Stayin' Alive in The Wall

I have forever blogged about creativity in the time of advanced computing.  Routine tasks can be translated into algorithms--even facial recognition, yes.  But, creativity?

There is no formula for creativity.  After all, if there is one, then that can be written up as an algorithm, right?

Creativity is something that has always intrigued me; I have always felt that formal education the way we offer it simply kills any creativity. Only the fortunate ones survive with their creative skills in tact.

All these add to my frustration with the mantras of STEM and coding. If I could, I would tell educators to "fuck off."  But, alas, in the academic and professional worlds, we cannot ;)

Which is why I fully resonate with the following:

Machines are already superintelligent on many axes, including memory and processing speed. Unfortunately, those are the attributes our education system currently rewards, with an emphasis on learning by rote.
It doesn’t make sense to me. Part of my job as an investor is to attempt to predict the future – I need to make bets on the way we’ll be behaving in the next two, five, ten and 20 years. Computers already store facts faster and better than we do, but struggle to perfect things we learn as toddlers, such as dexterity and walking.
We need to rethink the way we teach our children and the things we teach them. Creativity will be increasingly be the defining human talent. Our education system should emphasise the use of human imagination to spark original ideas and create new meaning. It’s the one thing machines won’t be able to do.
We should aim to teach our kids about the power of creativity in every area.

The system in K-12 and in higher ed increasingly make no sense to me.

As an example, think about how music comes about.  And then think about such remixing:




Of course, there is a lot more to creativity than to music alone.

We need to rethink the way we teach our children and the things we teach them. Creativity will be increasingly be the defining human talent. Our education system should emphasise the use of human imagination to spark original ideas and create new meaning. It’s the one thing machines won’t be able to do.
We should aim to teach our kids about the power of creativity in every area. Science and maths, which are often considered uncreative, have shaped human history with huge creative leaps. It was creativity that allowed Newton to discover gravity while observing a falling apple as he was thinking about the forces of nature.

Tell me something that I have not been yelling about!

Oh well ... nobody cares :(

Here is Sir Ken Robinson, whom I have quoted a lot when it comes to creativity:

The robot and the orange monster

I hope you remember these lines from The Sound of Music: 

When the bear woos
When the dinosaur churns
When I'm feeling steep
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so creep

No, right?

You don't remember those lines because that is not what Oscar Hammerstein wrote.

That verse was authored by a Twitter bot called FavThingsBot.

Yes, algorithms.

Twitter bots are, essentially, computer programs that tweet of their own accord. While people access Twitter through its Web site and other clients, bots connect directly to the Twitter mainline, parsing the information in real time and posting at will; it’s a code-to-code connection, made possible by Twitter’s wide-open application programming interface, or A.P.I. The bots, whose DNA can be written in nearly any modern programming language, live on cloud servers, which never go dark and grow cheaper by the day.

Algorithms are so pervasive that there are sites like this one where you can engage in a Turing Test of sorts, and try to figure out whether even a poem--yes, a poem--was authored by a human or a bot.

Poetry writing bots don't kill people.  But, the robots are already ruining our lives.  "Robots posing as people have become a menace."  They even helped hijack the US elections last November.  What we have seen is the mere beginning:

The problem is almost certain to get worse, spreading to even more areas of life as bots are trained to become better at mimicking humans. Given the degree to which product reviews have been swamped by robots (which tend to hand out five stars with abandon), commercial sabotage in the form of negative bot reviews is not hard to predict. In coming years, campaign finance limits will be (and maybe already are) evaded by robot armies posing as “small” donors. And actual voting is another obvious target — perhaps the ultimate target.

The robots have arrived.  And we created them!

Using robots to fake support, steal tickets or crash democracy really is the kind of evil that science fiction writers were warning about. The use of robots takes advantage of the fact that political campaigns, elections and even open markets make humanistic assumptions, trusting that there is wisdom or at least legitimacy in crowds and value in public debate. But when support and opinion can be manufactured, bad or unpopular arguments can win not by logic but by a novel, dangerous form of force — the ultimate threat to every democracy.

I do follow one bot on Twitter--the bot automatically re-presents the president's crazy tweets into official statements.  This bot tells me that the batshit crazy president tweeted this earlier this morning:

A statement by the President: pic.twitter.com/j4VBiKkMA2

— Real Press Sec. (@RealPressSecBot) July 17, 2017

This revolution is being digitized :(

The human touch ... is also being phased out? :(

As if I don't have enough to read and freak myself out (and, perhaps, cause a few more to freak out as well) the friend emailed me a link to a NY Times piece.  So, get ready to either argue against, or join me in noting yet another milepost on the way to becoming subservient to our computer overlords!

First, the phrase of the day:  “automated narrative generation.”

Unlike any other technical mumbo-jumbo (a mouse is not really a mouse!) this one means what it the words mean--automated narrative generation.  You get machines to automatically generate narratives. Way better narratives than the randomness of putting a thousand monkeys in front of typewriters and ending up with a Shakespearean work.

Companies in this business aim to relieve humans from the burden of the writing process by using algorithms and natural language generators to create written content. Feed their platforms some data — financial earnings statistics, let’s say — and poof! In seconds, out comes a narrative that tells whatever story needs to be told.
These robo-writers don’t just regurgitate data, either; they create human-sounding stories in whatever voice — from staid to sassy — befits the intended audience. Or different audiences. They’re that smart. And when you read the output, you’d never guess the writer doesn’t have a heartbeat.

Not really news to readers of this blog, whom I have assaulted with cries of "AI is coming, AI is coming!"

But, despite my cries, the Cassandra Curse effect means that nobody listens to my warnings.  Heck, it is one awful "I don't get no respect" life! ;)

Consider the following examples in the NY Times piece, and guess which one was authored by a human and which one was not:

“Things looked bleak for the Angels when they trailed by two runs in the ninth inning, but Los Angeles recovered thanks to a key single from Vladimir Guerrero to pull out a 7-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday.”
“The University of Michigan baseball team used a four-run fifth inning to salvage the final game in its three-game weekend series with Iowa, winning 7-5 on Saturday afternoon (April 24) at the Wilpon Baseball Complex, home of historic Ray Fisher Stadium.”
If you can’t tell which was written by a human, you’re not alone.

(Nope, I won't give away the answer, yet.  Either read this post to the end, or read the entire NY Times article!)

As with every other automation innovation, the rationale is that we humans will be liberated from the chores and can then spend our times on more creative aspects of life:

The mantra around all of this carries the usual liberation theme: Robo-journalism will free humans to do more reporting and less data processing.

Ahem, isn't that the gazillion dollar question: what exactly will be left for us humans to do?

Kristian Hammond, Narrative Science’s co-founder, estimates that 90 percent of news could be algorithmically generated by the mid-2020s, much of it without human intervention. If this projection is anywhere near accurate, we’re on a slippery slope.

More than a slippery slope.  Think about how easily narratives can be generated that will be customized for your specific tastes in order to manipulate your thinking.  You might think you are reading Sriram's blog but it might appear differently to another person depending on that person's digital footprint in the internet.  

Our phones can speak to us (just as a human would). Our home appliances can take commands (just as a human would). Our cars will be able to drive themselves (just as a human would). What does “human” even mean?

You see, that NY Times essay also comes down to the question that I often write about in this blog, talk with students about, and have even noted in more than one op-ed: what does it mean to be human?

My worry is that we are not considering that question enough.

With technology, the next evolutionary step always seems logical. That’s the danger. As it seduces us again and again, we relinquish a little part of ourselves. We rarely step back to reflect on whether, ultimately, we’re giving up more than we’re getting.

Good thing I am on a countdown, and--hopefully--will not get to experience the complete madness!

You read until here, or you scrolled down in a hurry?  In any case, the answer is "machine first, human second."

BTW, 

A shocking amount of what we’re reading is created not by humans, but by computer algorithms. Can you tell the difference? Take the quiz.

Cue the theme from the Twilight Zone! ;)