[FRIAM] AI art

Frank Wimberly wimberly3 at gmail.com
Tue Jun 25 10:51:53 EDT 2024 

I am flattered.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:44 AM Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com>
wrote:

> 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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