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Digit culture. When the computers begin to write can no longer creation is seen as a unique human ability. But a robot can crack the code behind a chronicle? In the last part of the series of numeric culture decides Kulturmagasinet Hanna Fahl to find out the truth.
When the computers begin to write can no longer creation is seen as a unique human ability. But a robot can crack the code behind a chronicle? In the last part of the series of numeric culture decides Kulturmagasinet Hanna Fahl to find out the truth.
Note for the future: no one wants to finish reading a chronicle of tapeworms and other parasites, how poetic it is.
I remember when I wrote it, it was in late December, I was quite pleased. Christmas peace and worms! Creative contrast! Munter metaphors! But when I have the figures in front of me, black on white, it feels obvious. The grotesque is not well with julskinkefokuserade weekends.
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Large amounts of data makes it possible to analyze us humans and our cultural consumption behavior in detail. It makes art and culture, in turn, be tailored to satisfy our needs. TV series like “House of Cards” is designed according to carefully calculated formulas built on how we look at Netflix, our e-book readers can register precisely which side we get tired when we read novels. All this has DN Culture talked about in spring, in Article Series Numeric culture.
Journalism is now poised to be automated. Software can already write fully publishable articles; News agency AP uses, for example of such texts. So far, it is mainly dry, facts frequent subjects such as sports results and weather, but as the software evolves, we will see more types of machine-generated captions. Swedish My Media has recently launched an robot journalism projects. At the same time the Group on a slimming down of the human editorial offices of at least 36.5 Services.
It is impossible to say where the limits to what a software can create, and it raises quickly philosophical questions. What is creation? Can an algorithm to make art? Can figures measure creativity? And should I be worried about my job?
I’m calling Karim Jebari. He is a philosopher and researcher at the Institute for Future Studies, and when he doctorate at KTH, he wrote a thesis on the ethical aspects of technological development. He points out that it is not the first time a computer do something we thought were uniquely human.
– We are stuck in the idea that people have some computers lack, that we are special or magic, or that our brains have a special essence that produces something of value. It is an important part of our self image and our wage negotiations. But the line moved all the time, says Karim Jebari.
As an example, he takes the chess computers. Chess was seen as the essence of human strategic thinking and planning, chess was the very idea of human intelligence. But in 1997 won the chess computer Deep Blue match of world champion Garry Kasparov.
– Then began instead to talk about creativity as uniquely human. But if you look at the matches between Deep Blue and Kasparov, it is impossible to claim that Deep Blue does not play creatively! Kasparov himself has written about it – the computer game was bold, it seemed to have the best qualities of extremely skilled human players.
It is not surprising that Deep Blue was able to play as a human. Computer database containing the best chess matches ever played. Similarly, a journalism robot is fed by huge amounts of text. According to Karim Jebari it is also possible to let computers assess the qualities of “good” or “bad”.
There are just too tempting; I decide to test.
In about four years I have written chronicles in DN Culture every week. This kind of talk is not high on, especially when you are colleagues, but I compare myself often with Fredrik Strage. It’s hardly my fault; it is laid out for comparison. He Fridays, I Saturdays. We are interested about the same things. The data can be analyzed to determine which one of us is the better columnist?
Hillevi Hägglöf and Kelly Smith is the language students – a sort of combination of linguists, programmers and statisticians – and they run together Textual Relations, a language technology consulting firm.
– In principle, it is about trying to get the computers to learn human language, says Hillevi Hägglöf.
Textual Relations has, among other things, examined the image of Sweden around the last election, and built a journalism robot access news agency Siren.
I send over three years collected chronicles of me and Fredrik Strage for analysis. In addition, I ask the DN to produce as much data as possible: who our readers are, which chronicles the spread best online, who has clicked the most times. All data should be brought to light. A simple “good” or “bad”, I will not make, any particularly good krönikeutvärderingsalgoritm does not exist yet.
– You and I understand the text as a whole it is. It does not have a computer, where you have to divide everything in the many concrete dimensions. What words are used, how personal the number is, the subjective or objective text is, says Hillevi Hägglöf.
Like so many others, I have always seen my writing and creation as intuitive, something that just is – now I want to know what it consists of.
The issue of creation is very much present in religions. The Bible begins with the story of creation, something becomes of no. Archbishop Antje Jackelén’ve thought a lot about technology and society, and what it is to create. In 2001, she was assistant professor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago and published the article “The image of God as techno sapiens” about what happens to humans when technological developments in artificial intelligence and artificial life.
The view of the human role in relation to job creation has changed over time, says Antje Jackelén.
– In the Lutheran tradition has long hesitated to speak of man as co-creators, without talking about the employee: create may well only God can do!
Paradoxically, it was the destructive force that put the focus on her creator. All creation is not good, says Antje Jackelén.
– The idea of man’s creative power grew seriously by the atomic bomb. Then something happened in theology, there was growing realization that we actually have the power to destroy ourselves. Man has both the ability to create and be destructive.
But can an algorithm to create art?
– The criteria for what is art lies in the eye of the beholder. It is not possible to draw a sharp boundary, and it has long been examples of indirect job creation. The discussion has been about electronic music, but where is the frontline a man who has designed something that in turn creates something.
Art and culture which only satisfies our desires as consumers quickly becomes boring, think Antje Jackelén.
– When something goes lost. But if you construct algorithms in a way that gives you what you are not want a regular basis … then you will be one step closer. It is both frightening and fascinating development, says Antje Jackelén.
The numbers fall in. First of how our texts are read online. The statistics are not comprehensive, some figures are based on the logged-in subscribers, and the paper newspaper readers lacking. But it is fascinating reading. Fredrik Strage has far more chronicles of our joint top-ten lists of the most read and shared – but I have the top position. Fredrik has a larger share of readers in Stockholm, mine are more scattered across the country. I reach more older, Frederick is the largest in the segment between 30 and 40 years. I have almost the exact gender balance among my readers, while 60 percent of Frederick’s men. Fredrik has faithful fans. He has even more fans among our colleagues – you can see how many people read us from the job computer inside the newsroom – which makes me slightly paranoid, why do the better of him ?
It is possible that a closer look at the data indefinitely. Texts have sex or sexual words in the title is read by many, but almost no share articles on social media. My chronicle of tapeworms are the most tired of (or äcklats of?) Halfway; get done reading it. Melody The cross is a subject that attracts old. Note for the future: policies are popular.
Language analysis is even more fascinating. Both Fredrik and I use more adverbs than adjectives. I am equal in terms of pronouns, Frederick writes to 64 percent of men, which is consistent with how our audiences look. Fredrik refers more often to himself than I do – you could argue that he is more self-centered. I say “my goodness”, Fredrik prefer “hell”. I say “thank you”, he says “congratulations”. We are both naysayers. Fredrik is somewhat easier to read than I, but neither of us writes very complicated. My sentences are 2.4 letters longer than his.
I am trying to visualize the numbers, see something concrete in front of me. I write for the old people in the countryside, Fredrik metropolitan guys with looming 40-life crisis? It does not feel right. So simple is not it. I get dizzy seeing all the data in black and white, do not know what to do with it, get vertigo of the detail level. It feels like looking into a forbidden place, see the source of creation.
Meanwhile, I have a sneaking feeling that my employer already know all this. Or at least that it is only a matter of time. Why should not they, when all the data already exists and just waiting to be Tydd? What it means for the future is difficult to know. More effective ad placement, maybe. Or I get fired when my target is deemed too köpsvag. And perhaps both Fredrik and I actually so predictable and measurable that it is possible to replace us with software. Frederick wrote a chronicle about just this last year, after a study at Karlstad University revealed that half of the subjects in an experiment could determine whether a sports commentary was written by a computer or a human being: “StragBot are soon there. You can not negotiate with it. It knows no compassion. And it will not give up until I’m unemployed. “
I ask språkteknologen Hillevi Hägglöf what she thinks about the future. Computers can already write novels, she points out, legible beginning middle and end.
– But who will read them, and why? Is there a value in that a computer can write a novel?
One day we may reach genuine artificial intelligence, says Hillevi Hägglöf, and then maybe a computer can write a novel of the same value as a human being.
– But if we talk it meaningful and valuable content, such as a journalist creates when the hen makes intelligence, then I think you have to have the motivation and agenda, things like a computer totally lacking, says Hillevi Hägglöf.
But Karim Jebari at the Institute for Future Studies disagree. Purpose, motivation, all these things can be written into the program code, he says. Or at least simulate.
– Human motivations arise course not out of nothing, and they change all the time. In the long term, no major difficulties to write programs that have a kind of self-motivation, says Karim Jebari.
Will we be forced to reevaluate what creativity and art in the future?
– Yes, maybe. An analogy is when the photograph was. Then it was out to paint still lifes and portraits, you could not compete with photographs of clarity and realism. Instead, they began with surrealism and garish colors. Computers writing under formal rules, they can find patterns. One possible consequence could be that people are starting to write more unconventional texts. But new styles would have to come quite often to do not have time to be copied to computers, says Karim Jebari.
Do you think that my writing will change from this knowledge?
– If you broke many norms in this article, so one could know for sure that it is not computer generated. I do not know exactly how, but maybe you can start to use the Cambridge Getting? Or have a continental philosophical approach where you have a lot of references to obscure people in every subordinate clause?
Exactly where the latter feels much more like a strategy for Fredrik Strage, I think when I put down the receiver. Fredrik is already very good at referring to obscure people – he uses proper names more often than adjectives and pronouns.
It is time to confront Fredrik Strage with the analysis. We study the graphics together, Fredrik stick to the list of typical topics.
– Have I written about Springsteen? I’m surprised that “South Park” is not the …
Are you surprised that you write so much about yourself?
– No, I’m probably pretty narcissistic total. But I usually appreciate chroniclers as it is, as Julie Burchill or Andres Lokko. I am a little shocked that it’s so much Stockholm among my readers. I can imagine that it is my reference to my friend Hipster Kristofer who have Sabbath for me out there in the country, says Fredrik Strage.
I ask what Fredrik think about the future: we have something uniquely human in our writing, which can not automatically generate? Fredrik draws the same conclusion as both Karim Jebari and Antje Jackelén have suggested: capriciousness is the way out.
– Have you read “The Dark Tower” by Stephen King? One of my favorite sections is about a train powered by a supercomputer that decided to crash and commit suicide. It wants to hear riddles, but it can answer everything. The main characters fail to crack it before they start pulling absurd joke that the computer does not understand. “How many does it take to screw in a light bulb,” these things. I think it irrational, illogical, difficult to imitate.
Is it the niche we are forced into when StragBot and FahlBot is invented? Impressionism, surrealism?
– We must become less deferential, more messed up, more difficult. But on the other hand. Already in the 80s launched one a drum where hi-hate played a little wrong in some places, because it would let more human …
It’s not relevant anymore to compare myself with Fredrik, the DN is big enough for both of us. But StragBot and FahlBot is not far away. I ask Textual Relations to make an attempt on the basis of the text masses they analyzed. Any cure that can write whole columns, they have not, but they generate a few sample sentences. I’m almost nervous when I open the mail.
FahlBot:
Research on Facebook makes me want to carve out his eyes with a spoon in a perverse fantasy of a more neutral body opening .
StragBot:
No need physical business because all the music is nothing more than a collection of artistic awkward people who are there to silence anyone who criticizes pop star Beyoncé Knowles.
It is … not perfect. The cure was based on already existing phrases and word orders in our texts, it is no creation of artificial intelligence. But the result is the same time almost painfully pure distillate of how we write.
Oh my God. I’m so vulgar? Note for the future: a chronicle of a perverse fantasy of a more neutral body orifice would probably clicked a lot but hardly shared in social media, how poetic it is.
On the other hand FahlBot more surreal and irrational than any I myself created so far. The last loophole, the last definition of human creativity, feels not so rock solid anymore. So I do the only reasonable basis of the data analysis; roll up our sleeves and decide to write better and more unpredictable. Two can play this game, FahlBot.
At the same time. A reluctant note for the distant future: consider retraining.
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