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Neural Nets Make Art While High
brilanon writes "Telepathic-critterdrug is a controversial fork of the open source artificial-life sim Critterding, a physics sandbox where blocky creatures evolve neural nets in a survival contest. What we've done is to give these animals an extra retina which is shared with the whole population. It's extended through time like a movie and they can write to it for communication or pleasure. Since this introduces the possibility of the creation of art, we decided to give them a selection of narcotics, stimulants and psychedelics. This is not in Critterding. The end result is a high-color cellular automaton running on a substrate that thinks and evolves, and may actually produce hallucinations in the user."
What controversy? All I see is someone promoting their own project on /.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
If ever there was a need for a "wtf" tag...
Palm trees and 8
in order to understand what the hell this is about?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Needs more acid.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
I just looked at the link and I see that quite a few of them have starved.
So this mimics real life starving artists who (although they are starving) can still afford to get high.
The art will be worth more once the PC is off.
Look, I'm all for making robots and AIs do work, but outsourcing our drug use (and sex, apparently) is just going too far! Leave at least something for us puny humans to enjoy!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
and may actually produce hallucinations in the user.
I don't think the program is the only thing that's high around here.
Orwell was an optimist.
This is either an incredibly cool experiment or an unparalleled exercise in highly-refined, weapons-grade bullshit.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Two words: Jackson Pollock.
Also known as "the guy who vomits paint on extra large canvases while drunk and stoned." Glad to see neural nets getting high... they'll make an excellent contribution to modern american art (which imho is an oxymoron).
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Sounds like a mind.forth troll by a different name. Show how this work realistically explains or models anything about biological mental processes or furthers AI or neural net research. Narcotics, stimulants, and psychedelics are complex chemical interactions in brain, not superficial rainbow colors on a grid.
Submit this work for peer review and rightly be humbled by the withering reviews.
The only mental stuff going on with this project is the mental masturbation.
I'm going to suggest that when a project like this forks, it's from a failure of flexibility in the original project. The second project looks like it could easily be a module added onto the first, and that their efforts would be better spent working on the same project, making it in a way that allows certain features to be added or removed.
Qxe4
Looks like a bunch of poorly rendered cubes. No fun!
once a cellular automaton cuts off its ear.
welcome our new stoned overlords, and ask 'Yo, you holding?'
I think a more accurate title would be "Neural Nets Intended on Making Art While High".
All of the innocent slashdotters expressing doubt as to the wonder of TFA obviously weren't reading it stoned.
The critterdrug page has some critters for that on it, but here are a couple of related types for vanilla Critterding, for those who are on Windows or prefer their electronic life clean and free
http://ansistego.sf.net/foodotropes.tgz
http://ansistego.sf.net/knightotropes.tgz
"telepathic-critterdrug isn't available yet for Windows. I'm sorry"
The one thing I hate about Windows is the lack of compatibility with neural nets
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
In the movie toward the end they look like male genitalia crawling around looking for a good fuck. Is this accidental?
Table-ized A.I.
Leave it to Silicone Valley to try to automate the 60's. California apparently misses its "glory days".
Table-ized A.I.
I think it was "the".
Cute toy. I remember doing something like this back in high school in 2D after getting Koza's book about 20 years ago.
It's one hell of a stretch to suggest this does something for pleasure or is complex enough that virtual "drugs" can affect it's processing. The only thing high was the person writing up the description... ya know man because may like - we're all simulations - woah!
an extra retina which is shared with the whole population... extended through time like a movie... write to it for communication or pleasure...
Looks like the cellular automata aren't the only things that are high around here.
Right. That's where the controversy part starts. Kudos on being the first to get it going ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
drug use in artists coincides with a loss of abilities, not an increase of them
artists certainly have excesses in their lifestyles, of which drug use certainly is a common factor. but this is all secondary to being an artist, not some sort of gateway. if you dressed up like a race car driver, does that make you a race car driver? likewise, if you use drugs, you don't increase any artistic abilities, you just get stupid
anyone who actually believes that drug use increases artistic ability is certainly no artist
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I also made some art in the toilet this morning.
Don't take it so hard, the history of AI is full of toy applications.
In a field with so much left to explore as AI, sometimes an informal approach will yield results when the orthodox methods have run their course. Sort of like a meta-simulated annealing.
drug use degrades and confuses the senses
both result in an alteration of what someone would consider "normal", thus the source of your confusion
but you don't create art when you are on lsd, nor do you find any inspiration
of course, when you are on lsd, you are speaking to god, you see both ends of the world, the words you write are of the highest genius, etc. then you come off of your trip, and you find you wrote "the dog, hollow beer"
drugs are a degradation, not a heightening. this is true aesthetically, and biologically. when you are in the degraded state of being under the influence of drugs, your perception of what art is becomes degraded as well
drug use is orthogonal to the lives of artists and the art they create. it is never intrinsic
the best art is done sober, and always has been done sober, and always will be done sober
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What does it score on the Acid 3 test?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
i can attest to the illusion you believe in
my thoughts and the images i saw on my trip were simply outstanding, the depths my mind was probing was simply awesome. i know what you speak of
but i was not actually feeling, seeing, hearing, and thinking great things. because while on that trip, what "i" was was modified: my mind had become incredibly small. what does a drug actually do psychopharmacologically? it doesn't open up some unknown portal in your mind. it simply shuts things down. its simple biochemistry, look it up
if you could take the processing power of a cat's brain, and temporarily put it in the context of the mental abilities of a human brain, the cat's brain would be utterly awestruck. this is the source of your impressions while on a trip. your executive functions, your highest faculties, are degraded and reduced and shrunk in powers to that of a small mammal like a cat. so of course normal human perceptions seem awesome: your executive functions are reduced
put it this way: if you measure the experience of sober reality as 1 foot in length, and your experience while on a trip as 1 mile in length, it is not because you actually experience a greater thing while on a trip, but because the yardstick you are using to measure your experience has been warped. what you experience while on a trip is no greater than reailty, simply your organs of perception have been shrunk and degraded. your entire yardstick is off
it is not that your mind is expanded while on a trip, but the actual organs of perception and interpretation in your mind are corrupted. such that common or cheaply altered thoughts and feelings and senses are seen as intricate, deep, and striking. when the truth is simply that the actual organ of thought is shrunken and broken while on a trip
what you believe of "great thoughts" and drug use is an illusion
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It isn't controversial, you didn't give them narcotics and 'they' didn't create art (you might have, but 'they' didn't).
Just because I draw a smiley on a piece of paper, it doesn't mean the paper is smiling, and just because you or anyone else assigns human emotion to a bit of hardware, it doesn't mean it experiences or intends anything.
This reminds me of those mad ventriloquists you sometimes get in horror films, who stick their hand up some puppet's backside, throw their voice, and convince nobody more than themselves, that the puppet - pause for shudder - is alive!
"The drugs won't just give you great things. You need to seed the experience. You need to participate in it, not just sit back and spectate."
you're posturing. those are arbitrary pointless signifiers. what you wrote is just a wonderful way to say a whole lot of nothing... much like a trip
plenty of people have tried to capture the sights, sounds, and thoughts of what they experienced while on a trip. but what they see, hear or read when they are sober is always scribbles, random musical notes, or "muffler indexing big cat dancing toupee". no matter if they "participate" or "observe and report". you are using arbitrary signifiers ("seed the experience") in a desperate attempt to attach meaning to an experience you have obviously retained a lot of significance in for your life
well, good for you then. if tripping is important to you, then please, by all means, go on with your bad self: continue to trip and enjoy the experience. i do not in any way stand against that which you enjoy. power to you. i hope you continue to enjoy tripping your whole life
i am not trying to be a killjoy. i am trying to kill your notion that what you enjoy has anything to teach us. hey, i enjoy kayaking. but i don't believe kayaking is a gateway to greater consciousness. i'll enthuse and evangelize and get excited when i talk to people about my joys kayaking. but i'm not going to tell them it makes my mind expand or my artistic abilities to increase or my iq to go up. it simply means i'm having fun and other people can have fun at it too
so don't try to fool yourself any longer or anyone else that what you are experiencing is anything more than the temporary degradation of self for pleasurable effect, like any other drug. not that the act of degrading self for pleasurable effect should not be done, not that it isn't enjoyable, and not that you shouldn't enthuse about it and enjoy talking to other people about how wonderful it is
but it isn't the gateway to anything except some harmless fun. get off your high horse
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sourceforge causes massive memory leaks in firefox and crashes IE whenever I try to download a file. Anyone know another place to grab the original Critterding?
The project has added shared vision (across a population) and various drug pills that alter the behaviour of the neurons to an existing project to see what happens. The website describes this in a way which doesn't make it sound as controversial as the summary does - it's just cool. The critters are powered by neural nets and seemingly have retinas wired up for vision - this project has added a shared retina across the whole population and allows it to be updated by the individuals. And it changes over time too, AIUI, like some kind of replay. The drug pills act on the neural nets by changing the behaviour of certain neurons, which is basically what drugs do in a real brain. Why do this? Who cares if it's useful, it's a cool hack and this is news for nerds! You can view the image of the shared retina so you can see what the critters have produced - I think that the telepathy aspect is more interesting (though not so headline-grabbing) than the drugs.
I'm not really sure where the "may actually produce hallucinations in the user" came from, I didn't see a mention on the homepage of the project. It makes it sound like you, the user at the computer, might hallucinate whilst watching it - it looks like just a low-res grid of coloured pixels to me, so I wouldn't be worried about seeing any flying monkeys afterwards!
---
AI Feed @ Feed Distiller
What they need to do is reward the AI for self-referential behavior, and then allow it to post on slashdot.
And once they make it recurse occasionally and repeat some earlier navel-contemplating two or three times, then they can be editors.
-Styopa
an artist who has never ever touched a drug will inherently be a better artist than one who has had their faculties degraded due to drug use
drug use is only a gateway to lost time and lost faculties
however, plenty of people believe what you have written above. they are all subpar wannabes, not real artists
heck consider the work of drug enthusiasts, like william s burroughs or hunter s thompson: they never, ever say drug use heightens their art. they merely make art about their lifestyle. no artist, who has ever lived, has ever claimed that their drug use made them better artists. although you have: are you a salesman for the mafia? pffffft
if you wish to make great art in your life, you stay off drugs. if you wish to deaden the pain of feeling like a failure, take drugs
those are your choices, and that explains the relationship between drugs and art: it is a secondary, orthogonal use by people who, living on the cutting edge, often burn out
please note: i am not arguing against drug use here. go on, enjoy yourself. take all the drugs you want. just don't fucking pretend that drug use is anything more than what it is: a pleasurable experience, life-deadening experience. heighten insight and the senses? more like reduce and corrupt the faculties
you're a snakes oil salesman of the highest and sleaziest of orders. you should go work for big pharma
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
they made works of art about the drug using lifestyle
but that doesn't mean their abilities or peceptions were made better for using drugs. in fact, show me one quote where they would even claim that. oh sure, they would defend their right to take drugs. and as would i: i am not saying you shouldn't take drugs. temporarily deranging your thoughts and senses is quite pleasurable. i would be a hypocrite if i say you shouldn't do that
but that doesn't mean i'm going to sit here and accept the pure bullshit that that temporary derangement somehow IMPROVES your thoughts or senses. and no one serious, no serious artist, not even hunter s thompson or william s burroughs, ever claims that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
what you are talking about is heightening pleasure
which i don't have a problem with at all
but you haven't said a single thing about the creation of art
this subject matter confusion points to a degradation in mental faculties on your part lol
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i'm talking about a real-life scourge that destroys great artists en masse
this is the relationship between artist and drug:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davis
the drugs did not makes miles davis a better artist, they interfered with his ability to create art. this is the story of artist and drug time and time again
and yet there's an actual group of people out there who actually believe that if you drop acid or take dope, you make great art. that that is the cause and effect. that's what i am arguing against. you do understand my concern, don't you?
why don't we have michael jackson with us anymore? what do you see when you look at amy winehouse? an artist propeled via drug use to great fame? or a wasted shell of potential, destroyed because of drugs?
the truth is, all artists live on the edge, and are open minded to edgy ideas. drug use is unfortunately an idea they should have never considered. they often also burn out. they have stresses which predispose them to abuse. this is where the drug use comes into play. that is the only point at which the drug use come into play: a destructive force. its unfortunate
but if you have a proper understanding of artists and drug use, it is one of hate towards drugs for destroying so many great artists, however self-inflicted
meanwhile, you want to say maybe somebody takes a drug and maybe an idea occurs to them that maybe they turn into art. ok, well maybe if i go hiking maybe an idea occurs to me a turn into art. hypothetical imperceptible whatever versus long-standing multiply repeated story of waste and destruction of great artists at the hands of drugs
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but let's properly describe the relationship, shall we?
the truth is, all artists live on the edge, and are open minded to edgy ideas. drug use is unfortunately an idea they should have never considered. they often also burn out. they have stresses which predispose them to abuse. this is where the drug use comes into play. that is the only point at which the drug use come into play: a destructive force. its unfortunate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davis
the drugs did not makes miles davis a better artist, they interfered with his ability to create art. this is the story of artist and drug time and time again
and yet there's an actual group of people out there who actually believe that if you drop acid or take dope, you are "more creative". that that is the cause and effect. that's what i am arguing against. you do understand my concern, don't you?
why don't we have michael jackson with us anymore? what do you see when you look at amy winehouse? an artist propeled via drug use to great fame? or a wasted shell of potential, destroyed because of drugs?
the relationship between artist and drug use in all of human history is great works of art stolen from us because of their drug use. not that they could be stopped, but it is a tragedy, that artists use drugs, and nothing to see anything positive of
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it