Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Stephen Guerin]

Most of the laughter came from realizing what our answers said about
ourselves than the quality of the other.

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:51 AM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> 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 
> wrote:
>
>> I was corrected by my companion that I should have said volleyball ;-)
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:41 AM Stephen Guerin 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Frank, you are easily my first choice over a soccer ball.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:30 AM Frank Wimberly 
>>> wrote:
>>>
 You have been deceived by an illusion.

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

 505 670-9918
 Santa Fe, NM

 On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:26 AM Stephen Guerin <
 stephen.gue...@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 <
> thompnicks...@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 <
>> piet...@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 <
>>> thompnicks...@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 
 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 

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Frank Wimberly]

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 
wrote:

> I was corrected by my companion that I should have said volleyball ;-)
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:41 AM Stephen Guerin 
> wrote:
>
>> Frank, you are easily my first choice over a soccer ball.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:30 AM Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>>
>>> You have been deceived by an illusion.
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Frank C. Wimberly
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>>> 
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>> 
>>>
>>> 505 670-9918
>>> Santa Fe, NM
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:26 AM Stephen Guerin <
>>> stephen.gue...@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 <
 thompnicks...@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 <
> piet...@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 <
>> thompnicks...@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 
>>> 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 

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Stephen Guerin]

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

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:41 AM Stephen Guerin 
wrote:

> Frank, you are easily my first choice over a soccer ball.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:30 AM Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>
>> You have been deceived by an illusion.
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> 
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>> 
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:26 AM Stephen Guerin 
>> 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 
>>> 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 <
 piet...@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 <
> thompnicks...@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 
>> 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 

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Stephen Guerin]

Frank, you are easily my first choice over a soccer ball.


On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:30 AM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> You have been deceived by an illusion.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> 
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> 
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:26 AM Stephen Guerin 
> 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 
>> 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 <
>>> piet...@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 <
 thompnicks...@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 
> 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

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Frank Wimberly]

You have been deceived by an illusion.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:26 AM Stephen Guerin 
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 
> 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 <
>> piet...@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 
>>> 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 
 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 

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Stephen Guerin]

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 
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 <
> piet...@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 
>> 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 
>>> 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 

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[glen]

I was teaching a couple of kids (8 and 6, I think) at the pub the other night. I don't 
like kids. But it is an interesting task to try to draw out their "look ahead" 
skills. The 8 yr old definitely has them already. But from conversations with their mom, 
it seems clear they're high on conscientiousness and neuroticism: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits The 6 yr old seems to have more 
of the open and extravert traits.

On 6/24/24 20:26, Pieter Steenekamp 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 mailto:thompnicks...@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 mailto:jonzing...@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 

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Pieter Steenekamp]

I truly don't claim to know where AI is headed. However, I am convinced
that tomorrow's AI will be significantly smarter than today's. My
perspective on the future of AI isn't based on any special insight or
predictive power, but rather on my hopes for what could happen. I envision
AI developing to be far superior to humans in every aspect and fostering a
very positive relationship with us—akin to the relationship I have with my
children and grandchildren.

I'm quite old now, but for nearly half a century, I enjoyed playing tennis
with my son. Except for when he was very young, he has always been much
better than me—he's a skilled player, while I'm average. We created a
custom handicap system that allowed me to occasionally win, and I would
then make a big fuss about it, proudly telling the family that I had beaten
him. Everyone knew it wasn't a truly fair victory, but we all enjoyed it
immensely.

Lately, I've been teaching my 9-year-old grandchild to program in Python.
For now, I'm (probably) still better at it than him, but I truly enjoy
watching him develop and knowing he'll soon surpass me. We do this online,
as we live on different continents, and my daughter tells me how much he
enjoys our weekly Python sessions. My wife always reminds me of how much
joy it brings me.

I find true joy in seeing my offspring outperform me. My "wishful thinking"
prediction for the future relationship between humans and AI is that we
will find genuine happiness in our AI creations surpassing us in all areas.

On Mon, 24 Jun 2024 at 21:31, glen  wrote:

> Exactly. The (relatively) successful AIs also have 2 components to their
> lineage: structural and tuning. The self-attending transformer architecture
> is analogous to either our anatomy or the ontogeny of the anatomy from DNA
> - structural lineage. I'd argue it's more like the former. The analogy to
> cultural descent is more difficult to iron out. But we can imagine
> something like LoRA, where some of the weights are more stable than others
> during any given training period ... like trying to unlearn idiom or speak
> with a different accent might be more difficult than learning new facts or
> "theorems". Some of the weights are subject to more frequent tuning than
> others. Etc.
>
> All we need to do is reverse engineer a DNA-like grammar from which to
> grow different architectures and we have something akin to biological
> evolution. Then develop a persistent MMO world allowing inter-player
> stigmergy and we have something akin to cultur[e|al evolution].
>
> On 6/24/24 11:55, Barry MacKichan wrote:
> > Our brains start off prewired to a significant if poorly understood
> degree. And then we learn from the full range of human experience in all
> its serendipitous contingency. We learn from the feel of an embrace and
> taste of ice cream, from battle wounds and wedding ceremonies and athletic
> defeats, from bee stings and dog licks, from watching sunsets and riding
> roller coasters and reading Keats aloud and listening to Mozart alone.
> Trying to train a computer about the meaning of love or grief is like
> trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll.
> >
> > “And not just from all these life experiences of our own but from the
> experiences of all our cultural ancestors. Our teachers—all those from whom
> we have learned, and those departed souls who taught our teachers—have
> shaped all those experiences into a structure of life, a system of values
> and ideals, a way in which we see and interpret the world.”
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>   1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
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  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Nicholas Thompson]

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  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 

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Pieter Steenekamp]

As for chess, it seems like AI is now truly on another level than humans.
>From a 2021 blog post
https://www.chessable.com/blog/computers-vs-humans-in-chess-who-is-better/
"chess computers with sufficient processing strength will always be able to
beat any human, calculating the most efficient move that will lead them to
the best possible result from any position."


On Mon, 24 Jun 2024 at 20:07, Jon Zingale  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 

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Barry MacKichan]

I was struck recently by an article in *Harvard Magazine* by Harry 
Lewis, a computer science professor and former dean of Harvard College. 
In it, he says:


“The first error is suggesting that computers can be digitally trained 
to be superior versions of human intellects. And the second is inferring 
that human judgment will not be needed once computers get smart enough.


“Learning first. How do we become the people we are? Not by training a 
blank slate with discrete experience data. Our brains start off prewired 
to a significant if poorly understood degree. And then we learn from the 
full range of human experience in all its serendipitous contingency. We 
learn from the feel of an embrace and taste of ice cream, from battle 
wounds and wedding ceremonies and athletic defeats, from bee stings and 
dog licks, from watching sunsets and riding roller coasters and reading 
Keats aloud and listening to Mozart alone. Trying to train a computer 
about the meaning of love or grief is like trying to tell a stranger 
about rock and roll.


“And not just from all these life experiences of our own but from the 
experiences of all our cultural ancestors. Our teachers—all those from 
whom we have learned, and those departed souls who taught our 
teachers—have shaped all those experiences into a structure of life, a 
system of values and ideals, a way in which we see and interpret the 
world.”


Some friends from my college days have shared a quiz of mathematical 
puzzles. I gave the quiz to Github Copilot, since that LLM seems well 
versed in mathematics. The LLM aced it, and in addition, identified the 
theorems that allowed it (him? her?) to solve the problems. This is 
somewhat surprising given that LLMs have a hard time counting to four 
(One reviewer asked ChatGPT 4o to come up with a four-syllable word 
beginning with “w”. The answer it gave was “wonderful”.)


Concerning mathematics, my take on it currently that it can and does 
master learning existing mathematics, and it conceivably can draw 
analogies and make connections between the various fields of 
mathematics, but I do not see that an LLM can create genuinely new 
mathematics; I can’t see how an LLM trained in 1858 could possibly 
state the Riemann Hypothesis, let alone prove it.


My current opinion is that if you think of mathematics as a bunch of 
points in a high dimensional space, AI can fill in the spaces between 
two of those points; i.e., it can find new results, but it cannot head 
out beyond the existing points. In mathematical lingo, it can’t go 
outside the convex hull of existing mathematics.


— Barry


PS
For renegade English majors, a convex set has the property that if any 
two points are in the set, then all the points on the line connecting 
them is also in the set. A ball is convex; a doughnut is not. The convex 
hull of a set is the smallest convex set containing the original set. 
The convex hull of the doughnut is what you get when you completely fill 
in the hole.


On 22 Jun 2024, at 23:32, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

AI will never fully replace humans in the realm of pure art. While AI 
has

made impressive strides in generating art, humans inherently gravitate
towards creations by fellow humans. This preference stems from our
deep-seated connection to human experiences and emotions.

Consider the analogy of chess: AI can easily outplay the human world 
chess

champion, yet we remain uninterested in AI-exclusive tournaments. The
reason is simple—our fascination lies with human competitors and 
their
stories, not with machines. This extends beyond chess to all forms of 
art.
Whether it’s music, literature, or visual arts, the knowledge that a 
human

mind and soul crafted the piece adds a unique layer of significance.

It's not that humans are disinterested in non-human phenomena such as 
AI,

the stars, or mathematics. There is a wide spectrum of interests among
individuals, with some drawn more to human-centered pursuits and 
others to
abstract or scientific endeavours. However, as a collective, 
human-related

creations consistently hold a special place in our hearts.

When a human plays chess, the essence of the game is enriched by 
knowing

the opponent is also human. Similarly, when we listen to music, read a
novel, or admire a painting, the awareness that it was created by 
another
human being adds depth to our appreciation. This connection to the 
human

aspect of art is, in my opinion, irreplaceable by AI.

I can't prove this definitively; it is simply my perspective.
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Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Pieter Steenekamp]

AI is making strides on many exciting fronts, and one particularly
intriguing development is the emergence of autonomous agents. Imagine
having an AI companion with a distinct personality as your personal "buddy"
– it’s like having your own digital sidekick!

Now, think about the impact this could have. There are many lonely folks
out there, and these AI buddies could really brighten their days. They’d be
like digital cheerleaders, always there to lift spirits and share a laugh.
I don't want to downplay this potential – it’s a genuinely wonderful use
case. However, I must point out that, in my humble opinion, this isn't
quite the same as enjoying the warmth and depth of real human relationships.

Picture a future where AI is quietly working behind the scenes, ensuring
everyone's material well-being is taken care of. Meanwhile, humans could
live in small, close-knit communities, focusing on creative pursuits and
building fulfilling relationships with each other. No need to compete with
our AI buddies – just a harmonious existence where we can indulge in what
truly makes us human. Now, wouldn't that be a delightful scenario?

On Mon, 24 Jun 2024 at 15:40, glen  wrote:

> It would be useful if you were able to nudge the perspective from "simply"
> to something a little more formal. The toolchains for these self-attending
> transformer models allow for interactivity, including memory and "online"
> processing (allowing for the bot to sit alone, iterating over its input and
> output, gathering new data as needed, kneading old data as needed, etc.).
> I'm not suggesting we see many bots doing such so far. But some come close.
>
> What you seem to be implying requires some sense of locality, a
> containment boundary for the human/bot, that cloud-based bots don't have. A
> little meat (or silicon) bag of skin running around in space, acquiring
> information from its trajectory through space provides such a build-up of a
> "story", a history, a Markovian provenance for their *next* expression,
> whether in interaction with another (like chess) or a seemingly novel piece
> of art (or testable scientific hypothesis).
>
> Cloud-based bots could have such. What a trajectory through space define
> for each of us bags of meat is a set of stable/coherent constraints guiding
> which information we see (and the construal through our sensory-motor
> boundary and into our inertial learning machinery). Were the bots also
> given a well-formed set of training constraints that we humans could
> understand, we would begin thinking of them as autonomous agents, as
> opposed to oracles in the temple. And *then*, as autonomous agents, it
> would start to be interesting to see them interact with one another in the
> same way we might enjoy watching humans interact.
>
>
> On 6/22/24 20:32, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> > AI will never fully replace humans in the realm of pure art. While AI
> has made impressive strides in generating art, humans inherently gravitate
> towards creations by fellow humans. This preference stems from our
> deep-seated connection to human experiences and emotions.
> >
> > Consider the analogy of chess: AI can easily outplay the human world
> chess champion, yet we remain uninterested in AI-exclusive tournaments. The
> reason is simple—our fascination lies with human competitors and their
> stories, not with machines. This extends beyond chess to all forms of art.
> Whether it’s music, literature, or visual arts, the knowledge that a human
> mind and soul crafted the piece adds a unique layer of significance.
> >
> > It's not that humans are disinterested in non-human phenomena such as
> AI, the stars, or mathematics. There is a wide spectrum of interests among
> individuals, with some drawn more to human-centered pursuits and others to
> abstract or scientific endeavours. However, as a collective, human-related
> creations consistently hold a special place in our hearts.
> >
> > When a human plays chess, the essence of the game is enriched by knowing
> the opponent is also human. Similarly, when we listen to music, read a
> novel, or admire a painting, the awareness that it was created by another
> human being adds depth to our appreciation. This connection to the human
> aspect of art is, in my opinion, irreplaceable by AI.
> >
> > I can't prove this definitively; it is simply my perspective.
>
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
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>
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group 

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[Jon Zingale]

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 

Re: [FRIAM] AI art

[glen]

It would be useful if you were able to nudge the perspective from "simply" to something a 
little more formal. The toolchains for these self-attending transformer models allow for 
interactivity, including memory and "online" processing (allowing for the bot to sit 
alone, iterating over its input and output, gathering new data as needed, kneading old data as 
needed, etc.). I'm not suggesting we see many bots doing such so far. But some come close.

What you seem to be implying requires some sense of locality, a containment boundary for 
the human/bot, that cloud-based bots don't have. A little meat (or silicon) bag of skin 
running around in space, acquiring information from its trajectory through space provides 
such a build-up of a "story", a history, a Markovian provenance for their 
*next* expression, whether in interaction with another (like chess) or a seemingly novel 
piece of art (or testable scientific hypothesis).

Cloud-based bots could have such. What a trajectory through space define for 
each of us bags of meat is a set of stable/coherent constraints guiding which 
information we see (and the construal through our sensory-motor boundary and 
into our inertial learning machinery). Were the bots also given a well-formed 
set of training constraints that we humans could understand, we would begin 
thinking of them as autonomous agents, as opposed to oracles in the temple. And 
*then*, as autonomous agents, it would start to be interesting to see them 
interact with one another in the same way we might enjoy watching humans 
interact.


On 6/22/24 20:32, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

AI will never fully replace humans in the realm of pure art. While AI has made 
impressive strides in generating art, humans inherently gravitate towards 
creations by fellow humans. This preference stems from our deep-seated 
connection to human experiences and emotions.

Consider the analogy of chess: AI can easily outplay the human world chess 
champion, yet we remain uninterested in AI-exclusive tournaments. The reason is 
simple—our fascination lies with human competitors and their stories, not with 
machines. This extends beyond chess to all forms of art. Whether it’s music, 
literature, or visual arts, the knowledge that a human mind and soul crafted 
the piece adds a unique layer of significance.

It's not that humans are disinterested in non-human phenomena such as AI, the 
stars, or mathematics. There is a wide spectrum of interests among individuals, 
with some drawn more to human-centered pursuits and others to abstract or 
scientific endeavours. However, as a collective, human-related creations 
consistently hold a special place in our hearts.

When a human plays chess, the essence of the game is enriched by knowing the 
opponent is also human. Similarly, when we listen to music, read a novel, or 
admire a painting, the awareness that it was created by another human being 
adds depth to our appreciation. This connection to the human aspect of art is, 
in my opinion, irreplaceable by AI.

I can't prove this definitively; it is simply my perspective.



--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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[FRIAM] AI art

[Pieter Steenekamp]

AI will never fully replace humans in the realm of pure art. While AI has
made impressive strides in generating art, humans inherently gravitate
towards creations by fellow humans. This preference stems from our
deep-seated connection to human experiences and emotions.

Consider the analogy of chess: AI can easily outplay the human world chess
champion, yet we remain uninterested in AI-exclusive tournaments. The
reason is simple—our fascination lies with human competitors and their
stories, not with machines. This extends beyond chess to all forms of art.
Whether it’s music, literature, or visual arts, the knowledge that a human
mind and soul crafted the piece adds a unique layer of significance.

It's not that humans are disinterested in non-human phenomena such as AI,
the stars, or mathematics. There is a wide spectrum of interests among
individuals, with some drawn more to human-centered pursuits and others to
abstract or scientific endeavours. However, as a collective, human-related
creations consistently hold a special place in our hearts.

When a human plays chess, the essence of the game is enriched by knowing
the opponent is also human. Similarly, when we listen to music, read a
novel, or admire a painting, the awareness that it was created by another
human being adds depth to our appreciation. This connection to the human
aspect of art is, in my opinion, irreplaceable by AI.

I can't prove this definitively; it is simply my perspective.
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom 
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
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