Via Kottke.org, a demo of a deep learning algorithm creating audio soundscapes based on Google Street View. Kinda fascinating:
More about the project (and a usable demo!) here: http://imaginarysoundscape.qosmo.jp.
Tag: AI
Link: Silicon Valley is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear
Ted Chiang has a quick but worthwhile read over at Buzzfeed about how Silicon Valley is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear:
The ethos of startup culture could serve as a blueprint for civilization-destroying AIs. “Move fast and break things” was once Facebook’s motto; they later changed it to “Move fast with stable infrastructure,” but they were talking about preserving what they had built, not what anyone else had. This attitude of treating the rest of the world as eggs to be broken for one’s own omelet could be the prime directive for an AI bringing about the apocalypse.
It’s a lot to chew on, but gets at something we should be seriously considering more than we are.
Link: Jobs are for Machines
Deep Learning Is Going to Teach Us All the Lesson of Our Lives: Jobs Are for Machines, by Scott Santens.
Advances in technology are now so visibly exponential in nature that we can expect to see a lot more milestones being crossed long before we would otherwise expect. These exponential advances, most notably in forms of artificial intelligence limited to specific tasks, we are entirely unprepared for as long as we continue to insist upon employment as our primary source of income.
Scott Santens
There’s been talk about this coming in varying degrees for years (and the idea of a universal basic income has been tossed around for decades — it was a central idea in For Us, The Living, Heinlein’s first [unpublished at the time] novel back in 1938), but this article does a solid job of summing up the state of where things are NOW, and why we’re out of time to put off thinking seriously about what’s coming.