Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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hands

Observing and Communing

What human art and literature do that AI can't

AI image generators like Midjourney or DALL-E are generally adept at capturing the accuracy of the human form. The concerns over copyright, job infringement, and general degradation of the visual arts via such AI are ongoing concerns for many artists and practitioners. However, a new New Yorker article by Kyle Chayka identifies a noticeable flaw in AI artwork: human hands. Missing the Big Picture Chayka begins by recalling an art class where he was asked to draw his own hand. It’s an assignment for beginners, and as behooves a novice, tempts the artist to focus more on the specific contours of the hand instead of the overall structure and form. The forest gets lost in the trees, so to speak. Read More ›

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Man reading in the park

Will ChatGPT Replace Human Writers?

Some people think so. But maybe they’re mistaken about the purpose and nature of language

In the wake of the notorious ChatGPT chatbot from OpenAI, many are asking, “What’s going to happen to people who make their living as writers?” We’re talking journalists, novelists, academics, etcetera. It’s a valid question given the dexterity of the new technology. OpenAI’s DALL-E image generator poses the same question to visual artists. If a machine can generate a skillfully crafted piece of text or an image, the need for human writers and artists turns opaque. That is if we actually think artificial and natural intelligence are comparable competitors.   Cynics are claiming a doomsday for writers. Sean Thomas of the Spectator thinks doomsday is upon us. He wrote in a January 10th article, I’ve done writing of all kinds Read More ›

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robot ai artificial intelligence is learning creativity

Defining the Role of AI in Patents

Recently, a piece of art called “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” took home the first-place prize at the Colorado State Fair’s fine art competition in the category of digital arts/digitally manipulated photography. The art was generated using AI. Can AI hold a copyright? Can a human hold a copyright for a piece of artwork that they used AI to generate? Robert J. Read More ›

Painting Mike Petrucci Unsplash

AI Can Detect Art Forgery—and That’s Not All

It can also help with problems in art history that are not nearly as simple as forgery

By the very nature of collaborative work, if simple fraud for financial gain is not in question, many much harder questions remain, questions where AI might provide information that enables better judgment. But it’s hardly the stuff of “AI Is Taking Over.”

Read More ›
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Painted face, split in two

AI as the Artful Dodger

Watch what happens when I train a neural network on portraits of 56 famous scientists, starting the process with a right eye
New AI is much more sophisticated but the old and new AI share the property that the final result is nothing more than an interpolation of the training images used to train the AI. Read More ›
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The End of Human Drama

Part 3: Yuval Harari on the end of democracy, volition, religion, and art?

In this third part of their reflection on Yuval Harari’s Atlantic piece anticipating technology’s march toward tyranny, Jay Richards and Robert J. Marks discuss the many assumptions therein. At the root of these speculations is an overestimation of the power of information processing systems and an underestimation of the human ability to be the true governors of their creations, not their docile “pets”. Harari rightly points to a better understanding of the mind as the way forward, but fails to appreciate its true nature, resulting in a dismal prognosis for art, religion, and democracy. Read More ›