Week1 Reading Notes
"Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory":
challenging the commonplace idea: machines cannot think ⇒ machines theoretically could simulate human thought (how?) ⇒ simulate human reasoning closely, making both mistakes and novel discoveries much like humans.
Is simulated reasoning actual thought?
Reflection: “Mary’s room qualia” + the chinese room experiment
Learning by Experience: machines improve by learning from experience, evolving their behavior (like human education)
Indexing Systems: a memory that tracks experiences with indexes ⇒ to recall past situations ⇒ future actions
Crude Rules for Decision-Making becoming more sophisticated.
pleasure principle: machine recognize favorable or unfavorable outcomes
mimicking psychological motivations in humans.
Randomness: diverse decision-making and reducing predictability ⇒ more adaptive learning
machines could one day surpass human intelligence
Humans will have to compete or collaborate with machines
Already an reality these days?
Ethical + Social Consequences: creating intelligent machines ⇒ opposition from intellectuals fearing job displacement + society fearing the rise of machines surpassing human control
Plant - Zeros + One - 88-95
Irony in Human superiority: Man is superior ⇒ Turing: machines would challenge man’s superiority
Creating machine as slave ⇒ performing predictable tasks given by creators
Backfire?
Process become routine ⇒ machine can be programmed to handle them autonomously ⇒ reducing human control
Human masters would protect their roles ⇒ keeping their work in mystery + complexity
Chatbot interactions: imitation + authenticity ⇒ what it means to be human in the face of increasingly intelligent machines?
Trials:
Eliza: psychotherapist using clever tricks in the imitation ⇒ no contribution + contradiction to human messages
Parry: neurotic male
Julia: “agent more interesting than Eliza”
Adept at detecting and deflecting sexual advances
Turing: computing machines doing “errors” other than what they were instructred ⇒ mistakes are a most intelligent move to be like human ⇒ differences b/w failures and redusals to be bound by them?
Perfection != success
Bratton - AgueroyArcas - The Model Is the Message
Bratton: does not believe LaMDA is conscious as Lemoine believes
Sentience : need to define in both intelligent and conscious aspects
Apply existing philosophy vs. invent new concepts and terms to make sense of technologies before
Not interior subjectivity to human, but projecting personhood onto a pre-scripted chatbot (the ELIZA effect)
Graziano: consciousness = mind emphathetically modeling other minds
Subjectivity: objectifying one’s own mind
Mary’s room: the scientific knowledge vs. the actual experience
Conversations: “synthetic personalities”
Oct 8 2024 Discussion in class:
The smartest human would design the smartest AI in the world?
Sentience: the emotional/conscious intelligence(less tangible feelings), while intelligence is capacity to learn(more rational)
Sefl- awareness of “who you are” - does the AI know it’s an AI?
Mirror stage of young children - able to recognize oneself in a mirror in the growth of kids - growing idea of “self-awareness?”
what is really the one thing to distinguish AI from human?
perfection of machine does not equal to success because human make mistakes?
Assignment 1: What is Intelligence?
in-class quick sketch + doodles
my short definition:
Intelligence would go beyond simply storing and retrieving information. It would involve understanding and responding to both expressed and hidden emotions. True intelligence is rooted in empathy, the capacity to connect with others’ feelings and adjust accordingly. This would include intuition, perception, imagination, and a deep understanding of human emotions, and mimicing warmth or human-like reactions.
keywords:
embracing, connectivity, sensitivity
illustrations:
embracing
connectivity
sensitivity
Week 2 Reading Notes
Pearson - 2011 - chapter 6
Emergence: a simple rule set at a low level ⇒ creates organized complexity on a higher level
How complex + coherent patterns can arise from a large number of small, simple interactions
Ex: ant colony(macro behavioral patterns are byproducts of the local self-interested behaviors of the individuals collectively)
Large number of small agents w/ simple behaviors ⇒ more complex, emergent behavior on the macro level
Consciousness is an example of emergence?
Macro-level coherence from micro-level interaction of firing synapses
Jenna Sutela - Soul, Meat and Pattern
Blur the boundaries b/w “things and organisms” ⇒ we exist “outside” of ourselves
Questioning the fragile foundations of human rationality
We have neither a monopoly over intelligence nore consciousness
Poetic + playful expression to ethical questions of how to live with other human beings & with other ecosystems
Physarum polycephalum ⇒ slimy tract acts as an externalised memory, “autobiography”
Looking for signs of pattern and meaning in the randomness
Open up possibility of an encounter with other beings
Cohabitants, symbiotes and other ghosts in the machine
Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design, Tero et al, - 2010
Physarum polycephalum: forms networks w/ comparable efficiency, fault tolerance
Grow adaptive without centralized control ⇒ potential model for scalable, decentrailized network design in human infrastructure systems
Transport networks: achieve high transport efficiency + with correspondingly less emphasis on making systems tolerant to interruption or failure (cost-effectivenss)
Mathematical model for network growth based on feedback loops ⇒ thicker transport tubes reinforced by higher flow rates
Mimicking how physarum adapts its network in response to environmental conditions
Light as a constraint to physarum ⇒ representing geographical limitations
Aligning biological network w/ real-world transport networks
These biologically inspired models can improve design of self-organizeing networks in communication, transportation, and logistics systems
Wilk and Sutela - 2019 - slime intelligence
Physarum polycephalum: no brain or nervous system, but advanced spatial intelligence
Spreading with efficiency + coordination to find food + avoid light
Cannot find resources ⇒ hibernation(turning into a scab “sclerotium” or growing spores to await future conditions to regenerate)
What can we learn from a primordial organism about decentralized cooperation, material problem solving, and the limits of consciousness?
Slime mounld decision-making cannot be repdicted or replicated
It coordinates itself entirely through sensory feedback w/ environment
Robots inspired by slime mould’s plasmodium
Move as a result of the interaction of neighboring modules and friction from the surrounding world
Similarities b/w the information processing of humans + other forms of organic and synthetic life
Assignment 2: Sensory Intelligence
group google drive link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VudAXqynD-0wqbNAoV8WPawD0-oh1B4F?usp=sharing
brainstorming images + videos
experimentation video generations using Luma Dream AI
key characteristics of the environment: Controlled chaos, responsiveness, industrialized society vs. nature, …?
behaviors:
The environment’s changing of states through movement, rotation, and transformation, its changing of balance between the natural elements and industrialized elements of the human world, and how the two ar co-existing with one another
the entity’s instinctive, and visceral reactions to the constantly changing environments
google slide link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UasGAyiBsDZELK7rms7m0y0XTZLl2u6ML1pGivWPJ2s/edit?usp=sharing
Final video generated:
Reflection:
Through this assignment, each of our group members uploaded multiple images to a Google Drive collectively. We then select a few images from each of us, then use Dream Luma ai to generate videos that combine two images together. I found the process very interesting because the AI will always produce some unexpected results that you might never imagined. However, I wish I could use other more advanced and free image-generating tools next time to have more control over the prompt. In the end, we used the looping function and combine multiple images together to create this dreaming-like looping video.
Week 6 Readings
Are We Human, pgs 219-238
Human body = different sets of microbes
The mix of microbes keep changing during a lifetime
Human has a genetic matrix very close to countless other species
Our seemingly distinct form ⇒ slow-moving effect of countless exchanges
Western philosophy of the body: a “construction site” with parts to replace and reconstruct
Ethical considerations of genetic engineering
Change of human genome
Cross-species construction
On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?
Environmental + financial cost of training LLMs ⇒ disproportionately affect marginalized communities (plus they’re not benefiting directly from the technology)
LLMs get training data from the web, often contain biases related to race, gender, and other identities ⇒ discriminatory outcomes?
“Illusion of coherence”: tendency for people to attribute human-like understanding to LLMs
Tend to believe LLMs provide meaningful insights like human beings
Transparency + accountability: argue for documentation of dataset in training process
To trace and address the sources of potential harm within the models
Larger LMs != better language understanding
Pattern recognition rather than true comprehension
Privacy violations? Memorize personally identifiable info from training data
Ethical implications of LMs ⇒ sustainable model development, smaller curated dataset, stakeholder engagement, use of value-sensitive design
Reduce risks + serve diverse communities
Good Technology Is/Not Asian Women
Ornamentalism: east asian women are objectified as decorative symbols
“To aestheticized to suffer injury but so aestheticized that she invites injury”
Protrayal as delicate, ornamental figures ⇒ make their pain invisible/unrecognized
Beauty + passivity invites, permitting harm b/c seen as ornamental
Blade Runner: “techno=orientalism”
Western anxieties about industrial dominance by portraying the East as both technologically advanced and intellectually primitive
Requiring western intervention for “consciousness-raising”
History of technology: inseparable from the history of race + gender
Coded in social, cultural + tech
How cyborg figure can represent potential for hybridization and heterogeneity
Cyborg: A blend of human and machine that challenges traditional views of personhood
A symbol for subverting reductive + essentialist stereotypes
Assignment 3.1: From Behaviors to Bodies
google slide link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19Dw3HwqSb8LKtRwZ45Yr9dYdxW2yIOyWDvO4iyIguFw/edit?usp=sharing
The Ecosystem - overview：
blend of natural and industrialized elements, constantly in motion
organic landscapes interweave with rusted machinery, metallic structures, and remnants of human industry
unpredictable—rotating, shifting, and transforming, altering the balance between natural and manufactured forms
The HERMIT overview:
The HERMIT is an intensely networked solitary creature that lives in ignored and disused public infrastructure. It feeds on the remains of long cut-off connections to data, power, and people. It exists in a nothing-space between the world of the human and somewhere far beyond.
Core behaviors of the HERMIT:
Instinctive Adaptation: instinct sensitivity to environmental changes, reacting immediately to shifts in the balance between nature and industry.
Morphing and Transformation: body adjusts to match the physical state of the environment
blending into organic surroundings or developing traits for surviving in industrial landscapes.
Sensory Attunement: perceives subtle shifts (like the faint hum of machinery or the scent of wet earth), guiding its movements and behaviors.
Body Outline:
Shape-Shifting Skin: its skin is covered in receptors that can respond to environmental signals, transforming texture and density based on the surroundings
Ex: mossy and soft in natural areas, metallic and rigid in industrial zones).
Sensory Nodes: Small, responsive nodes along its body detect vibrations, light, and environmental changes, allowing it to perceive shifts in real-time.
Adaptable Limb Design: Its limbs extend or become more tool-like when navigating industrial areas.
Chromatophores: pigment cells located in the skin, controlled by the nervous system
Altering the color of the skin responding to outside influences
sketches:
Reflection:
From this assignment, our group learned how to understand, discuss, and incorporate each other’s ideas. For example, we take Lillia’s idea of the crab and shell-like creature’s appearance, Vittoria’s focus on the industrialized and chaos concept, and my idea of the changing of forms in the environment + the response to emotional signals in the surroundings. I feel like this process helped us to get to know each other better while creating something interesting to further explore in the following assignments.
Assignment 3.2: What's in a Body
google slide link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Q4gFVv8IvJh2bXJVybVIGwi8Ht3Xt5AzMdtgvZPl8js/edit?usp=sharing
Socio-Political Implications:
Genderlessness: The Hermit lacks defined gender ⇒ challenges anthropocentric views of gendered physicality.
Cyborg Representation: fusion of organic and industrial forms
Its transformation: resilience and adaptation rather than limitation.
Identity: Its ability to blend with surroundings
visibility and the consequences of existing in liminal spaces.
Facial Features and Expressions:
The Hermit’s "face" is fluid and changes depending on the situation:
Default Form: A smooth, mask-like surface with no distinct features, emphasizing its anonymity and solitude.
Adaptive Expressions:
In organic environments: develop features resembling eyes or mouth-like structures (mimicry of other organisms)
In industrial zones: its face can fragment into patterns of sound + light, communicating through subtle pulses or glitches.
Expressive Shifts: Changes in forms, color, and patterns serve as its "expressions," conveying intent or mood without traditional facial structures.
p5.js prototype link: https://editor.p5js.org/lindseygu0707/sketches/6ICFReN-X
Reflection:
In this assignment, we further explored the detailed behaviors and ways of interactions of the Hermit with the environment. I liked how our Hermit is developed into the “default form” and the “adaptive forms” as a result of the being’s response to the environmental changes. One question remaining would be how are we going to represent the being without a definite form, especially the “default form" with no distinct shapes and color? This will be something I need to further discussing with my team members to figure our the ways we can represent the Hermit’s changing in a more easy to understand and visually attractive way.
Week 9: Embodied Pacific
Memo Akten and Katie Peyton Hofstader + SOARS：
Superradiance. Embodying Earth. is a data dramatization of complex ocean simulations, distilled and re-imagined in the form of abstract visuals and sounds inspired by the Scripps Ocean Atmosphere Research Simulator (SOARS). SOARS is a 120-foot-long wave tank researchers use to replicate and study air and sea interactions under controlled laboratory conditions.
This work aims to provoke and nurture strong connections to the global ecosystems of which we are a part. The cognitive phenomenon of embodied simulation (an evolved and refined version of ‘mirror neurons’ theory) refers to the way we feel and embody the movement of others, as if they are happening in our own bodies. The brain of an observer unconsciously mirrors the movements of others, all the way through to the planning and simulating execution of the movements in their own body. This concept aligns well with the way our intelligence entity, the HERMIT, interacts with its environment. We can gain a lot of inspiration from this piece on the way it transforms and adjust its shape and colors with the changing environment.
Final Assignment
presentation link: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGYRNioJPk/Vg6qL8f4gM4wk0_nG639vQ/edit
final video link: https://youtu.be/-1KRnBBZThU
Storyboard sketches:
