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Life is full of changes, and so is the business industry. As a result, people always worry how they will thrive in an environment that is continuously changing. As difficult as it seems, it is very possible. You always need to be on the lookout. Therefore, in this article, you will learn how to thrive in a changing environment. 

Ideas  

According to Jason Silva, multilingual people are privy to multiple world views, and thus more fluid creativity.

SOURCE  Shots of Awe

By 33rd Square

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 Artificial Intelligence  

In his new book, The Formula, author Luke Dormehl asks if all of our world, including human creativity, can be defined by computer code, what will it mean?

Algorithms are already playing a big part in fields of work and the trend is increasing. What if everything about creativity could be reduced to a simple formula?

This may sound like the world of science-fiction, but in fact it is just the tip of the iceberg in a world that is increasingly ruled by complex algorithms and artificial intelligence.

In his book The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems—And Create More, author Luke Dormehl says that today we know that they can do so much more with computers and artificial intelligence: from driving cars to diagnosing medical conditions. Why, then, should the creative process be beyond them?

Stephen Ramsay, author of Reading Machines, calls The Formula, "An essential text for understanding the shimmering boundary between human beings and the machines they create."

In The Formula, Dormehl discusses Epagogix, a London-based company which uses artificial intelligence neural networks to screen test films prior to their release.

Epagogix's data-mining and deep learning algorithms have shown that they can accurately forecast how much money a movie is going to make at the box office.

When Epagogix submits its final report to a movie studio it presents a thin dossier that essentially presents just two different numbers. The first of these is the projected box-office forecast for a film as written. The second figure is the predicted gross for the film on the condition that certain recommended tweaks are made to the script. According to Epagogix's system the changes recommended by the AI typically project a 10 percent higher gross with the changes, although it can sometimes be up to twice its value.

The neural network can be used to single out individual elements where the potential yield is not where it should be — or where one part of the film is dragging down others.

This is the point at which an algorithm seems to be making creative decisions.

Fast Company writer Dormehl also points out that in literature, a growing group of scholars have called for an "algorithmic criticism" that would turn literature studies into a branch of computer science. In algorithmic criticism, computer programs are used to determine "vocabulary richness" in text by measuring the number of different words which appear in a 50,000-word block of text.

Algorithms can also be used to determine authorship, as was the case last year when they were used to reveal that The Cuckoo's Calling -- a crime novel written by supposed first-time author Robert Galbraith -- was actually the work of Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling. Rowling later admitted to writing under a pseudonym.

With knowledge of the high-level details that characterize an artist's work (Rowling's recurrent word pairings, for example, or the temp and time signature of a particular musical act) it might even prove possible to generate new works in an existing style.

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The same techniques work for other creative arts, like music.  Lior Shamir has created an algorithm capable of sorting the Beatles' music into chronological order by tracking their musical progression. Soon the software might actually write new music. "Theoretically it's certainly possible," Shamir told Dormehl. "The problem right now is the amount of computing power you would need to let the computer do that kind of composition."

Contemporary Italian architect and designer Celestino Soddu. Soddu uses what are referred to as genetic algorithms to generate endless variations on individual themes. These systems generate evolution digitially. Adopting the idea that living organisms are the consummate problem solvers, and using this to optimize specific solutions, Soddu first inputs what he considers to be the "rules" that define, say, a chair or a Baroque cathedral. His algorithms can then conceptualize what a particular object might look like were it a living entity undergoing thousands of years of natural selection.

Some of Dormehl's examples challenge our notions of what creativity actually is. "It is clear that, just autonomic law enforcement and identity in the age of Google, creativity in the algorithmic era won't look exactly the same as pre-digital creativity. But why should it? Cinema and popular novels reflects the Industrial Age with its focus on standardized products designed to sell to the largest number of people possible," he writes.

By 33rd Square

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 Friendly AI  

To spur the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) David Hanson urges greater international and cross-disciplinary co-operation. His goal is to develop AGI systems that surpass human-level creative genius, yet remain friendly. He calls these creations, Genius Machines.

Robotics pioneer, David Hanson is pushing for an integrated global initiative to create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).  His goal is to develop AGI systems that surpass human-level creative genius, yet remain friendly.  He calls these creations, Genius Machines.

Hanson has created the robots, Bina48, Diego-San and is the Robokind platform. Hanson's work in rubber and sculpture resulted in the amazing breakthrough of Frubber™. He integrates a vast array of disciplines including engineering, philosophy and art to further the development of “robots as socially adept as any human being.” He is as much an artist as a scientist, and his work in robotics have earned him praise as a “genius” by both PC Magazine and WIRED.

Related articles Consumer Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Company ANKI Debuts  David Hanson and Dmitry Itskov Discuss the 2045 Initiative  Robots For Everybody

To accomplish the goal of Genius Machines, Hanson proposes the following techniques to accelerate progress:

GENI (www.geni.ai) - GENI is an organization created to rally the effort in creating genius machines.  The resulting AI can be called GENI, which stands for Generation of General Intelligence.  Hanson hopes botht he tools and the community of GENI will serve as a breeding ground for new AGI.

GLUE (www.glue.ai) - To make the GENI systems, GLUE proposes to be an effort to bridge the numerous components into super-systems. These "bridging" efforts seek to expand the integrative design of AI, AGI and robotics research.  Hanson hopes to bridge platforms such as ROS, Microsoft's Robotic programming system, OpenCog and more with GLUE.

Character AI - Perhaps what Hanson is most famous for is the development of character and expression driven robotics and AI.  To him, the natural, human-like interaction is a requisite scaffold for Friendly AGI.  First, such design allows for people to desire and interact with the systems, and second this market may naturally select for AGI that understand humans and care about us--leading towards increasingly Friendly AGI.

Interestingly, Hanson proposes that creativity is an emergent pattern from physical interaction, and that perhaps our own creativity is distinguished by complexity and our memory.  It follows then, that for artificial intelligence systems to be considered creative they should probably be enabled with robotics.

Hanson would like to further develop the creative capacity of AI systems through research.

Overall he also stresses the need for better software and hardware systems to make Genius Machines possible.  Part of this development will require extending intelligent robotics out of research labs and into the consumer space.

The video was recorded at the Winter Intelligence Oxford http://winterintelligence.org - Organized by the Future of Humanity Institute http://fhi.ox.ac.uk/ - AGI12 -http://agi-conference.org/2012.


SOURCE  Adam Ford

By 33rd Square

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