhumes
the body of that grief. I saw, I heard,
and I remember, Mother. Every word

Sonnet 2[xxix]

The dirty rusty wooden dresser drawer.
A couple million people wearing drawers,
Or looking through a lonely oven door,
Flowers covered under marble floors.

And lying sleeping on an open bed.
And I remember having started tripping,
Or any angel hanging overhead,
Without another cup of coffee dripping.

Surrounded by a pretty little sergeant,
Another morning at an early crawl.
And from the other side of my apartment,
An empty room behind the inner wall.

A thousand pictures on the kitchen floor,
Talked about a hundred years or more.

See the endnotes for the answer. The issue is not how good the software is but rather how fallible we are.

If software can recognise, predict and replicate the writing styles of famous deceased authors, one assumes this may well extend to poets: Shakespeare, Yeats, Wordsworth, Wilde, even Homer. Sounds kind of like a good thing.

Music

AI systems are able to create, i.e. generate music, autonomously. Sony has released 2 songs, “Daddy’s car” and “Mr Shadow”.[xxx] [xxxi] [xxxii] Global annual music sales are over $15 billion; this is a lucrative market.[xxxiii] In 2016, Google’s Magenta program produced its first piece of generated music. Just four notes were presented. After the creation the drums and orchestration were added (by humans) for effect.[xxxiv] Listen to it hear by clicking on the endnote.[xxxv]

If songs can be generated in an instant and songwriters fees waived, and if software capability is a factor of time and investment, then this area of development should reach a high level of proficiency quite soon.

Perhaps, just as software can recognise, predict and replicate writing styles of deceased authors, the same can be said for music. Music in the style of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and even popular music could be forthcoming. Sounds kind of like a good thing.

For example, there is a AI model named DeepBach which can compose polyphonic chorales in the style of J.S. Bach.[xxxvi] The chorale is a rather formulaic piece of Lutheran church music that usually reharmonizes a well-known melody.[xxxvii] This is not a plagiarism of Bach, and it even fooled some critics; most importantly, it produced genuinely new work. Some critics have identified compositional errors like parallel octaves, but the Bach-like patterns of characteristic cadences to the expressive use of non-chord tones are accurate reproductions. The piece can be heard at this footnote.[xxxviii]

It must be noted that music is a powerful influencer, and not always in a good way, e.g. Seress’ Hungarian Suicide Song, aka Gloomy Sunday.[xxxix] [xl] Furthermore, the perfection of a computer’s output is cause for concern: No errors. Brian Eno warns of the same error-free, consistent production played every time, with perfected voices having been run through pitch-correction software; it’s simply not human.[xli] The algorithm might need to be tweaked.

Art

What is art? (Perhaps an easier question would be What is the meaning of life?) Art, by definition, is:

The conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.[xlii]
The class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art include paintings, sculptures, drawings.[xliii]
The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.[xliv]

The practitioners of art have a different way of defining and describing art:

1. "Art is either plagiarism or revolution." Paul Gauguin, painter[xlv]

2. "Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider." Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist and poet[xlvi]

3. "Art is meant to disturb. Science reassures." Georges Braque, painter[xlvii]

4. "Art is long, and time is fleeting." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet.[xlviii]

5. "Art is the signature of civilizations." Jean Sibelius, composer[xlix]

6. "Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand." Pablo Picasso[l]

7. "Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world." Leonardo da Vinci[li]

8. "Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence." Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher[lii]

These quotes are important; the artists are accomplished, the statements reflect their experience, and it becomes clear that art is essential to the human spirit.

Enter the realm of software, AI, robots, etc. The term robotic art refers to any artwork that employs a form of robotic or automated technology.[liii] Example, brush strokes, complicated patterns applied with a unique instrument.[liv] A combination of software and hardware that can produce an existing work of art seems not dissimilar to a printer printing an image. Deep Dream Generator receives images and re-interprets them to a style or medium, e.g. charcoal, crayon, psychedelic, etc.[lv] The key question, asked a bit fearfully, is Can a computer make art?

The Painting Fool is a computer program that claims to answer this question by creating portraits based on its mood, assessing its own work, and learning from its mistakes.[lvi] [lvii] Its work has been exhibited in multiple galleries; there is even a Facebook page.[lviii]

There is also the Robot Art Contest which accepts submissions in two categories:[lix]

Telerobotics, which is for robots that collaborate with humans (prize money of $10 000), and
Fully Automated painting robots (prize money of $30 000)

French artist Patrick Tresset is the inventor of Paul-IX, an automated sketch-bot that can outline a still-life setting.[lx] The robot comprises a camera, an arm holding a writing instrument, and software that operates the process. The work has been exhibited in art galleries. There is a recording on YouTube at this endnote.[lxi]

What’s notable about Tresset’s robot is that the image is drawn on paper. Technology exists for an image to be created … in air. Think hologram. Holovect is an application that draws 3D images in air using light.[lxii] It’s a holographic display, presenting free-floating objects in space, and projections can be manipulated in real time.

Hologram technology has developed to the point that actual item A in Hologram Box A in Location A can present image B in Hologram Box B at Location B; the Haptoclone does all, and it’s in real time.[lxiii] [lxiv] Added to this is ultrasound energy which creates the sensation of touching and being touched. In the public environment this might be used as a communication device, seeing the person you’re speaking to in 3D, and being able to experience the sensation of touch.

AARON is a computer program that has been in continual development since 1973, and claims to create original artistic images. Early programming was in C, then changed to Lisp. At one point the programs ran on a DEC VAX 750 minicomputer. Given the early development, many questions were asked about its output, if it was original, the nature of creative work, the nature of creativity versus a program following procedural instructions.[lxv]

Prisma is a program that takes a digital image and changes it to look like a painting in the style of particular painter. With this technology a simple image can have multiple siblings, each with a different style (e.g. Picasso, Van Gogh, Munch, Levitan, etc.). The software, in analyzing the pre-set artists even analyses their brush strokes. This is a welcome approach in an art environment where emphasis on painting techniques has waned, to be replaced by boldness or intricacy of ideas.[lxvi]

The interaction of art and technology is even taught formally, e.g. the University of London has a course titled Machine learning for musicians and artists.[lxvii] Perhaps, just as software can recognise, predict and replicate writing styles of deceased authors, this can be applied to art: Van Gogh, Vermeer, da Vinci, Michelangelo, etc. Sounds kind of like a good thing.

Discussion & Conclusion

Moore’s Law came into effect after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore noted that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since their invention.[lxviii] As a predictor, this Law was first scoffed at, and yet the growth rate of computing power has been incredible.

What is required is a Moore’s Law for AI creativity. The handheld calculator, the chess engine, passing the Turing test, the Go engine, then literature, poetry, music and art. It’s difficult to establish the rate of progress but it is evident.

One area of the AI field is the philosophic questioning about a computer making art, what defines an original piece of work, how human art appreciation differs from computer art, etc. The philosophy of digital art is not an established field; if this field interests you then refer to the work of Dominic Lopes.[lxix]

A connected area of AI art is the programming, e.g. creating an original piece of work at the touch of a button, or taking an image and reinterpreting it in a unique way. Some AI programs have been mentioned, and although each seems somewhat limited, the way creativity expands is to mix and grow exponentially on previous ideas.

A third area is the output of art, which is the intention, after all. One might wonder when (not if) computer art complexity will pass its Turing test. Let the public decide.

Two observations are notable:

Program/ Application fluency is a factor of time.
Creativity is pivotal for product development, and Man’s needs seem without end. Programmers and designers are creative in finding new applications. With software becoming a source of creativity, it will be very interesting to see what transpires.

The perseverant world turns, motivated by profit and perceived value, limited only by Man’s imagination, until now. Back foot indeed, and yet it sounds kind of like a good thing.

- end -

Further reading

25 real-life robots that will make you think the future is now[lxx]
5 Advanced humanoid robots you have to see to believe[lxxi]
The 5 best computer chess engines[lxxii]
These androids can hold a conversation and crack jokes[lxxiii]
9 computer-generated novels you should read, or attempt to, or at least look at in wonderment[lxxiv]

Keywords

AI, Android, Animatronics, Artificial creativity, Artificial Intelligence, Chat robots, Chatterbots, Chatterboxes, Cognitive computing, Computational creativity, computer vision, Creative computation, Creative computing, Humanoid robot, Mechanical creativity, Robot, Robotics, Uncanny Valley

Engines/ Robots/ Androids referred to in this essay