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Some humans creates novel things. You might not be able to think that way, but other humans can. For example, humans started making computer games, but there w

Some humans creates novel things. You might not be able to think that way, but other humans can. For example, humans started making computer games, but there were no computer games before, and now we have all these genres and stuff. Humans are capable of doing creative novel works from nothing. So you personally might be an uncreative automaton who just copies what others said or did, but that isn't normal, other humans can think in novel ways.

krapp 4y ago
Name one computer game created without any cultural or historical referents then, "from nothing" as it were. If you mention Pong or Spacewar, you've already lost. Table tennis and the Lensman books, respectively. Literally anything humans do is based on prior influences, referents and data. There's no aether out of which the "spark" of inspiration strikes, nor does anything emerge from the pure vaccuum, creativity is just neurons doing what they will with the information they already have. Therefore the only difference between human genius and the mediocre output of AIs is complexity, and the only question worth asking is how far that gap can reasonably be bridged. It's understandable that this is upsetting, because it threatens one of the last bastions of human divinity, and no one really wants to believe human beings in all their splendor, subtlety and complexity are just a pile of ad-hoc stochastic wetware algorithms running on a hemisphere of gelatinous goo, no more divine than a stone on the ground, but eventually as this technology matures we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that creativity can be manufactured, just like anything else, and like anything manufactured, its quality will inevitably surpass anything humans are capable of.
- Jensson 4y ago
  All of those things were created by humans. An AI isn't an individual, an AI must be compared to the entirety of humanity. The Go AI for example is better than humanity at Go, it is capable of being creative at Go and doesn't just repeat human moves in different combinations. Humans are capable of being creative similarly to how the Go AI is capable of being creative, statistical AI's that just copies doesn't seem to be capable of such creativity.
- jonathanstrange 4y ago
  What are the "cultural or historical referents" of Tetris, Angry Birds, and Snake?
  - defrost 4y ago
    Pyramid building, The Emu War, and Pentecostal snake handling ... clearly.
  - krapp 4y ago
    Tetris: the author's childhood playing pentominoes[0] Angry Birds: "a sketch of stylized wingless birds[1]", apparently, and games using that basic physics go back ages, and are inspired by cannon warfare[2] Snake: all Snake games are based on Blockade, published by Gremlin industries, where I found this[3] on an interesting site HN might like "[Lane Hauck] While we were designing wall games, I was tinkering in the back room with a video circuit that became our Blockade game board. I kept showing my work to Frank Fogleman and Jerry, pestering them with the “can we get into video now?” question. I made a 32x24 cell frame buffer with graphical characters. I was intrigued by the random walk in Physics…which said a drunk taking steps in random directions around a lamppost would gravitate to the lamppost. I decided to program an arrow to be the drunk, and watched it flit around the screen for about a minute before getting bored. Then I thought, what if the drunk can’t visit the same square twice? I made that adjustment, and watched the arrow move a bit and then get trapped. The step from there to Blockade was a small one. (Hauck 2012)" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris#Conception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris#Conception [1] https://www.cleverism.com/why-angry-birds-got-successful/ https://www.cleverism.com/why-angry-birds-got-successful/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game [3] http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-ultimate-so-far-history-of-gremlin_25.html http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-ultima...
college_physics 4y ago
Ha ha, love this. Ofcourse what we might call "higher" brain functionality is not uniformly distributed as realized capabilities, being a obscure mix of innate hardwiring and education. But it would be extremely odd if it wasn't quite uniformly available to all fully functioning brains in a qualitative and in-principle manner. Which begs the question: why would individuals intentionally diminish the own status when there is nothing much objective to support it? I guess it is for them to answer this, but what I would volunteer as a possibility is the enormous power of collective mental models / narratives. By adopting the "brain is a computer" narrative you become member (or aspired to become) of a certain social group that, incidentally, has been "winning" in a certain socio-economic context.
cortic 4y ago
Humans evolved playing as a teaching (data set input) strategy. We took playing and trees and made games around climbing, we took playing and puzzling things and made puzzle games, we took computers and puzzle games and made video games; We have a very similar algorithm to AI for creating 'new' things, that never really strays from our data sets.

krapp 4y ago

Name one computer game created without any cultural or historical referents then, "from nothing" as it were. If you mention Pong or Spacewar, you've already lost. Table tennis and the Lensman books, respectively. Literally anything humans do is based on prior influences, referents and data. There's no aether out of which the "spark" of inspiration strikes, nor does anything emerge from the pure vaccuum, creativity is just neurons doing what they will with the information they already have. Therefore the only difference between human genius and the mediocre output of AIs is complexity, and the only question worth asking is how far that gap can reasonably be bridged. It's understandable that this is upsetting, because it threatens one of the last bastions of human divinity, and no one really wants to believe human beings in all their splendor, subtlety and complexity are just a pile of ad-hoc stochastic wetware algorithms running on a hemisphere of gelatinous goo, no more divine than a stone on the ground, but eventually as this technology matures we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that creativity can be manufactured, just like anything else, and like anything manufactured, its quality will inevitably surpass anything humans are capable of.

Jensson 4y ago
All of those things were created by humans. An AI isn't an individual, an AI must be compared to the entirety of humanity. The Go AI for example is better than humanity at Go, it is capable of being creative at Go and doesn't just repeat human moves in different combinations. Humans are capable of being creative similarly to how the Go AI is capable of being creative, statistical AI's that just copies doesn't seem to be capable of such creativity.
jonathanstrange 4y ago
What are the "cultural or historical referents" of Tetris, Angry Birds, and Snake?
- defrost 4y ago
  Pyramid building, The Emu War, and Pentecostal snake handling ... clearly.
- krapp 4y ago
  Tetris: the author's childhood playing pentominoes[0] Angry Birds: "a sketch of stylized wingless birds[1]", apparently, and games using that basic physics go back ages, and are inspired by cannon warfare[2] Snake: all Snake games are based on Blockade, published by Gremlin industries, where I found this[3] on an interesting site HN might like "[Lane Hauck] While we were designing wall games, I was tinkering in the back room with a video circuit that became our Blockade game board. I kept showing my work to Frank Fogleman and Jerry, pestering them with the “can we get into video now?” question. I made a 32x24 cell frame buffer with graphical characters. I was intrigued by the random walk in Physics…which said a drunk taking steps in random directions around a lamppost would gravitate to the lamppost. I decided to program an arrow to be the drunk, and watched it flit around the screen for about a minute before getting bored. Then I thought, what if the drunk can’t visit the same square twice? I made that adjustment, and watched the arrow move a bit and then get trapped. The step from there to Blockade was a small one. (Hauck 2012)" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris#Conception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris#Conception [1] https://www.cleverism.com/why-angry-birds-got-successful/ https://www.cleverism.com/why-angry-birds-got-successful/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game [3] http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-ultimate-so-far-history-of-gremlin_25.html http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-ultima...

college_physics 4y ago

Ha ha, love this. Ofcourse what we might call "higher" brain functionality is not uniformly distributed as realized capabilities, being a obscure mix of innate hardwiring and education. But it would be extremely odd if it wasn't quite uniformly available to all fully functioning brains in a qualitative and in-principle manner. Which begs the question: why would individuals intentionally diminish the own status when there is nothing much objective to support it? I guess it is for them to answer this, but what I would volunteer as a possibility is the enormous power of collective mental models / narratives. By adopting the "brain is a computer" narrative you become member (or aspired to become) of a certain social group that, incidentally, has been "winning" in a certain socio-economic context.

cortic 4y ago

Humans evolved playing as a teaching (data set input) strategy. We took playing and trees and made games around climbing, we took playing and puzzling things and made puzzle games, we took computers and puzzle games and made video games; We have a very similar algorithm to AI for creating 'new' things, that never really strays from our data sets.