How do artificial intelligences get so intelligent? The same way we do, they get a library card and head on over to read up on their favorite topics. Or at least that’s the joke that [Jakob Werner] is playing with in his automaton art piece, “A Machine Learning” (Google translated here).
Simulating a reading machine, a pair of eyeballs on stalks scan left-right and slowly work their way down the page as another arm swings around and flips to the next one. It’s all done with hand-crafted wooden gears, in contrast to the high-tech subject matter. It’s an art piece, and you can tell that [Jakob] has paid attention to how it looks. (The all-wooden rollers are sweet.) But it’s also a “useless machine” with a punch-line.
Is it a Turing test? How can we tell that the machine isn’t reading? What about “real” AIs? Are they learning or do they just seem to be? OK, Google’s DeepMind is made of silicon and electricity instead of wood, but does that actually change anything? It’s art, so you get license to think crazy thoughts like this.
We’ve covered a few, less conceptual, useless machines here. Here is one of our favorite. Don’t hesitate to peruse them all.
I expected a librarian to come shush the thing. “If all you’re doing is pretending to learn, at least do it quietly.”
Now all you have to do is make it chug Red Bull and pop Adderall and you can rename it “CramBot”.
It’s a pubescent teen studying simulator right? It seems to be pretending to read while looking way over the book and tracking passing butts and/or crotches.
No video (Vimeo is BANNED where I am now: Indonesia. It’s deemed Evil [or some-such]). Anyway, from the ani-gifs on the Author’s page, I like this. It might be a kick-off (NOT KickStarter!) ‘page-turner’ device that when hacked together with a “smart” phone taking processed pictures, it might actually produce a decent electronic version of a physical book.
Out of curiosity, could one reach the page through a translation website as a proxy?
The flying spaghetti monster’s image is found in all of his works. May we all be touched by the noodly appendages to create great works of art. Arrrh
“Artificial intelligence has the same relation to intelligence as artificial flowers have to flowers.”–David L. Parnas
“Add a camera and a Raspberry Pi, and actually scan books.”–notarealemail
Add five more of these and make them play “Silent Library”.