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- Convenors:
-
Kory Mathewson
(DeepMind)
Piotr Mirowski (DeepMind)
Luba Elliott (elluba.com)
S. M. Ali Eslami (DeepMind)
Chrisantha Fernando (DeepMind)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 8 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
In this era of human-machine symbiosis, we explore what it means to live, think, and feel alongside machine enhancements to our cognition, physicality, and creativity.
Long Abstract:
The history of humanity is one defined by the inventions of new, strange tools that extend the mind [Clark and Chalmers 1998, Noë 2015]. The 21st century is witnessing a major transition, a disruption in the relationship between humans and machines [Smith and Szathmáry, 1995]. Machine learning technology is augmenting human cognition. As we enhance ourselves, we will need to answer questions about the value of our experiences, the right to modify ourselves, the ethics of engineering, the tension between human and machine creativity, and the definition of life itself. How will we respond to this new world of possibilities? Will we be able to overcome our anxieties and cultural biases to embrace a new age of creative symbiosis? And, how can AI help us to better understand each other, with big data holding a mirror of our cultural artifacts?
Creativity is a crucial aspect of human life. Many argue that endless, creative thought is a defining characteristic of human intelligence. Several recent works have shown how machine learning can be used to produce creative outputs in collaboration with humans. In this panel, we will present recent developments in machine learning applications in the arts. The panel will include a general overview of creative processes from the perspective of generative systems. We will present examples from different AI-generated domains: music, art, poetry, improvisation, theater, and psychotherapy. We will explore visions of the future of human-machine creative symbiosis and we will discuss the potential challenges and benefits of human-machine co-creativity.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 8 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Noah Harari characterized humanism as a modern religion. I will follow this thesis and examine the degree, in which humanism is being challenged by machines and “artificial intelligence”.
Paper long abstract:
Noah Harari characterized humanism as a modern religion. I will follow this thesis and examine the degree, in which humanism is being challenged by machines and “artificial intelligence”. There are several blows that shatter the basic concepts of humanism – in my metaphor the columns of the temple of humanism. I will identify seven columns and examine how far they are still holding up the ceiling, trying to get to a conclusion if we should sharpen our concepts or if it is time to move out of the temple.
The concepts are “intelligence”, “creativity”, “consciousness”, “communication”, “historicity”, “intentionality” and “subjectivity”. Coming from the arts (theatre), I will discuss the role of art in a time, where the concepts of humanism become fragile. How can art, how can theatre relate to this process? Should it strengthen the side of humanism as is the traditional role of theatre? Or has art already gone beyond that, as it often precedes the trends of society? What would a post-humanistic theatre look like?
Paper short abstract:
From human-machine interaction to fully creative machines: What will this mean for the future of ‘humans’?
Paper long abstract:
The boundary between humans and machines – the other - is blurring. Machines have already shown glimmers of creativity, mastering complex games such as Go, producing unpredictable styles of art, generating new forms of music and literature, and engaging in cutting-edge scientific research such as protein folding. GANs enable machines to dream, imagine and begin to build an inner life. They may soon be able to deal with real world situations by inventing their own algorithms. At present humans and machines collaborate, bootstrapping each other’s creativity. The next step will be when machines become end-to-end creative and become artists, musicians and writers in their own right. We need to ask why creativity should be an attribute only of humans and indeed may well need to learn to appreciate art we know has been created by a machine.
In the future this will become moot when we merge with machines which may well be the path to survival for the human race. Unlike humans, machines can look into the future, sense problems and deal with them.
I will discuss these topics and more by presenting an overview of the creative process with my own theory of creativity as it applies to generative systems. This will enable us to discuss how machines can have human characteristics of creativity and be creative like us - and go beyond in the Age of Artificial Superintelligence.
I have begun to explore these topics in The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity (MIT Press, 2019).
Paper short abstract:
How can an android actor empathically involve the spectator? How can language written by a machine be human? Through the notions of performativity, agency, entanglement and intra-action it will be discuss how to motivate a non-human contribution to a theatrical dramaturgy.
Paper long abstract:
In the last twenty years theatre, the art par excellence of ritual and the human, has welcomed artificial intelligence and robotics as pivotal elements in the creative process. Theatre experiments deserve a cross-analysis that takes into account the reaction of the users engaged in the dramaturgical performance experience as well as that of machines and devices understood as autonomous intelligent agents. The human-robot hybrid artistic process will be analyzed through performative, dramaturgical and interactive settings, that will use the AI and the robot not as a support or as "an object" to be employed by humans, but as a peer, an interaction partner in the perspective of an "interspecies cooperation". How can an android actor empathically involve the spectator? How can language written by a machine be human? Through the notions of performativity, agency, entanglement and intra-action, as rethought by New Materialism and Neuroscience, it will be discuss how to motivate a non-human contribution to a theatrical dramaturgy.
Paper short abstract:
The ongoing study critically overviews AI-generated artworks, specifically focusing on creatives from BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and PWD communities. It argues that future visions of human-machine creative symbiosis should promote inclusion, equality and diversity, to overcome our anxieties and cultural biases.
Paper long abstract:
The first computer programmer in the history of humanity was Ada Lovelace. In one of her famous writings, she envisioned: “Numerous fundamental relations of music can be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, such that a machine could compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent” (Hollings et al., 2018; see also Barbican, 2019). It can be argued that a creative and non-conventional environment, where she was raised and educated, allowed her to develop a vision for human-machine creative symbiosis, which is still flourishing nowadays with machine learning and AI. This paper critically overviews creative processes from AI-generated domains, specifically focusing on creatives from BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and PWD communities. Drawing from different AI-generated domains, such as music, art, and poetry, this study highlights the role of BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and PWD communities in human-machine co-creativity, particularly in the last decades. Will we be able to overcome our anxieties and cultural biases to embrace a new age of creative symbiosis? How can AI help us to better understand each other, highlighting the importance of BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and PWD communities in the creation of our common cultural artifacts? Can we develop creativity as a common language across different communities and scientific disciplines, to envision a future of inclusion, equality, and diversity between humans and machines? This study argues that visions of the future of human-machine creative symbiosis should promote inclusion, equality, and diversity, to solve the societal crisis facing humanity in the 21st century.