AIs are now re-writing history • Hacker News Board

Re: AIs are now re-writing history

#41

Post by hoopism » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 7:58 PM UTC

chrisrhoden wrote: post #20

"I told him that algorithms are, without prompting from their human designers or the owners of the photos, creating human moments that never existed." I'm not sure how anyone could make the argument that this occurred without prompting from their human designers. This seems to be a continuation of a theme, where AI academics and theorists are so divorced from the realities of present-day engineering that they assume…

"Smile!" is one config file away from putting his head on her body. It might be hilarious, but it's not AI.

Citation of hilarity http://manbabies.com/

Re: AIs are now re-writing history

#42

Post by xnull » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 7:58 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #36

xnull wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't a human draw a picture of Usain Bolt in the Greek Olympics? Wouldn't such a criticism also apply to human art?

I don’t understand you. The amount of human art, or indeed the possible maximum number possible of human artistic expressions (from the beginning of time until the end of the universe), is, I believe, far smaller than the pictures you would have left after your sorting filter.

I don't understand you either.

I don't know what you mean by a 'sorting filter', but what I'm talking about is an algorithm that takes >40Mb of data as input (pictures of Bolt and Athens for example) and uses this data to output ~40Mb of Bolt in Athens.

I mean human artists to be an analogy: humans can 'select' a picture of Athens Bolt without enumerating all others. I don't see why computers couldn't.

Re: AIs are now re-writing history

#43

Post by abemassry » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 8:14 PM UTC

nobodysfool wrote: post #38

abemassry wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also had a similar thought experiment, went and built it. Thanks for the other commentors as well I should link to this HN page in the README. https://github.com/abemassry/crazip

Thanks for this. Have you considered using a GPU to speed up computations?

I thought about it, but according to the other commentors here a project like this wouldn't make sense. I was learning python at the time and I wanted to learn about multithreaded programming in python.

I could turn it into a learning project with no practical applications. It would be a good platform to learn about OpenCL, and see if the benchmarking times improve.

Re: AIs are now re-writing history

#44

Post by geekpondering » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 8:16 PM UTC

chrisrhoden wrote: post #20

"I told him that algorithms are, without prompting from their human designers or the owners of the photos, creating human moments that never existed." I'm not sure how anyone could make the argument that this occurred without prompting from their human designers. This seems to be a continuation of a theme, where AI academics and theorists are so divorced from the realities of present-day engineering that they assume…

I don't think its necessarily a question of how close we are to the singularity. I think it's a question of how close we are to the Orwellian Memory Hole.

Re: AIs are now re-writing history

#45

Post by pnathan » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 8:25 PM UTC

whitten wrote: post #15

I appreciate the artistic license of saying the "AIs" are doing this, but this isn't an AI issue at all. This is a particular single purpose program "Smile!" which is producing results by combining pictures together to produce a picture the author never took with a camera. He could have blamed Snidely Whiplash, or the greek god Zeus with just as much verity.

That's a very stupid AI, directed by a human to robotically go after certain categories of pictures and meld them.

Re: AIs are now re-writing history

#46

Post by Zigurd » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 8:35 PM UTC

This an interesting example, but other photo processing techniques can really make the "commissar vanish" and jack up the creepy factor. The same photo software vendors that make your smartphone jpgs look uncannily good can remove moving objects from your vacation snaps. The person being chased by a cop across your Eiffel Tower snap will just vanish without a trace.

The shutter button is just a hint. The camera knows what you want to see before you do.

Re: AIs are now re-writing history

#47

Post by Houshalter » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 9:01 PM UTC

whitten wrote: post #15

I appreciate the artistic license of saying the "AIs" are doing this, but this isn't an AI issue at all. This is a particular single purpose program "Smile!" which is producing results by combining pictures together to produce a picture the author never took with a camera. He could have blamed Snidely Whiplash, or the greek god Zeus with just as much verity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_AI

>Weak AI (also known as narrow AI) defines non-sentient computer intelligence, typically focused on a narrow task. The intelligence of weak AI is limited.

Typically people refer to algorithms that use machine learning, optimization, or other things once believed to be part of the field of AI (once we understand how to do them, they are no longer "AI".) People have been using the word "AI" like this for decades, to the point it's used far more to refer to weak AI than strong AI. When you talk about strong AI you generally have to specify it.

I would say that AI is very closely related to this though. Deep learning is taking over machine vision and simpler hand coded algorithms. It has the capability to generate good synthetic images, and it will probably be used for stuff like this a lot in the future, if it isn't already.

Re: AIs are now re-writing history

#48

Post by Houshalter » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 9:06 PM UTC

ivanche wrote: post #3

Some time ago I conducted a simple (albeit impossible in practice, for now at least) thought experiment. Let's say that average size of a JPEG image is 5 MB. Now, some machine could generate all possible valid JPEG files sized 5 MB. In some of those images there would be events which never happen, and never could (for example Usain Bolt running in 1896 Athens Olympic Games etc.) Of course, sheer number of such images…

Here is an interesting article on a business plan is to copyright every conceivable image and make money on the royalties:

http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-apocalypse-trolls-attack-t...

>“Qentis aims to produce all possible combinations of text (and later on images and sound) and to copyright them,” Qentis’ Michael Marcovici told TorrentFreak.

>“Concerning text we try this in chunks of 400 word articles in English, German and Spanish. That would mean that we will hold the copyright to any text produced from now on and that it becomes impossible for anyone to circumvent Qentis when writing a text.”

>In terms of graphics, Qentis promotional material states that a subsidiary has already generated 3.23% of “all possible images” in the 1000×800 pixel format.

>“We are now generating images at a much faster pace and expect to complete 10 percent of all possible images by the end of 2015. At current projections, we will by 2020 generate every possible image in the 1000×800 pixel resolution,” the company claims.

Re: AIs are now re-writing history

#49

Post by moogleii » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 9:08 PM UTC

mbca wrote: post #32

The middle paragraphs are just further proof that talking to a blowhard like Cory Doctorow is a complete waste of time. The "all photos are fake at some level" slippery slope argument is beyond tiresome. The fact that something like white balance introduces a small amount of post-processing into photographs does not mean that all levels of photo manipulation are somehow equal. That's nonsense on its face and should b…

Exactly. If a dog views the same scene as me, and it presumably sees only black and white, did we see a different reality? No, we saw different colors.

Re: AIs are now re-writing history

#50

Post by itp » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 9:20 PM UTC

moogleii wrote: post #49

mbca wrote: post #32

The middle paragraphs are just further proof that talking to a blowhard like Cory Doctorow is a complete waste of time. The "all photos are fake at some level" slippery slope argument is beyond tiresome. The fact that something like white balance introduces a small amount of post-processing into photographs does not mean that all levels of photo manipulation are somehow equal. That's nonsense on its face and should b…

Exactly. If a dog views the same scene as me, and it presumably sees only black and white, did we see a different reality? No, we saw different colors.

Off topic, but just so you know -- dogs are colorblind (as compared to us) in that they have a more limited perception of color, but they don't just see black and white (and shades of gray)!

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/200810/can...