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 ")
Lawyer AIs Create Chaos In Our Legal System
'I want my lawyer program.' - David Brin, 1990.
Grok Scores Best In Psychological Tests
'Try to find out how he ticks...' - Isaac Asimov, 1941.
Google's Nano Banana Pro Presents Handwritten Math Solutions
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.' - Isaac Asimov (1949)
Woman Marries Computer, Vonnegut's Dream Comes True
'Men are made of protoplasm... Lasts forever.' - Kurt Vonnegut
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
The New Habitable Zones Include Asimov's Ribbon Worlds
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
3D Printing A 12-Meter Boat Hull
'It makes drawings in the air...'
China Still Working On Rescue Robot That Eats People
Firefighter Rescue Robot Eats Humans - again!
Lawyer AIs Create Chaos In Our Legal System
'I want my lawyer program.'
Chinese Hospital Tries Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron' Cosplay
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half
blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
Robot Clerks Become A Reality In China
'The robot clerk in the waiting-room checked her number...'
Can One Robot Do Many Tasks?
'... with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!'
Atlas Robot Makes Uncomfortable Movements
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
Boring Company Drills Asimov's Single Vehicle Tunnels
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
Humanoid Robots Tickle The Ivories
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
A Remarkable Coincidence
'There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here...'
Cortex 1 - Today A Warehouse, Tomorrow A Calculator Planet
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...'
Perching Ambush Drones
'On the chest of drawers something was perched.'
Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicle Technology
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...'
Golf Ball Test Robot Wears Them Out
"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
Boring Company Vegas Loop Like Asimov Said
'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
