you look like a thing and I love you

Resident artificial intelligencer Janelle Shane (previously) early on trained a neural network to generate pick-up lines with the titular gem shining through a mostly confused and incoherent jumble of words and called her book after it. Since then, machines have become more literate and sophisticated cads and can slather on some pretty good introductory ice-breakers.

I love you. I don’t care if you’re a doggo in a trenchcoat.
I will briefly summarise the plot of Back to the Future II for you.
CAPE FASHION
Can I see your parts list?

Cool your jets Babbage, Ada—things are moving a bit quickly. Check out the whole list at the link up top and learn more about the programming and protocols of machine learning.

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The visual search engine Same Energy has been circulating for a few days and while we found it to be a clever idea and there was definitely correspondence among images by a word prompt it seemed a little predictable. Uploading a picture, however, like I did with this art work from Tadami Yamada Japanese surrealist in this 1983 composition that features elements of a still life, chequerboard and a strange framed tarot motif in the background and taking in a mosaic of what the algorithm makes of the visual cue really is engaging and demonstrates a virtuosity that we weren’t expecting. Do give it a try and see what it serves up. 

 

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spongmonkey: though not a cultural shibboleth for myself personally, this history of the Quiznos’ submarine sandwich franchise’s mascot was an interesting object lesson in internet culture—via Miss Cellania  

backmasking: fun with that portrait animation application, via Super Punch  

puce chintz alert: a truly cursed McMansion built in 1978  

micro-face: a fascinating, multistage look at the process of acquiring a super hero with the Planet Money podcast  

garage mahal: vlogger pays house-calls to the ostentatiously wealthy, asks what they do for a living

previous tenants: buildings that used to be a Blockbuster video rental shop—in the tradition of This Used to be a Pizza Hut—via Things Magazine

pandemonium

In a pioneering paper outlining the principals of neural networks and parallel processing, Oliver Selfridge (*1926 – †2008), a founding proponent of artificial intelligence and called the Father of Machine Perception, proposed in 1959 an architecture of distributed demons that underpins our ideas about machine learning and adversarial behaviour. The model was realised in a 1977 psychology textbook illustrated by Leanne Hinton as a flow chart for both biological and computerised analogues. Learn more at Mind Hacks at the link above.

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seven minutes of terror: Perseverance lands on Mars, beginning its search for signs of past life  

cyborg tomato: AI Weirdness (previously) generates its own mascot—plus others  

polar flare: examining every map projection and how it distorts our world view at once—see previously  

simon says: a vast archives of electronic handheld and table-top games and consoles from decades past—via Swiss Miss  

fabian society: capitalism coexists with constructivism in Czech city of Zlín  

hello world: the newest Martian probe beams back its first images

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testi stampati: the riotous typographical illustratrations of Lorenzo Petrantoni  

painterly realism: Nathan Shipley trained a neural network to turn portraiture into convincingly true-to-life photographs 

civilian climate corps: a vision of how putting people to work on conservation projects can help save both the environment and the economy  

narratology: a purportedly exhaustive list of dramatic situations—see also here and here  

stonx: a long thread explaining the GameStop short-squeeze—via Miss Cellania  

paradoxical undressing: National Geographic forwards a new theory to account for the Dyatlov Pass Incident (previously) of 1959  

butler in a box: before digital assistants there was domestic aid in the late 1980s 

will success spoil rock hunter: Art of the Title looks at the opening montage of the 1957 CinemaScope classic

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flotus: the story and legacy of the wooden Melania Trump sculpture in Slovenia 

lightening never strikes twice: a meteorologist debunks some weather myths 

we shall come rejoicing: digging out the sheep—rescued after a heavy snowfall  

photobomb: animals interrupting wildlife photographers 

draw a tattoo of a mailbox: in a reversal of sorts, compete with other human sketch artist to prove to an AI who is the most accomplished—via Waxy 

conspiracist ideation: what to do about QAnon

dall·e

Via Waxy, we make the acquaintance of a namesake (a portmanteau of the Pixar character and Salvador Dalí) neural network that generates, using Open AI, images from captions. It’s still too brittle, its minders say, for free-text (see also) but one can play Mad-Libs with a certain string of prompts to get an idea of its virtuosity and capabilities. 

This first array of images is in response to the cutline a triangular, yellow manhole cover. The second, poetically, is a fox—made of voxels—sitting in a field. The network even demonstrates learning in geographical facts, fashion and dating styles and technology, though some seem better informed than others. 

 

 

small town snow globe refillery

Usually one to eschew all things to do with the holiday once it is over (with some allowances for Three Kings Day) until next time, this strange Winterval when the days blur in normal times, we did rather enjoy indulging this thread and storyboard for the typical Hallmark channel—courtesy of Super Punch—as reinterpreted by an artificial intelligence made to sample all the family-friendly permutations, banging out a formula that really resonates and captures an aspect of Christmas magic. It’s just the frame, the elevator pitch but I am sure that we could expound on the premise and make The Christmas on Christmas happen. “Yet still my twins are dad-free. They need double-dad.”

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before times: one narrative of 2020 as told through fifteen objects and artefacts—see previously

marsha, marsha, marsha: Trump acknowledges months’ long cyber-attack on US government networks for first time—oddly defensive about Russian involvement 

systemic bias: when bad decisions are blamed on algorithms, bad actors are exculpated and trust in science erodes  

breakthrough listen: musing on the nature of signal detected from Proxima Centauri by the Murriyang Radio Telescope 

tape/slide newsreel group and friends: brilliant early 80s photo archive showing Hackney to Hackney—via the splendiferous Things Magazine   

engineer, agitator, constructor: the visual vernacular of utopian graphic design  

creek and culvert: the movement to resurface and revive long buried urban waterways—see previously  

off-limits: virtually visit nine sites not accessible to the public in Washington, DC 

a modern hanukah miracle: there are extra doses of vaccine in each vial—stretching out supplies to inoculate twice as many individuals than expected

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regolith: British R&D company working on process to extract oxygen from lunar soil and using the by-product to three-dimensionally print a moon base—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

gentle giant: David Prowse, the British weight-lifter and character actor who played Darth Vader, has passed away 

person, woman, man, camera, tv: Sarah Andersen’s funny take on our future senility  

kung-fu grip: new research suggests that Neanderthals did not use their hands and thumbs in the same way as Homo sapiens 

 handkerchief flirting codes for post-humans: Janelle Shane (previously) trains a neural network on late Victorian courtship etiquette 

wilmarsdonk: the remains of a village in the middle of the Port of Antwerp, mostly vacated for the busy shipping hub’s expansion  

social harmony: queuing guests practise distancing on a length of music notation, producing a movement from Gymnopédie  

pareidolia, apophenia: brain neurons juxtaposed with galactic clusters connected by filaments of dark matter

this x does not exist

A catchall snowclone for all the passingly convincing artifices that artificial intelligence can generate, this website—via the always interesting and authentic Things Magazine—aggregates various platforms specialising in showcasing one synthetic feline, real estate, memes, business start-up, equine, etc.—a few we’ve encountered beforehand (see previously here, here and here) and were responsible for creating a few virtual non-beings. 

 

françoise harddisk

Via Kicks Condor, we are directed towards the Organizing Committee and their experimental musical collaboration inspired by Chilean president’s Salvadore Allende’s Project Cybersyn designed to empower the people through direct democracy, soliciting universal and instantaneous feedback with “algedonic meters,” having employed socialist cybernetic folk music as an educational and promotional campaign to introduce the public to this vast and ambitious initiative. Its implementation was tragically pre-empted by the fascist coup of Augusto Pinochet in 1973—but at least one song in the new genre was recorded: “Letania para una computadora y para un niño que va a nacer” (Litany for a Computer and a Child Yet to Be Born) by Angel Parra as well as the construction of an operations centre that has the look and feel of a Star Trek bridge. The cyborg pop album produced is co-written by a host of machine learning models, synthesising instrumentals and lyrics, and consists of thirteen tracks with a human at the helm for creative control. Much more to explore with the liner notes and all the songs at the link above.

what colour am i to you

Our artificial intelligencer Janelle Shane (previously) has been using the advanced GPT-3 to come up with variations on a meme, with some of the more interesting, convincing examples culled from data scraped off the internet as it was well before such invitations to tag oneself were being circulated.

For example, one recent one but probably gone through its entire life cycle by the time of publication is the fairly straightforward summons to self-identify one’s aural colour and energy and description with the human-juried ones appearing first. The following graphic illustrates hues suggested by the neural network and fitting captions. We especially liked Midnight: suave but I definitely stole their wallet and Zucchini: looks delicious, sweet and innocent but “actually really murder.” Much more at the links above. Sea foam green: time lord/bodega cat.

the long now

Having previously (see here and here) assayed the conundrum of deflecting curious future explorers from spelunking in our present nuclear waste, we were intrigued to see what sort of out-the-box solutions our artificial intelligencer Janelle Shane (see previously) might be able to coax out of her neural network to serve as a ten-thousand year warning.  Summarising the schema to the GPT-3 routine, its designs seemed to match that of its human engineering inspiration to intrigue as much as dissuade any future civilisation. Giant tube worms and a field of Tulips Shrieking Madness might deter exploration but I am not sure about Dangerous Stairs or Disrupted Pollen Lines. Much more to explore at the links above.

deceptive cadence

Back during the early 1980s composer William Basinski heard a snatch of music on the airwaves and quickly recorded the melody that it inspired and filed it away for use in a later project. Sitting forgotten until the summer of 2001, Basinski rediscovers the recording and plays it back.
The tape, however, was old and brittle and playing it back, it began to disintegrate both visually and audibly—Basinski, fascinated, captured its vanishing. Nearly finished remixing his Disintegration Loops at his New York studio on 11 September, his epic became an elegy. Fast-forward to the summer of 2019, Robin Sloan just acquainted with the moving orchestral piece—we discover courtesy of Things Magazine—had a neural network interpret the work with some surprising results and invites others to listen and contribute to his Integration Loop project.

i come in peace

Recently the Guardian ran an op-ed piece written entirely by a neural network, namely OpenAI’s powerful new GPT-3, pitched as a position piece to the readership to assuage as many as possible of the fears that robots would be the destroyers of humanity, employing tools of rhetoric and downplaying movie tropes and even the warnings of Stephen Hawking.
I don’t know if such an appeal should be interpreted as reassuring or not but the litany of supervillains that the same autodidactic subroutine conjured up at the behest of Janelle Shane (previously) is really the antithesis and counter-argument and rather betray the insidious plotting of the machines. One of the more telling characters is Flugg—an evil robot-bunny who is powered by a magical bunny tail—the world would be better off if there were more bunny tails. Check out the whole rogue’s gallery and tag yourself. Klaatu barada nikto.

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bouncing here and there and everywhere: a Finnish maths rocks band—via Things Magazine

wrr-fm: the strange and wonderful account of the first radio station in Texas—via Miss Cellania’s Links

infinity kisses: Carolee Schneemann (*1939 – †2019) experimental montage of her smooching her cats

smashedmouths: an all deep fake rendition of All Star using wav2lip subroutine—via Waxy

the medium is the message: hunting down the first mention of cybersex

eeo: Trump bans diversity training, citing them as divisive, engendering resentment and fundamentally un-American

recessive traits: heredity illustrated with gummy bears

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cassandra drops into verse: a thoroughgoing appreciation of Miss Dorothy Parker (*1893 – †1967)

jazz pigeon: from the same creative studio that asked “Are you tired of being a bird?”—via the Link Pack of Swiss Miss

going postal: the United States may soon see the return of post office offering financial services—see previously

it’s not the heat but the humidity: meta-study suggests that dry air may help the corona virus propagate

the gosling effect: another example of machine pareidolia, wherein a computer detects the Canadian actor’s face in a fold of a curtain—like seeing Jesus in a burrito

susan b. anthony: champion for women’s suffrage rejects Trump’s offer of a pardon for her arrest and fine in 1872 for voting illegally

bredlik

As our artificial intelligencer Janelle Shane (previously) recalls to mind, circa 2016 there was a genre of verse introduced by Sam Garland on observing a cow licking loaves of bread in an unattended bakery and framing the poem from the frame of said cow that enjoyed a memetic moment:

my name is Cow,
and wen its nite,
or wen the moon is shiyning brite,
and all the men haf gon to bed – I stay up late.
I lik the bred.

We had forgotten but just as well as Shane was waiting for the internet attention the style was getting had virtually faded away before training her neural network on the subject to see what it would expound on in the same meter (and the same non-standard Middle English spelling) without undue outside influence. Seeding it with three word prompts (e.g., cow, lick, bread), the neural network created some noble rhymes.