I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of artificial intelligence and whether we will know when it has truly ‘arrived’. The goalposts seem to move every time I dive into the topic as many machine learning algorithms display intelligent properties that could have passed a Turing Test several decades ago.
Many of us have chatbots on our phones that can deal with basic queries while apps such as Google Now provide us with information before we even need it. The potential for AI and automation to replace jobs is almost guaranteed as we’re currently seeing with brands such as Adidas, McDonalds and Uber
Whether a machine can mimic creativity is a question that has been posed more frequently and the answer to that is yes. Google for example is teaching its artificial intelligence how to understand language by making it predict, and replicate, the works of famous dead authors. Companies such as Melomics are creating brand new music using an AI while teaching a neural network about famous painters such as Picasso or Pollock can lead to some amazing results as you can see below:
Wouldn’t it be great to hire Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt, Suzuki Harunobu, Camille Corot or Jackson Pollock as art consultants for your photography project? Or how about game design? By looking at patterns the neural network can identify elements at multiple levels (e.g. grain, texture, strokes, composition), then use an optimisation process to help generate a new image from scratch.
This leads us further into issues of copyright and ownership and whether those concepts are outdated in the modern digital world. If a machine can randomly produce a famous song or produce a song that then becomes well known around the world, who owns the copyright? As we’re slowly entering the world of abundance it will be fascinating to see these battles play out against ingrained resistance
RESOURCES
Google Deep Dream: 19 of the best images from mesmerising photo software
Instapainting: turn your photo into a painting of that style
Two Minute Papers – Deep Neural Network Learns Van Gogh’s Art
Exploring the Intersection of Art and Machine Intelligence
Deep Style Networks: Famous Painters Make Concept Art for Quake
