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We know machines and artificial intelligence (AI) can be many things, but can they ever really be creative? When I interviewed Professor Marcus du Sautoy, the author of The Creativity Code, he shared that the role of AI is a kind of catalyst to push our human creativity. Its the machine and human collaboration that produces exciting resultsnovel approaches and combinations that likely wouldnt develop if either were working alone.

Can Machines And Artificial Intelligence Be Creative?

Instead of thinking about AI as replacing human creativity, it's beneficial to examine ways that AI can be used as a tool to augment human creativity. Here are several examples of how AI boosts the creativity of humans in art, music, dance, design, recipe building, and publishing.

Art

In the world of visual art, AI is making an impact in many ways. It can alter existing art such as the case when it made the Mona Lisa a living portrait a la Harry Potter, create likenesses that appear to be real humans that can be found on the website ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com and even create original works of art.

When Christies auctioned off a piece of AI artwork titled the Portrait of Edmond de Belamy for $432,500, it became the first auction house to do so. The AI algorithm, a generative adversarial network (GAN) developed by a Paris-based collective, that created the art, was fed a data set of 15,000 portraits covering six centuries to inform its creativity.

Another development that blurs the boundaries of what it means to be an artist is Ai-Da, the worlds first robot artist, who recently held her first solo exhibition. She is equipped with facial recognition technology and a robotic arm system thats powered by artificial intelligence.

More eccentric art is also a capability of artificial intelligence. Algorithms can read recipes and create images of what the final dish will look like. Dreamscope by Google uses traditional images of people, places and things and runs them through a series of filters. The output is truly original, albeit sometimes the stuff of nightmares.

Music

If AI can enhance creativity in visual art, can it do the same for musicians? David Cope has spent the last 30 years working on Experiments in Musical Intelligence or EMI. Cope is a traditional musician and composer but turned to computers to help get past composers block back in 1982. Since that time, his algorithms have produced numerous original compositions in a variety of genres as well as created Emily Howell, an AI that can compose music based on her own style rather than just replicate the styles of yesterdays composers.

In many cases, AI is a new collaborator for todays popular musicians. Sony's Flow Machine and IBM's Watson are just two of the tools music producers, YouTubers, and other artists are relying on to churn out today's hits. Alex Da Kid, a Grammy-nominated producer, used IBMs Watson to inform his creative process. The AI analyzed the "emotional temperature" of the time by scraping conversations, newspapers, and headlines over a five-year period. Then Alex used the analytics to determine the theme for his next single.

Another tool that embraces human and machine collaboration, AIVA bills itself as a creative assistant for creative people and uses AI and deep learning algorithms to help compose music.

In addition to composing music, artificial intelligence is transforming the music industry in a variety of ways from distribution to audio mastering and even creating virtual pop stars. An auxuman singer called Yona, developed by Iranian electronica composer Ash Koosha, creates and performs music such as the song Oblivious through AI algorithms.

Dance and Choreography

A powerful way dance choreographers have been able to break out of their regular patterns is to use artificial intelligence as a collaborator. Wayne McGregor, the award-winning British choreographer and director, is known for using technology in his work and is particularly fascinated by how AI could enhance what is done with the choreography in a project with Google Arts & Culture Lab. Hundreds of hours of video footage of dancers representing individual styles were fed into the algorithm. The AI then went to work and "learned how to dance. The goal is not to replace the choreographer but to efficiently iterate and develop different choreography options.

AI Augmented Design

Another creative endeavor AI is proving to be adept at is commercial design. In a collaboration between French designer Philippe Starck, Kartell, and Autodesk, a 3D software company, the first chair designed using artificial intelligence and put into production was presented at Milan Design Week. The Chair Project is another collaboration that explores co-creativity between people and machines.

Recipes

The creativity of AI is also transforming the kitchen not only by altering longstanding recipes but also creating entirely new food combinations in collaborations with some of the biggest names in the food industry. Our favorite libations might also get an AI makeover. You can now pre-order AI-developed whiskey. Brewmasters decisions are also being informed by artificial intelligence. MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is making use of all those photos of the food that we post on social media. By using computer vision, these food photos are being analyzed to better understand peoples eating habits as well as to suggest recipes with the food that is pictured.

Write Novels and Articles

Even though the amount of written material to inform artificial intelligence algorithms is voluminous, writing has been a challenging skill for AI to acquire. Although AI has been most successful in generating short-form formulaic content such as journalism "who, what, where, and when stories," its skills continue to grow. AI has now written a novel, and although neural networks created what many might find a weird read, it was still able to do it. And, with the announcement a Japanese AI programs short-form novel almost won a national literary prize, its easy to see how it wont be long before AI can compete with humans to write compelling pieces of content. Kopan Page published Superhuman Innovation, a book not only about artificial intelligence but was co-written by AI. PoemPortraits is another example of AI and human collaboration where you can provide the algorithm with a single word that it will use to generate a short poem.

As the world of AI and human creativity continue to expand, its time to stop worrying about if AI can be creative, but how the human and machine world can intersect for creative collaborations that have never been dreamt of before.

You can watch the full interview with Marcus du Sautoy here:

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Can Machines And Artificial Intelligence Be Creative? - Forbes

One of the seminal texts for anyone interested in technology and society is Melvin Kranzbergs Six Laws of Technology, the first of which says that technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. By this, Kranzberg meant that technologys interaction with society is such that technical developments frequently have environmental, social and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves, and the same technology can have quite different results when introduced into different contexts or under different circumstances.

The saloon-bar version of this is that technology is both good and bad; it all depends on how its used a tactic that tech evangelists regularly deploy as a way of stopping the conversation. So a better way of using Kranzbergs law is to ask a simple Latin question: Cui bono? who benefits from any proposed or hyped technology? And, by implication, who loses?

With any general-purpose technology which is what the internet has become the answer is going to be complicated: various groups, societies, sectors, maybe even continents win and lose, so in the end the question comes down to: who benefits most? For the internet as a whole, its too early to say. But when we focus on a particular digital technology, then things become a bit clearer.

A case in point is the technology known as machine learning, a manifestation of artificial intelligence that is the tech obsession de nos jours. Its really a combination of algorithms that are trained on big data, ie huge datasets. In principle, anyone with the computational skills to use freely available software tools such as TensorFlow could do machine learning. But in practice they cant because they dont have access to the massive data needed to train their algorithms.

This means the outfits where most of the leading machine-learning research is being done are a small number of tech giants especially Google, Facebook and Amazon which have accumulated colossal silos of behavioural data over the last two decades. Since they have come to dominate the technology, the Kranzberg question who benefits? is easy to answer: they do. Machine learning now drives everything in those businesses personalisation of services, recommendations, precisely targeted advertising, behavioural prediction For them, AI (by which they mostly mean machine learning) is everywhere. And it is making them the most profitable enterprises in the history of capitalism.

As a consequence, a powerful technology with great potential for good is at the moment deployed mainly for privatised gain. In the process, it has been characterised by unregulated premature deployment, algorithmic bias, reinforcing inequality, undermining democratic processes and boosting covert surveillance to toxic levels. That it doesnt have to be like this was vividly demonstrated last week with a report in the leading biological journal Cell of an extraordinary project, which harnessed machine learning in the public (as compared to the private) interest. The researchers used the technology to tackle the problem of bacterial resistance to conventional antibiotics a problem that is rising dramatically worldwide, with predictions that, without a solution, resistant infections could kill 10 million people a year by 2050.

The team of MIT and Harvard researchers built a neural network (an algorithm inspired by the brains architecture) and trained it to spot molecules that inhibit the growth of the Escherichia coli bacterium using a dataset of 2,335 molecules for which the antibacterial activity was known including a library of 300 existing approved antibiotics and 800 natural products from plant, animal and microbial sources. They then asked the network to predict which would be effective against E coli but looked different from conventional antibiotics. This produced a hundred candidates for physical testing and led to one (which they named halicin after the HAL 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey) that was active against a wide spectrum of pathogens notably including two that are totally resistant to current antibiotics and are therefore a looming nightmare for hospitals worldwide.

There are a number of other examples of machine learning for public good rather than private gain. One thinks, for example, of the collaboration between Google DeepMind and Moorfields eye hospital. But this new example is the most spectacular to date because it goes beyond augmenting human screening capabilities to aiding the process of discovery. So while the main beneficiaries of machine learning for, say, a toxic technology like facial recognition are mostly authoritarian political regimes and a range of untrustworthy or unsavoury private companies, the beneficiaries of the technology as an aid to scientific discovery could be humanity as a species. The technology, in other words, is both good and bad. Kranzbergs first law rules OK.

Every cloud Zeynep Tufekci has written a perceptive essay for the Atlantic about how the coronavirus revealed authoritarianisms fatal flaw.

EU ideas explained Politico writers Laura Kayali, Melissa Heikkil and Janosch Delcker have delivered a shrewd analysis of the underlying strategy behind recent policy documents from the EU dealing with the digital future.

On the nature of loss Jill Lepore has written a knockout piece for the New Yorker under the heading The lingering of loss, on friendship, grief and remembrance. One of the best things Ive read in years.

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How artificial intelligence outsmarted the superbugs - The Guardian

AVENTURA, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 4, 2020 / Orbsat Corp (OSAT) ("Orbsat" or the "Company"), a global provider of communication solutions for connectivity to the world through next-generation satellite technology, announced entering into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with New York-based, AI VentureTech, Inc. ("AI VentureTech") to explore development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data related applications utilizing its satellite-based voice, high-speed data, tracking and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity services.

Under terms of this 12-month MOU, Orbsat and AI VentureTech will explore the development of AI and Machine Learning (ML) applications for an array of global markets including industrial IoT, fleet management, shipping and logistics, and smart cities. Both companies will explore development of data analytic applications to increase efficiencies and cost savings for shipping and fleet management enterprises by employing advanced satellite technologies.

David Phipps, Chief Executive Officer of Orbsat Corp, said, "Orbsat was founded on the vision of connecting the world using cutting-edge satellite communications technology to deliver voice and high-speed data services. Together with AI VentureTech, we intend to explore how industrial customers can leverage the power of advanced satellite-based data and AI-based analytics to improve the efficiencies of their global operations and ultimately, the value of the services they deliver to their end users."

Thomas Bustamante, the Founder and CEO of AI VentureTech, Inc. commented, "We are very excited to announce our collaboration with Orbsat in developing data-related applications utilizing their suite of satellite-enabled voice, data, tracking and IoT connectivity services. Through the combination of Orbsat's expertise and global reach, we can harness a great source of tracking data on which we can build robust data sets and models for analytic and prediction-based applications for commercial and enterprise clients. We look forward to collaborating with Orbsat and to finding new ways to utilize their products in building-out AI and Cloud-based applications for future customers."

About AI VentureTech

AI VentureTech is an AI research lab and development company that leverages cutting-edge technologies to deliver data-related products and solutions that empower enterprise customers and partners through improving their business eciency, enhancing their value and realizing their digital transformation. Located in New York City, its team of data scientists and engineers can customize AI-powered software and technical solutions for both companies and institutions looking to leverage data and machine learning for greater business value. The Company seeks growth through collaborations in the areas of business analytics, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), visualization tools, predictive modeling, and cloud advanced analysis.

About Orbsat Corp

Orbsat provides services and solutions to fulfill the rapidly growing global demand for satellite-based voice, high-speed data, tracking and IoT connectivity services. Building upon its long-term experience providing government, commercial, military and individual consumers with Mobile Satellite Services, Orbsat is positioned to capitalize on the significant opportunities being created by global investments in new and upgraded satellite networks. Orbsat's U.S. and European based subsidiaries, Orbital Satcom and Global Telesat Communications, have provided global satellite connectivity solutions to more than 35,000 customers located in over 160 countries across the world.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this release constitute forward-looking statements. These statements include the capabilities and success of the Company's business and any of its products, services or solutions. The words "believe," "forecast," "project," "intend," "expect," "plan," "should," "would," and similar expressions and all statements, which are not historical facts, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including the Company's ability to successfully explore and commercialize on the results of the MOU and the underlying engagement, the Company's ability to meet its performance (financing, operating and other) objectives, including those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), copies of which may be obtained from the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. The Company assumes no, and hereby disclaims any, obligation to update the forward-looking statements contained in this press release.

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Orbsat Corp and AI VentureTech to Explore Development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Applications for Industrial IoT and GPS Market - Yahoo...

Agnieszka Kurants lower Manhattan studio stands among a scattering of cultural outposts that represent some of the most recent efforts of the avant guard to grapple with our cultural moment. When I visited in late January, a gallery two doors down was hosting a reproductive rights-themed show with works listed for upwards of $30,000. Across the street, four floors of the windowless New Museum were taken over by a retrospective of artist Hans Haacke, which included a demographic survey, a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a grass-covered mound of dirt. The seventh floor was occupied by a mixed reality pop-up, sponsored by Ruinart champagne, in which visitors could wander about in augmented reality glasses. Minders politely asked those without reservations to step away from the experience.

Technology and late capitalism similarly intersect in Kurants work, though perhaps with a greater degree of self-awareness. A conceptual artist, she explores modern questions over data rights, online labor exploitation and the power of big corporations. With growing public awareness of issues like the commodification of big data and the ever-increasing power of artificial intelligence (AI), shes part of a new generation of artists and curators who are trying to represent the nature of these new technologies, and the ways we are being transformed by them.

To talk about any kind of new media or new technology, sometimes its better to use an analogue technology, Kurant says, showing a photograph of a 2017 piece entitled A.A.I. She says the name is based on a phrase coined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, artificial artificial intelligence, which describes the process of digitally outsourcing work to human freelancers through distributed labor platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk. The artwork consists of a series of fluorescent termite mounds created from green, blue, violet, yellow or orange artificial sand. She collaborated with entomologists at the University of Florida to enlist the labor of the termites.

If you give them something else that is not sand they will not notice the difference and they will still keep building, Kurant says. She sees termite societies as a kind of dispersed factory akin to the mechanism by which large tech companies collect massive quantities of information about users in order to power sophisticated advertising algorithms. We are all working on a very long, gigantic conveyor belt providing our data or expressing our emotions so that corporations could capitalize on it, she says.

New digitally-enabled economic systems figure even more directly into some of Kurants other pieces. In her Production Line series, produced between 2016 and 2017, she and co-author John Menick contracted hundreds of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers to each draw a single line which were then algorithmically assembled into cohesive drawings. When a painting is sold, the Turkers are given part of the profits.

Artist Agnieszka Kurant stands in front of "Conversions 2" at the de Young museum

Gary Sexton the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Collectivity figures prominently in another of Kurants series, The End of Signature, in which she used computer algorithms to coalesce hundreds of individual signatures into a single illegible line. Another of her series, Conversions (2019), focuses on the ways in which collective social energy, in the form of tweets, posts and online searches, is transformed into revenue streams. Consisting of a copper plate covered with liquid crystal paint and attached to computer-controlled heat pumps, the painting changes composition in response to algorithmic sentiment analysis of tens of thousands of social media feeds tied to protest movements, continuously transforming collective societal disquiet into physical heat energy.

Even the activities of protest movements are somehow taken advantage of by corporations, says Kurant, explaining the context of the piece. There is a price tag on social energies.

Other contemporary artists are also grappling with the intersection of artificial intelligence, data and capitalism. At San Franciscos de Young museum, an exhibition entitled Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI (Feb. 22 Oct. 25, 2020) takes its name from a term describing how artificial representations of ourselves can come too close for comfort. According to curator Claudia Schmuckli, the installation makes the case that widespread use of AI has brought about a fundamental change in humans relationship with machines.

The contemporary uncanny valley is no longer occupied by the image of the machine but by the statistical data profiles of humans that are compiled by algorithms, which are designed to mine and analyze behavior and project them into tradable or governable futures, Schmuckli says. She adds that famous pop culture representations of AI, like 2001s HAL and Schwarzeneggers Terminator, have been replaced by something even more unsettling: the reflected data profiles generated from our own lives.

A still of Stephanie Dinkins in "Conversations with Bina48" (2014-present)

Stephanie Dinkins; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Notions of uncanny resemblance figure prominently into another piece at the de Young, Conversations with Bina48, which features artist Stephanie Dinkins speaking with a humanoid social robot built to resemble a black woman.

[I] wanted to see what would happen if I tried to become friends, Dinkins tells TIME. Shes interested in exploring how communities of color fit into the new world being created by companies struggling to become more diverse. There is a small subsection of the population thats creating AI ecosystems that will be contributing to many of our lives, she says. What happens if regular people are not a part of thinking about and calling for transparency?

Installation of Ian Cheng's "BOB (Bag of Beliefs)" (2018-2019) at the de Young museum in San Francisco.

Gary Sextonthe Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Other artists are using AI to take decidedly unconventional approaches to the uncertainties of our time. In BOB (Bag of Beliefs) (2018-2019), artist Ian Cheng combines neural networks with a video game engine to create an intelligent simulation named BOB. The digital animal resembles a multi-headed snake. As users interact with it via a smartphone app, BOB develops beliefs about the world it inhabits, and its personality evolves over the course of a simulated lifetime. BOBs body and BOBs personality and BOBs beliefs continue to grow, explains Cheng. BOB is quite particular by the end of any of these given exhibitions.

New technologies get blamed for much of todays collective unease, but for Cheng, that same technology may also provide one of the best ways to come to terms with the times we live in. I want to feel that the thing Im looking at is alive, that it has something that can surprise me, Cheng says of his artificially intelligent artworks. It mirrors a bit the way that life feels right now where everything is constantly changing theres no story that stays stable for too long.

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Write to Alejandro de la Garza at alejandro.delagarza@time.com.

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'There's No Story That Stays Stable for Too Long.' How Artists Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Confront Modern Anxieties - TIME

"Poland is a place full of talented IT people," the minister said, going on to state that, as a result, the country has become a centre for outsourcing though "that state of affairs does not satisfy our ambition." Tomasz Gzell/PAP

Development Minister Jadwiga Emilewicz told a ministry debate on Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Tuesday that there are plans to develop AI centres in Poland so as to become creators rather than recipients of innovation.

Emilewicz was quoted in a ministry press release as saying that it is necessary to increase the productivity of the Polish economy with the aid of automatisation and the use of algorithms based on AI and machine learning.

"Poland is a place full of talented IT people," the minister said, going on to state that, as a result, the country has become a centre for outsourcing though "that state of affairs does not satisfy our ambition."

"We want unique intellectual value in the field of AI to be created in Poland," Emilewicz said, during a meeting with David Hanson, CEO of the Hanson Robotics company, which makes a humanoid robot called Sophia. "It is time to become a creator rather than a recipient of innovation. That's why we are striving for competence centres to emerge in Poland and for them to be catalysts of cooperation between business and science."

Hanson was quoted in the release as saying that he was considering working towards creating a hub related to ethical AI in Poland. He said the creative and technological sectors are very well developed in Poland as well as that related to robotics, which has persuaded Hanson Robotics to create an R&D centre in Poland and to conduct research into developing technology to serve people, including humanoid robots that interact with people.

The ministry pointed out that the development of AI hubs in Poland gains importance in light of a European Commission policy, which as part of the digital strategy, plans to earmark significant funds to AI development. "In the case of the 'Horizon Europe' programme, the Commission has proposed investing EUR 15 billion in a 'digital technology, industry and space' cluster in which AI is a key field of activity that will be supported," the release read.

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Minister declares creation of artificial intelligence centres in Poland - The First News