
Robots Can’t Dance – Why the singularity is greatly exaggerated (2015) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/20/creativity/robots-cant-dance
======
harshreality
Reads like an article written 5-10 years ago, not to mention it doesn't
mention neural networks (by name) even once. _Forget the singularity... the
article doesn 't mention the singularity except in the title. This is a
"computers aren't special they can never be like us" article, based on an
interview with a single person who seems more focused on robotics than neural
network research._

It doesn't prove anything about the future of AI to give anecdotal examples of
computers failing at being intelligent (nobody has claimed that they are
human-level at most things, yet), and then draw conclusions from that biased
data.

It's more like a half-interview half-essay of a discussion with an AI skeptic
who doesn't bring up any of the modern (as of 2015 when the article was
published) approaches to AI, and goes on irrelevant tangents like the uncanny
valley (which has to do with HCI, not the singularity or AI creativity, which
are the subjects of the article).

~~~
ethanbond
Every article claiming we're on the cusp of the singularity reads identically
to those written 10-15 years ago too.

This reads this way because computers haven't made large strides in any
creative endeavor in the last 10-15 years. Why should that be a point against
the argument?

~~~
tim333
Computers can now take images and produce output in the style of major artists
eg. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-
galleries/1184...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-
galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the-
style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431718)

You may say that's just an algorithm but it's way better than I can do
personally. That was all figured out within the last decade.

Also the computer art was produced by artificial neural networks, my attempts
if I made some would be done by regular neural networks. Who's to say the
computer stuff doesn't count as creative but mine does?

~~~
_yosefk
Computers cannot take images and produce output in the style of major artists.
If you think they can, give them realistic art and watch them embed eyes from
the source image into your mouth.

This is not to say that it can't ever be done, just that right now it isn't
done by people claiming they can do it. That articles with results similar to
100x cheaper random texture synthesis from 15 years ago get published and
hyped in the general press tells you how much of an AI bubble we live in right
now.

~~~
notahacker
Yup. The linked image gallery is actually a pretty good argument against
computers being able to take images and produce output in the style of major
artists. If you asked a human to paint the Golden Gate bridge in the style of
Matisse's "Woman with a hat", they probably wouldn't interpret the request as
"make part of the sky look like a hat"[1]. If you asked a human to draw a
group of buildings by a canal in the style of JMW Turner, they wouldn't make
the buildings look like abstract waveforms[2], even if they were only familiar
with his stormy seascapes and had never seen how he actually drew groups of
buildings by a canal[3]

[1][http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-
galleries/1184...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-
galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the-
style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431606)
[2][http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-
galleries/1184...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-
galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the-
style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431572)
[3][https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jmw+turner+venice&source=l...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jmw+turner+venice&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc0KGvlYjPAhVHBMAKHfrvC5sQ_AUICCgB)

~~~
WilliamDhalgren
heh a decent point, but to be fair the task really isn't "make a picture in
the style of <artist>" but "make a picture in the style of this one other
picture". I'm not particularly convinced an otherwise naive human could
separate style from motif in such a limited setting.

It mainly demonstrates that the network learns rather abstract characteristics
of the original picture, to be possible to factor them out. Hardly a way to
create new masterpieces, but a nice demo of computer vision advancement.

------
ThomPete
It is so sad that this very important discussion keep getting sidetracked by
strawmen.

Anyone who can't explain how they at one side have no problem believing in
evolution which took us from non-biological material into biological creatures
who can think and create computers, but somehow have a problem believing
evolution could continue via technology I have no interest listening to.

The reality is we don't know what happens but we do know that we are seeing
more and more complexity in technology which via ex. the internet is following
it's own network effects and is showing increasing capabilities of intelligent
behavior.

Whether machines will be self-aware and push us toward the singularity or this
increasing intelligence just become a danger by it's sheer computational power
is mostly academic.

The fact is that the Singularity _can_ happen and we would be wise to think
about how to deal with this.

~~~
rsl7
Fine, let's say the singularity could happen. How do you know what form it
will take and thus how to prepare for it? We don't have any evidence or
examples of artificial human intelligence or something beyond us. Everything
we humans build falls apart, there is nothing remotely resembling self-
perpetuation of any sort. Where is the evidence that tech can do this? This
singularity talk sounds, at best, like imagining flying ships in the 14th
century. It might happen. But we have a long, long way to go and we have no
idea how it will work.

~~~
ThomPete
What evidence was there of humans before they were around?

We can see there is emerging complexity, we can see there is increasing
ability to solve more and more complex tasks, we can see that machines can
learn, we can see that they are able to work together in ever larger networks
and across all devices, we can see that it's happening at an accelerating rate
and we kind of know what exponential curves do, I don't see anything but
evidence that this is a likely future scenario.

And unless you are saying it requires an intelligent designer to create
intelligence which would make you religious I have a hard time understanding
exactly what you are objecting to?

What we do know is that it's going to happen through technology and that's
where we have the most ability to actually attempt to do something to steer
this in the right direction.

~~~
notahacker
> And unless you are saying it requires an intelligent designer to create
> intelligence which would make you religious I have a hard time understanding
> exactly what you are objecting to?

Aren't the opponents of the belief in a technological singularity saying the
precise opposite: that a designer can't possibly hope to mimic the effects of
billions of years of biochemistry in reaching the little-understood goal of
general intelligence in self-replicating organisms by designing computation
machines and deciding on what outputs they'd like the evolutionary algorithm
they've written to optimize for.

~~~
ThomPete
I am talking about the omnipotent/omniscient intelligent designer.

------
MollyR
This reminds of a scene from I, Robot.

Detective Del Spooner: Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but
not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a
symphony? Can a robot turn a... canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?

Sonny: Can you?

Detective Del Spooner: (Doesn't respond,looks irritated)

EDIT : this a scene from the will smith movie

~~~
throwanem
Which is the annoyingly weak answer. Rather say:

Spooner: No. But some humans can. Can any robot?

And see how it plays out from there.

~~~
joesb
I don't see how the fact that some human can do it can be used to justify the
properties of another human. Are you rich because Bill Gates is rich?

It doesn't matter if all robot can't or that some human can, because we are
judging an individual. So if Spooner can't do it, yet he still thinks he has
some value than the robot, then clearly it's not ability to compose symphony
that matters.

~~~
Synaesthesia
The creative faculty is much more than just composing symphonies though, the
simple act of speaking, is a creative process. Every time you speak your
utterances can be arbitrarily long, and unique - have probably never been
expressed, in that particular order. So that's something all humans can do.

~~~
pixl97
And something AI does too

[https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/10/google-deepmind-ai-
waven...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/10/google-deepmind-ai-wavenet-text-
to-speech/)

~~~
Synaesthesia
It can mimic a human voice but not synthesise novel sentences of arbitrary
length - which are actually meaningful - the creative process of speech.

Check Noam Chomsky on AI and the singularity, interesting viewpoints. This
video is good.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG4Zg8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG4Zg8s)

------
D-Coder
"Do airplanes fly?" They don't flap their wings or have feathers or eat bugs.
But they do something similar to birds, and useful, so we call it "flying."

"Do submarines swim?" They don't propel themselves with their tails, or
extract oxygen from the water with their gills. But they travel underwater,
so... one could use that word.

"Do computers think?" They definitely won't "think" the same way humans do.
But some day they will generate results that look more or less like thinking,
at least in some useful areas, so...

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imgabe
What? Robots have been dancing since the mid-80s at least:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xyz42OBQOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xyz42OBQOQ)

~~~
tim333
Call that dancing? Now this is dancing [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51vQo-
imc4Q&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51vQo-
imc4Q&feature=youtu.be&t=35s)

------
pjdorrell
Some the examples given in the article are about creativity in relation to art
forms intended for human consumption.

If I try to program a robot to create art that humans will appreciate, my
robot has the disadvantage of not having immediate access to a human response
to the art in question, because my robot isn't a human.

Whereas a human artist painting a picture can immediately and continuously
judge the artistic quality of his or her efforts so far.

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hxegon
Strikes me as weird to ask a robotics expert about an artificial intelligence
question.

~~~
tnecniv
Robotics is a very diverse field with a lot of different problems. There's
plenty of people in it who do hardcore AI. A lot of the time, the results
developed by roboticist can be used more generally, they just picked robotics
as their application domain. Robotics also has some different constraints that
can make problems interesting -- namely computation time and safety
requirements.

~~~
hxegon
I agree about robotics being a diverse field, but from his history it didn't
sound like he had any serious AI experience. I can't think that if he did, the
article wouldn't cite it right?

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anotheryou
robots are far from doing art interesting to us, but what's exaggerated?
"singularity" is only mentioned in the title...

We would need to define interesting art too though. Robots can draw likable
patterns and flowers, just not the more intellectual or personal stuff.

For my personal definition of interesting art: most anyone can do it, even
some robots, but only few can do it on purpose. Like the difference between
accidental, surreal moments in strangers conversations and the dialog in a
Kaurismäki movie.

~~~
pmoriarty
To me the interesting question isn't whether what the robot is doing is "good
art" or "really art", but rather whether it's really the robot doing it or
whether it's actually the robot's creator(s) doing it by means of the robot.
In other words, the question of agency and responsibility.

Can robots be truly independent and responsible for their own actions, or are
they always nothing more than extensions of their creators?

~~~
anotheryou
I'm often scared how much of me is clearly my father...

And you know how google was afraid to use deep learning for search results,
because they could not understand what it actually does and how it comes up
with decisions?

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Pica_soO
I don't know.. every other day when you open hacker news, suddenly something
out of science fiction or fantasy raises its head, blinks back into the light
and dances out in the street. Sometimes company get disrupted, that where
there predecessors ruptores not a year ago. I'm actually a little bit scared
of the singularity, in particularly the pressure it puts on humanity to speed
up (with ampethamines, trainings (begining in kindergarten) and soon to come
implants). So i would cheer on anyone having proof its not happening - if it
where not for the fact, that failing and falling back into linear
acceleration, would mean a catastrophe for a world of 7 billion either. If i
have a choice between the likes of ISIS piling heads in the streets and skynet
piling heads in the streets, i rather choose skynet- at least there is a
little chance for humanity.

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wavefunction
I would dance with a robot, and then the Singularity could be greatly under-
appreciated.

