5 Things Everyone Should Know About Machine Learning And AI
I wanted to talk about 2 things everyone must understand about creativity before that.
Noa Zamstein
I guess to sharpen the issue, is the ability to express humor only a matter of how much data you have been exposed to over the years, or - if to be a bit philosophical - is there this extra "something" that for some reason cannot be just a mere extrapolation of learned lessons? Why are some people astute or funny and can blurt out this brilliant concoction of ideas from all walks of life whose sum is a witty conclusion that we all nod to and can understand but would never think about saying at the right moment in the right context?
Noa Zamstein Why do you want to teach computers something that human beings seems to have lost while working with them? Human and computer intelligence is just like flesh and bones: not to be mixed or replaced with each other, it's not a race but can be a symbiosis. Otherwise, we die. Not because AI would kill us - but because we are not wise enough to live with our power. Just look around. We don't have time for things like "analyzing humor"... we right now are a lethal tumor. ;-) (to sharpen the issue)
Nikola Ivanov, PMP
Lorand Kedves I think you make a good point, but I would dispute that humanity has lost creativity because they are working with computers. The act of building computers themselves and associated software and applications is a creative process. Computers are another medium for expressing ideas and feelings. Just look at all digital art and entertainment, blogs, etc.
Nikola Ivanov, I also know the marketing stuff, but coding and creativity are different animals (and I have spent the last 20+ years with solving "impossible" design and coding tasks).
"In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it. In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it." (Richard Hamming (2005) The Art of Doing Science and Engineering)
To me, creativity is science, but IT became business, and business loves engineering, not science. Do you really know that all the "new" inventions like the internet, OOP, tablet, ... came from ARPA (which then became DARPA) or PARC around 1970? The past decades were fantastic in engineering(!): reducing the size, consumption and increasing capacity and speed that made those old inventions physically possible.
Sure, Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg, Musk, etc. should be considered "creative" - sorry, that place is occupied by Lovelace, Neumann, Turing, Shannon, Hamilton or Charles Simonyi - but it takes a lot of time and effort to understand what they did (and today we are too busy chasing profit and fame, have no time to learn and understand them)...
I did watch the growth of the digital art, etc., as an IT expert and thinker - but all I see is quantity and marketing beating quality.
Sorry to be this short and rigid. I have written hundreds of pages about this, and I see no reason in trying to dispute, I am hopelessly bad at it. I rather recommend reading Technopoly (Neil Postman, 1992!), Civilization of the Spectacle (Mario Vargas Llosa), or watch this brilliant lecture from Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/dbx/ to get a glimpse of what I try to talk about.
Nikola Ivanov, PMP
Lorand Kedves I get your point and will check out Technopoly. It appears that you are dividing creativity into two separate categories by tying it either to science or to "marketing" and "profit." I can see how the two types of creativity can be different, but to argue that creativity just does not exist anymore is false. Sure, there is a lot of junk our there that people pay money for, but there is also a lot of innovative, creative, clever, elegant, and useful ideas and products.
Nikola Ivanov, I think we have no argument here: I wrote "human beings seem to have lost". I mean: not enough for keeping our civilization alive: a 1m jump to cross a 2m gap equals to zero considering the result... ;-)
My original point was that we try to push fundamentally human values to machines (from humor to ethics), while we measure humans more quantitative and less qualitative ways. Naturally, because quantitative improvements are easier to plan, so this method is dominant in a business oriented environment. Qualitative, unplanned, wild changes (that is "creativity" in my world) "should be done by someone else". (the "20% free time at creative companies" is actually mind farming, not much more)
See also: “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” (Warren Buffet) - sorry, then who will pay ANYONE trying to bring up new ideas (and naturally fails constantly for years)? Or the Candle problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candle_problem Or a favorite joke of mine (sorry for the weak translation):
The king spotted a shabby guy in his palace, and asked his counselor
- Who is this beggar?
- Your astronomer, sire.
- What does he do?
- He calculates the routes of your ships, the timing in farming, etc. Your empire depends on him.
- But why does he look like that?
- We pay them 5 pounds.
- No way! Give him 100!
- Sire, this is the only way to have a REAL astronomer... If we gave the royal astronomer 100 pounds, he would soon be replaced with that stupid son-in-law of your treasurer...
:-)
Nikola Ivanov, to make the division clearer.
There is creativity in finding the best possible answer to a complex, yet unanswered question. That is engineering and it has great importance. This is what we should thank our technological improvements in the past few decades.
And there is the creativity in finding a truly important question among the myriads of possible questions. That is science, and requires fundamentally different approach along the whole process.
We know a lot about how to support engineering creativity - but scientific creativity seems to be out of sight, thanks to its direct opposition to what we call "economy" or "society" today.
An example: engineering creativity is looking for an answer how to handle the garbage continents in the oceans. Scientific creativity asks: "why the f**k do we CREATE garbage???" And stops, because this is a much better and fundamental question, the job is done, the rest is engineering. Business guys say "this question cannot be asked", tap the head and kick science out of the way of making profit. Science leaves by saying "Have a nice funeral, guys. Don't forget the fireworks..."
Good morning Vietnam! :-D
