4 ms·

Every article claiming we're on the cusp of the singularity reads identically to those written 10-15 years ago too. This reads this way because computers haven

Every article claiming we're on the cusp of the singularity reads identically to those written 10-15 years ago too. This reads this way because computers haven't made large strides in any creative endeavor in the last 10-15 years. Why should that be a point against the argument?

sambe 10y ago
The majority of the discussion on the topic is not claiming we are on the cusp. It is claiming that it is a) a danger; b) likely to be fast if it happens. Almost maximally irrelevant to a claim that nothing significant has happened recently, so not a problem.
M_Grey 10y ago
I'm not sure that this argument is entirely sound, given how incredibly slowly humans move as a species to cope with anything new, and how quickly this particular kind of "new" would be likely to emerge. I don't know about you, but a few generations of ongoing discussion seems downright necessary to me, if we have a hope of not making some catastrophic mistakes.
tim333 10y ago
Computers can now take images and produce output in the style of major artists eg. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the-style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431718 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/1184... You may say that's just an algorithm but it's way better than I can do personally. That was all figured out within the last decade. Also the computer art was produced by artificial neural networks, my attempts if I made some would be done by regular neural networks. Who's to say the computer stuff doesn't count as creative but mine does?
- pavlov 10y ago
  Computers are way better than me at a lot of things: arithmetic, remembering things, surviving on a diet of plain electricity, just to mention a few... Transferring local patterns between images and playing Go have recently been shown to be a few more of those things. But how far will that generalize? Nobody knows.
- yosefk 10y ago
  Computers cannot take images and produce output in the style of major artists. If you think they can, give them realistic art and watch them embed eyes from the source image into your mouth. This is not to say that it can't ever be done, just that right now it isn't done by people claiming they can do it. That articles with results similar to 100x cheaper random texture synthesis from 15 years ago get published and hyped in the general press tells you how much of an AI bubble we live in right now.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    Yup. The linked image gallery is actually a pretty good argument against computers being able to take images and produce output in the style of major artists. If you asked a human to paint the Golden Gate bridge in the style of Matisse's "Woman with a hat", they probably wouldn't interpret the request as "make part of the sky look like a hat"[1]. If you asked a human to draw a group of buildings by a canal in the style of JMW Turner, they wouldn't make the buildings look like abstract waveforms[2], even if they were only familiar with his stormy seascapes and had never seen how he actually drew groups of buildings by a canal[3] [1]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the-style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431606 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/1184... [2]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the-style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431572 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/1184... [3]https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jmw+turner+venice&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc0KGvlYjPAhVHBMAKHfrvC5sQ_AUICCgB https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jmw+turner+venice&source=l...
    - WilliamDhalgren 10y ago
      heh a decent point, but to be fair the task really isn't "make a picture in the style of <artist>" but "make a picture in the style of this one other picture". I'm not particularly convinced an otherwise naive human could separate style from motif in such a limited setting. It mainly demonstrates that the network learns rather abstract characteristics of the original picture, to be possible to factor them out. Hardly a way to create new masterpieces, but a nice demo of computer vision advancement.

sambe 10y ago

The majority of the discussion on the topic is not claiming we are on the cusp. It is claiming that it is a) a danger; b) likely to be fast if it happens. Almost maximally irrelevant to a claim that nothing significant has happened recently, so not a problem.

M_Grey 10y ago

I'm not sure that this argument is entirely sound, given how incredibly slowly humans move as a species to cope with anything new, and how quickly this particular kind of "new" would be likely to emerge. I don't know about you, but a few generations of ongoing discussion seems downright necessary to me, if we have a hope of not making some catastrophic mistakes.

tim333 10y ago

Computers can now take images and produce output in the style of major artists eg. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the-style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431718 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/1184... You may say that's just an algorithm but it's way better than I can do personally. That was all figured out within the last decade. Also the computer art was produced by artificial neural networks, my attempts if I made some would be done by regular neural networks. Who's to say the computer stuff doesn't count as creative but mine does?

pavlov 10y ago
Computers are way better than me at a lot of things: arithmetic, remembering things, surviving on a diet of plain electricity, just to mention a few... Transferring local patterns between images and playing Go have recently been shown to be a few more of those things. But how far will that generalize? Nobody knows.
yosefk 10y ago
Computers cannot take images and produce output in the style of major artists. If you think they can, give them realistic art and watch them embed eyes from the source image into your mouth. This is not to say that it can't ever be done, just that right now it isn't done by people claiming they can do it. That articles with results similar to 100x cheaper random texture synthesis from 15 years ago get published and hyped in the general press tells you how much of an AI bubble we live in right now.
- notahacker 10y ago
  Yup. The linked image gallery is actually a pretty good argument against computers being able to take images and produce output in the style of major artists. If you asked a human to paint the Golden Gate bridge in the style of Matisse's "Woman with a hat", they probably wouldn't interpret the request as "make part of the sky look like a hat"[1]. If you asked a human to draw a group of buildings by a canal in the style of JMW Turner, they wouldn't make the buildings look like abstract waveforms[2], even if they were only familiar with his stormy seascapes and had never seen how he actually drew groups of buildings by a canal[3] [1]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the-style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431606 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/1184... [2]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the-style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431572 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/1184... [3]https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jmw+turner+venice&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc0KGvlYjPAhVHBMAKHfrvC5sQ_AUICCgB https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jmw+turner+venice&source=l...
  - WilliamDhalgren 10y ago
    heh a decent point, but to be fair the task really isn't "make a picture in the style of <artist>" but "make a picture in the style of this one other picture". I'm not particularly convinced an otherwise naive human could separate style from motif in such a limited setting. It mainly demonstrates that the network learns rather abstract characteristics of the original picture, to be possible to factor them out. Hardly a way to create new masterpieces, but a nice demo of computer vision advancement.