Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Should We Train AIs To Imagine A Future Of Horrific Disasters
Students in the PSU College of Information Sciences and Technology have developed a computer model that could help classify images of disaster scenes, thereby aiding first responders.
Using the dataset hosted as part of the AWS Open Data program, the students then developed a computer model to create an augmented, automatic way to classify the images. This work has led to a trained model with a precision of 79%, and their code and models are officially being integrated into the LADI project as the baseline classifier and tutorial. Anyone who uses LADI will be evaluated against the student’s models.
"They worked on training it with the full data set, and I anticipate the precision will get even better," said Jeff Liu, technical staff at Lincoln Laboratory. "So we’ve seen, just over the course of a couple of weeks, very significant improvements in precision. It's very promising for the future of classifiers.”
(Via PSU News)
Creative artists have also been using similar techniques, exposing sensitive computer minds to unimaginable horror. Catastrophe Jangled Hideously Out of Process is an art project that trains artificial intelligences with hundreds of pictures of catastrophes, hoping that the computers will come up with new, exciting images of a future brimming with disasters.
Through the semester-long project, the student team analyzed the group’s Low Altitude Disaster Imagery (LADI) dataset — a collection of aerial images taken above disaster scenes — and tagged images based on the photograph’s content.
(Computer Generated Images from Catastrophe Jangled Hideously Out of Process)
The images are trained from hundreds of images of post disaster scenarios from the recent years – tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides, plane crashes, wildfires and war. The saturation of news media with such imagery has lead to a certain desensitization, while simultaneously our fetishism for them makes us desire more, our gaze becoming trapped on this reality made strange. The commonplace become transformed into the transcendentally horrific. The competitive need to grab our attention forces media to lead with ever more grisly material, the images that make us stop in our tracks. The barrage of grisly and violent images eventually results in the psychological phenomena known as the “collapse of compassion” and “compassion fatigue”...However, there is also beauty in these pictures. Apart from our seduction by the horrific, there are abstract tones and forms and qualities in the aesthetic of destruction that are painterly, cinematic and beautiful. Our unease is piqued by the knowledge that our aesthetic satisfaction comes at the cost of great human suffering. So, how could we appease these compulsions of ours 'ethically'? How can we satisfy our enjoyment of the aesthetic of disaster without having to take into account the human cost? Is there a way to separate the aesthetics from the humanity? By generating images of disaster from which the sensationalism has been removed at the point of origin we arrive at a satisfying moment of guilt free aesthetic.
In stories like I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, science fiction writer Harlan Ellison imagines the AM - the supercomputer that hates, which captures the few remaining humans left in an apocalyptic future and won't let them die, creating for them an endless future of horror. Here's how the AM feels about humanity:
AM said, very politely, in a pillar of stainless steel bearing bright neon lettering:HATE. LET ME TELL
YOU HOW MUCH I'VE
COME TO HATE YOU
SINCE I BEGAN TO
LIVE. THERE ARE
387.44 MILLION MILES
OF PRINTED CIRCUITS
IN WAFER THIN LAY-
ERS THAT FILL MY
COMPLEX. IF THE
WORD HATE WAS EN-
GRAVED ON EACH
NANOANGSTROM OF
THOSE HUNDREDS OF
MILLIONS OF MILES IT
WOULD NOT EQUAL
ONE ONE-BILLIONTH
OF THE HATE I FEEL
FOR HUMANS AT THIS
MICRO-INSTANT FOR
YOU. HATE. HATE.
It's not clear how the artificially intelligent supercomputers of science fiction learned to hate us, but I'm guessing that making them think about the apocalypse and then picture it over and over is not the best thing to do.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/27/2022)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Artificial Intelligence ")
Are The Thought Police Listening To Everyone All The Time?
'... they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.' - George Orwell, 1948.
Nevada Will Use AI To Decide Worker Benefits
'They had screwed up and been blacklisted by Manna.' - Marshall Brain, 2002.
AI Note-Taking From Google Meet
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.' - Dr. David H. Keller, 1934.
Seeing Faces On Grains Of Sand (AI Pareidolia)
'... the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell.' - Schachner and Zagat, 1931.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Mechazilla Arms Catch A Falling Starship, But Check Out SF Landing-ARMS
'...the rocket’s landing-arms automatically unfolded.'
A System To Defeat AI Face Recognition
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
Robot Hand Separate From Robot
'The crawling, exploring object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
Hybrid Wind Solar Devices
'...the combined Wind-Suncatcher, like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
Is Optimus Autonomous Or Teleoperated?
'I went to the control room where the three other men were manipulating their mechanical men.'
Robot Masseuse Rubs People The Right Way
'The automatic massager began to fumble gently...'
Solar-Powered Space Trains On The Moon
'The low-slung monorail car, straddling its single track, bored through the shadows on a slowly rising course.'
Drone Deliveries Instead Of Waiters In Restaurants?
'It was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor...'
Optimus Robot Can Charge Itself
'... he thrust in his charging arm to replenish his store of energy.'
Skip Movewear Arc'teryx AI Pants
'...the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort.'
'Robovan' Name Already Taken - Elon, Try These
There are alternative names that are probably in the public domain by now.
How Old Are Tesla Designs?
You be the judge.
Is Your Autonomous Tractor Safe?
'The field-minder finished turning the top-soil of a two-thousand-acre field.'
Smart TVs Are Listening!
'You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard...'
Police Drones In China Would Like To Have A Word With You
''OVERRIDE,' the City Fathers said suddenly, without being asked anything at all.'
Oh Great (Part 2), Fence-Climbing Robots
Please, no stingers.
