artificial intelligence

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A Thorny Problem: When an AI Composes Music

John Martellaro ·

The Verge writes about legal issues when an AI composes music.

The word “human” does not appear at all in US copyright law, and there’s not much existing litigation around the word’s absence. This has created a giant gray area and left AI’s place in copyright unclear. It also means the law doesn’t account for AI’s unique abilities, like its potential to work endlessly and mimic the sound of a specific artist.

Not to mention the question of  who owns the copyright of this new music. Fascinating discussion here.

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Meet the AI-Created Sport Called Speedgate

Andrew Orr ·

Design agency AKQA gave data on 400 existing sports to a neural network, and one of the games it created is called Speedgate.

While the sport was created as an exercise for Design Week, it might just become a serious sport. AKQA is talking to the Oregon Sports Authority about Speedgate, and there might be an intramural league in the summer. The company is encouraging others to start their own leagues.

This sounds (and looks) like a cool game and I’d be interested to try it out. Additionally an informative guide to Speedgate can be found here.

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This AI Tool Scares the Crap Out of Elon Musk

Andrew Orr ·

OpenAI, an AI research institute cofounded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, built an AI text generator that its creators worry is dangerous.

Jack Clark, policy director at OpenAI, says that example shows how technology like this might shake up the processes behind online disinformation or trolling, some of which already use some form of automation. “As costs of producing text fall, we may see behaviors of bad actors alter,” he says.

Based on the examples I think it’s safe to say this AI would pass the Turing Test.

Cool Stuff Found

YouPorn AI Generated a List of Future Porn Star Names (SFW)

Andrew Orr ·

Last year, YouPorn Foresights used AI to predict what the most popular search terms would be in porn. This year the company did something similar. The data science and machine learning teams trained a recurrent neural network to look at the current most popular performer names, and have now created what science has predicted that the next generation of stars will call themselves. There are 69 names, both male and female, and the results are hilarious. As you would expect from AI, the names sound weird and goofy. My favorite names from the list are Man Master, Al Gorr (obviously my future kid), Summer Sax, and Paris Buttomina. It’s a safe-for-work list that you can check out here.

Cool Stuff Found

Watch This Robot Hand Learn How to Manipulate a Block

Bryan Chaffin ·

Check out this video from OpenAI of a robot hand learning how to manipulate a block. This an incredibly difficult task, and the level of difficulty is one of the many reasons Apple needs humans assembling iPhones. OpenAI used machine learning and virtual simulations for the robot to spend 100 years of trial and error to learn what you’ll see in the video (TechnologyReview has more details). Those virtual lessons were then used by the real-world robot hand, and it’s pretty darned cool. Check it out.


Podcast

Mark Zuckerberg vs. Tim Cook, Apple's New AI Chief, and Making HomeKit Great - ACM 456

Bryan Chaffin · · Add Comment

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook have been trading public barbs on privacy, and Bryan Chaffin and Jeff Gamet discuss the public tiff. They also discuss Apple’s hiring of Google’s former head of artificial intelligence and what it might mean for Siri (hint: good things!). They cap the show with a look at what it would take to make HomeKit the premier home automation platform.