BUENOS AIRES – Can robots be creative? Can they think? Are they conscious?
These are the questions being asked as IT programmers and artists start creating machines that can draw portraits, improvise choreographies and recreate our natural environment.
Once the stuff of science fiction, Artificial Intelligence (A-I) is creeping into our everyday lives. It the science of making computers do the versatile things humans can do.
A first in Latin America, Argentina is opening its doors to the world’s most important A-I event from 25 July to 31 July 2015 in the capital Buenos Aires.
The IJCAI-2015 conference gathers over 1,000 prominent neuroscientists and computer science researchers from across the globe.
The event is an opportunity to discuss key scientific contributions in the field.
Toby Walsh, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Australia’s National Information and Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence (NICTA) and the University of New South Wales, is enthusiastic about A-I’s impact on society.
“With A-I, there are good things we could do with it. We can save lives by having much safer cars because the cars drive themselves and the cars will be much more reliable. The cars will talk to each other and say ‘get out of my way, I am coming in your direction’,” he says.
To test the capacity of these intelligent machines, the event is hosting an Angry Birds competition. Researchers are curious to know whether robots can play the popular Finnish game better than human beings.
The multi-level game consists of shooting at pigs with little birds.
Jochen Renz, the contest organiser and Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Australian National University, sums it up.
“The reason why we’re doing that is exactly so that artificial intelligence develops these capabilities that enable robots to predict the consequences of their actions and then to select actions that have no undesired consequences, that don’t hurt anyone, nothing gets damaged. Developing this is extremely important for the future of A-I because if we don’t have that, if computers and robots cannot do that, humans will never accept robots in our society,” he explains.
This was a standout favourite competition during the conference, especially for Christian Kroer, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States.
“I’m a big fan of it, I think it’s a good way to make A-I seems more fun. Usually it has a lot of very interesting research problems even for simple games like Angry Birds,” he says.
The congress also sheds light on an under-developed A-I research area: the rapprochement between technology and art.
The “Kinetic Dialogues” installation stages a real-time interaction between Barbadian dancer Valencia James and an avatar.
The project shows how software can improvise dance moves, based on a recording with a motion-tracking camera.
This emphasises the creativity of machines, says Luc Steels, the exhibition’s curator.
“Thinking about creativity and thinking about artistic activity is a way to kind of shake up a little bit the purely technological, purely let’s say pragmatic, utilitarian way of looking at things.”
The “Look Into The Box” installation by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson explores how machines can create a communication system.
After taking a picture of a person’s eye, the machine invents words to describe colours identified in the picture.
In Australian artist Jon McCormack’s “Niche Constructions” project, robots create complex patterns by leaving a trail of ink on white paper.
If A-I has the potential to find new ways of making art and boost productivity, some fear that robots might replace humans in a near future.
“Many of us are wondering about the impact A-I is going to have on the workforce, on the jobs we have. Any technology tends to destroy some jobs and create new jobs elsewhere. And it’s an interesting question whether the efficiency, the productivity that will get out of AI will destroy more jobs than it creates,” says Professor Walsh.
This video was produced exclusively for Associated Press on July 31, 2015. Click here to watch it.
