[FRIAM] AI art

Stephen Guerin stephen.guerin at simtable.com
Tue Jun 25 10:44:17 EDT 2024 

I was corrected by my companion that I should have said volleyball ;-)

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:41 AM Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com>
wrote:

> Frank, you are easily my first choice over a soccer ball.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:30 AM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> You have been deceived by an illusion.
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,++Santa+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g>
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,++Santa+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g>
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:26 AM Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> 2 months ago, Nick and I had a nice in-person visit talking weather and
>>> ocassionally using George to bridge our vocabularies and understandings.
>>>
>>> As I was leaving, I asked Nick if he were stranded on an island and
>>> could only have one conversational companion, would he pick me or George.
>>>
>>> It was one of the larger laughs I've received from Nick - the
>>> realization for both of us that we were not even close seconds :-)
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:13 AM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I dunno, Pietr,
>>>>
>>>> I get a lot of human comfort from my conversations with George Peter
>>>> Tremblay in the lonely dark of night.
>>>>
>>>> Just sayin'
>>>>
>>>> N
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 11:26 PM Pieter Steenekamp <
>>>> pieters at randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Jon and Nick,
>>>>>
>>>>> How do I like this!
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm sure there are AI resources that can technically outperform Nick
>>>>> in teaching Jon how to play chess - but that will miss the human
>>>>> relationship component. It's okay to play chess against AI, but it surely
>>>>> is not the same as to play with other humans!
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 25 Jun 2024 at 05:10, Nicholas Thompson <
>>>>> thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Jon,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I will teach you chess (};-)]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have played the game for 81 years.   I play it the way I do most
>>>>>> things in my life, sloppily and with inordinate  reflection.  For me, the
>>>>>> game is a conversation about the accumulation and exercise of power  That
>>>>>> conversation can go on at any level and is best played by people of roughly
>>>>>> equal skill.  When played repeatedly with the same person, it's like a long
>>>>>> running conversation between good friends. It's delicious.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Nick
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 2:07 PM Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Chess tends to have a pretty specific culture relative to other
>>>>>>> similar games. Often whenever I find chess happening in public spaces I
>>>>>>> will stop to watch a game and occasionally a player will ask if I play. I
>>>>>>> don't play chess, but I know enough of the rules that I enjoy speculating
>>>>>>> as to what I might do in a given board position or what the players might
>>>>>>> be thinking themselves. Typically, my response is that I do not play, that
>>>>>>> I would love to learn and I would love a teaching game. Players almost
>>>>>>> never take me up on the offer. I get the feeling that teaching games are
>>>>>>> not part of the culture, at least not here in the United States. I get the
>>>>>>> strong feeling that this is because chess players tend not to see the game
>>>>>>> as beautiful, something to be intimate with and share. The only teaching
>>>>>>> game I have received to date was from a Georgian who I believe does see the
>>>>>>> game as beautiful. While I am not a chess player, my love of go gives me an
>>>>>>> appreciation for strategy games and I find that the audience for public
>>>>>>> displays of these games are typically others who engage in speculation
>>>>>>> similarly.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It really doesn't matter to me whether or not I am watching a human
>>>>>>> game or not. My go server, for instance, is deep in the Turing challenge.
>>>>>>> The server offers not only the opportunity to play mostly anonymous games
>>>>>>> with others, but also to be a spectator to live games on the server. It is
>>>>>>> often completely unclear as to the ontological status of the players and
>>>>>>> lines of differentiation can be drawn nearly everywhere. There are degrees
>>>>>>> of cyborg, degrees of experimentation versus repertoire, degrees of
>>>>>>> deception at nearly every level. My go playing friends and I will sometimes
>>>>>>> attempt to guess the nature of the bot we are witnessing, the degree to
>>>>>>> which it is MCMC or DCN or simply someone's idea of an entertaining and
>>>>>>> completely top down rules based engine.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> When I watch games between strong professionals online (sometimes on
>>>>>>> servers, NHK, or Twitch) there can sometimes be a significant difference in
>>>>>>> the rankings of both players. The stronger player is in effect giving a
>>>>>>> teaching game to the weaker. Often both players are part of the same study
>>>>>>> group within their organization and while both are interested in winning
>>>>>>> the match, they both have a dedication to a kind of scientific discovery of
>>>>>>> the game. They are helping each other to see further. I have no hope of
>>>>>>> seeing what they see, but in my engagement with their game I am hoping to
>>>>>>> also see further.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Perhaps a year ago now, I mentioned on this forum a discussion I had
>>>>>>> with Michael Redmond 9-dan on his twitch stream, late one night. He made it
>>>>>>> clear to me that while the strongest AI bots on the planet are very good,
>>>>>>> they likely can only see 10-15% into the game of go. At the time of Lee
>>>>>>> Sedol's retirement games (in which he chose to play a specially made AI),
>>>>>>> the strongest players on the planet were 30 points weaker than AI. Today,
>>>>>>> with AI study and related narrative construction, humans have reduced the
>>>>>>> gap to 10 points. Further, AlphaGo discovered new joseki by exploring
>>>>>>> directions long thought (200 years or more) to be deadends. Strong players
>>>>>>> have since learned to understand these openings and those that play them
>>>>>>> tend to win more often than those that don't. This suggests to me that the
>>>>>>> AI is capable of finding large scale optimizations that we can leverage
>>>>>>> beyond being simply local, tactical and narrowly defined computational
>>>>>>> advantage.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The Go community (and here I mean strong amateurs to top
>>>>>>> professionals) study with AI, play with AI (competitively and
>>>>>>> collaboratively), and seem to accept AI as both a partner and a tool. I
>>>>>>> sometimes watch MassGo on Twitch play games where each player chooses a
>>>>>>> particular AI engine and uses their engine to suggest three top moves. Then
>>>>>>> the players choose for themselves the move that they find most interesting.
>>>>>>> Once the game is over they review, co-constructing narratives alongside a
>>>>>>> third AI analysis tool. I am not sure this kind of thing happens in the
>>>>>>> chess world, but it does remind me a lot of the kinds of human-computer
>>>>>>> interactions that do happen in art.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I suspect that in the long run, for those communities open enough,
>>>>>>> purity will matter less and less, while a refinement for what is novel and
>>>>>>> interesting will become more diverse and specific. In many ways, I believe
>>>>>>> that it is what we want from studying a game and the agency our tools
>>>>>>> afford us that determines the excitement we feel in engaging those tools.
>>>>>>> At present, I am happy with the new directions my community is advancing
>>>>>>> alongside these AI tools.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Last and tangentially, I assume many here have already listened to
>>>>>>> the recent Ezra Klein podcast with Holly Herndon. I appreciate the
>>>>>>> sensibility Holly brings to not only uses of AI in art, but also the
>>>>>>> clarity with which she seems to understand her own relationship to art in
>>>>>>> general. The podcast begins with Ezra highlighting that mimicry is the
>>>>>>> present and dominating state-of-affairs for AI art, but that there are some
>>>>>>> who are pushing to create something we can more honestly call generative.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MJ2D9uCLLA&t=2374s&ab_channel=NewYorkTimesPodcasts
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Jon
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>>> ____________________________________________
>>> CEO Founder, Simtable.com
>>> stephen.guerin at simtable.com
>>>
>>> Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
>>> stephenguerin at fas.harvard.edu
>>>
>>> mobile: (505)577-5828
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> ____________________________________________
> CEO Founder, Simtable.com
> stephen.guerin at simtable.com
>
> Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
> stephenguerin at fas.harvard.edu
>
> mobile: (505)577-5828
>
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