Arts/Sciences #19: Jonas Degrave

Wednesday, 17 February 2016 | 20:00 - 22:00

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Does Artificial Intelligence understand Culture made by Real Intelligence? Art in the age of the deep learning singularity.

Over the last years, remarkable breakthroughs have made clear that the scientific community is on a path towards General Purpose Artificial Intelligence, an algorithm which can do everything mankind can do, and probably more. Deep learning, an approach based on artificial neural networks, seems to show a hint of what such an AI might look like. Leaps of progress have been made in the area of various type of media, such as text, images and video. Coincidentally, these are also media often used in human culture. So, what is already possible, what can we expect next, and what will the future bring? Expect computers writing Shakespeare, hallucinating on acid and painting in the style of artists long gone.

In this lecture, we'll go out on a leg and explain the philosophical issues we see looming at the horizon of AI. Let us discuss not only what will happen, but what might happen as well. Because when machines start figuring out human culture, where does this put us, "real" intelligences?

About Jonas Degrave

Jonas Degrave (1989, Veurne) is Phd researcher in the area of robotics and machine learning at Ghent University.

His latest work "LSD neural net", in which a neural net simulates the effect of LSD hallucinations, was an experiment in bringing the latest breakthroughs in AI research to the masses. The work has been exposed at the international new media festival "Speculum Artium" in Slovenia and has received critical acclaim in various international media:

"It was capable of generating alarmingly detailed dreamscapes from scratch." – The Guardian
"Die künstlichen Neuronen erzeugen dabei spektakulre Bilder, Kreationen wie ein Schwein mit Schneckenhaus und einen Fisch mit Hundegesicht." – Der Spiegel
"Watching the network at work already gives the uncanny sense that it's a human-like consciousness." – New Scientist
"But you dont need to know any of that to enjoy watching this network tow us gently through its mind, an ever-shifting, ever-spiraling wormhole in which a jumble of pizza slices slowly becomes a pile of sharks." – Atlas Obscura

http://317070.github.io
https://biblio.ugent.be/person/000070398859