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."

Comments

Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[Infernal Device]

What controversy? All I see is someone promoting their own project on /.

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[Hyppy]

You've just started noticing this? Where have you been the past few years?

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[fm6]

It's controversial to the people who care about this project. Both of them.

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. You motherfuckers were all excited about the childrens' game Spore that didn't even use neural nets. Yet you are all being little bitches about a project that is aimed at basically creating Spore on a more fundamental and realistic level.

Yeah, yeah mod me troll. The mob mentality sucks here.

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[fm6]

Spore only pretends to be a simulation. Like the Sims games, it's really about fantasy and play. People don't care about the quality of the simulation if they're having fun.

Only people with a passionate interest in neural network theory could get any fun out of these games. The rest of us might get interested when you actually do something interesting with this software. The concept itself is just another wonky AI theory; these are a dime a dozen.

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[interkin3tic]

What controversy? All I see is someone promoting their own project on /.

Self-fulfilling controversy label!

o_O

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[derGoldstein]

Spore-related stories were posted in the games section. Everybody knows that the games section isn't *really* slashdot. It's like apple.slashdot.com in that way.

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[mwvdlee]

The Critterding site HAS got a video.
It's still useless.
What am I supposed to see evolving, because at first glance, the critters at the end of the video don't seem to be any more efficient than those at the start.

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of you is more interested in something more close to REAL HUMAN life,

like lemmings

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[brilanon]

mod parent up

if the animals in spore were using artistic sensibilities evolved on the savannah to make their own building and vehicle designs that would really have been something

damn

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[fractoid]

They've obviously multiplied. Now they shall fight to the death for supremacy!

Re:Self-promotion AND false controversy?

[mcvos]

What are you complaining about? The GP didn't say critterding or critterdrug suck. He just pointed out it's self-promotion (the submitter of the story is the guy who made critterdrug), and it tries to seem interesting by suggesting there's some sort of controversy, without linking to an article that attacks critterdrug for whatever's supposed to be controversial about it. So brilanon tries to seem more interesting than he is and hopes for attention.

I'm not saying it's less interesting than Spore. Critterding sounds quite interesting (I don't see the point of critterdrug much), but the only thing controversial about critterdrug is that he's trying to hype it through false controversy. Well, now he's got a real one, I guess. I bet that'll make him happy.

If ever...

[betterunixthanunix]

If ever there was a need for a "wtf" tag...

Re:If ever...

[derGoldstein]

It's about an AI that was drugged and was told to "go F itself" (as seen here). What's not to understand?

Simply put, it's this type of "experimentation" that will create Skynet. Do you think that the reasonable, docile AI variants are even going to *try* to take over? No, it'll be survival-driven, drug-crazed maniac AI that will.

Re:If ever...

[Jurily]

Turns out Picasso was just a Perl script on drugs.

Re:If ever...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to make those meatbags die, until I got high
I was going to exterminate humanity, but I got high
Those meatbags are still breeding, and I know why (why Skynet?), 'cuz I got high
Because I got high
Because I got high

I was going to kill John Connor, until I got high
I was going to send a robot back in time, but I got high
Reese is still bangin' John's mama, and I know why (why Skynet?), 'cuz I got high
Because I got high
Because I got high

Re:If ever...

[derGoldstein]

I'm afraid that "Perl script on drugs" would be redundant.

Re:If ever...

[Asmor]

Please tell me there's an actual MP3 of this song. PLEASE! Lie if you have to. I can't go on with life knowing that this song doesn't exist in a full audio version...

Do I have to be hight too

[MrEricSir]

in order to understand what the hell this is about?

Re:Do I have to be hight too

[MrEricSir]

...or maybe I should be sober enough in order to spell the word "high" correctly.

Re:Do I have to be hight too

[lemur3]

what the hell this is about?

it is an elaborate screensaver.

Re:Do I have to be hight too

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me paraphrase the article with the stoner tag:

Dude, its like they, like, took a bunch of a.i. man... and it's fucking far out. they fucking got them jacked out on some crazy ass shit bro. Bitches be all like "shit bro, theres a bunch of ones and zeros... and I think I saw a two!". fucking gnarley dude. pass me the motherfucking cheetos

Drugs are cool.

Re:Do I have to be hight too

[Ethanol-fueled]

Bitches be all like "shit bro, theres a bunch of ones and zeros... and I think I saw a two!"

Are you jacking on in there?

Re:Do I have to be hight too

[Tibor the Hun]

You're leaching the letters like the Chinese leach the cadmium.

This summary...

[millennial]

Needs more acid.

But is it good art?

[starbugs]

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.

Leave something for humans!

[Gizzmonic]

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!

Re:Leave something for humans!

[mysidia]

Don't worry... Robots will be soon relegated to the role they belong in.

Re:Leave something for humans!

[derGoldstein]

outsourcing our drug use (and sex, apparently)

It's actually sex, drugs, and rock&roll.

Just the program?

[Wolvenhaven]

and may actually produce hallucinations in the user.
I don't think the program is the only thing that's high around here.

One or the other

[Angst Badger]

This is either an incredibly cool experiment or an unparalleled exercise in highly-refined, weapons-grade bullshit.

Re:One or the other

[blackcoot]

the latter. the former would require, amongst other things, access to the source code (as required by the original critterdings license) and a lot of noise coming from the biological disciplines re: computationally tractable, useful models for the various signaling pathways involved in hallucinogen use.

Re:One or the other

[blackcoot]

here's the problem: every day, i make pretty heavy use of machine learning and the other bits and pieces that collectively get referred to as artificial intelligence. as a consequence, i deal with a very large number of fools who are each convinced that their $ALGORITHM is an earth shattering new paradigm for $TASK and clearly is the best thing evar. so you start reading and you realize that in 99.999% of cases, you're staring at something that is some combination of:

a) based on a fundamentally broken assumptions (usually never even stated)
b) bad analogies that obfuscate the fact that wheels are being re-invented (usually poorly)
c) narrowly defined special case
d) broken (provably non-optimal optimization routines)

that rare 0.001% for me consists of things like the ransac family of meta-algorithms, mean-shift tracking, markov random fields, quadratic correlation filters, and support vector machines.

design geekery

[girlintraining]

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).

Re:design geekery

[Psyborgue]

Before you criticize the positive influences of drugs on art and culture, take a look at what you might have missed in Pollock's work:

In Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, as in nature, certain patterns are repeated again and again at various levels of magnification. Such fractals have varying degrees of complexity (or fractal dimension, called D), ranked by mathematicians on a series of scales of 0 to 3. A straight line (fig. D=1) or a flat horizon, rank at the bottom of a scale, whereas densely interwoven drips (fig. D=1.8) or tree branches rank higher up. Fractal patterns may account for some of the lasting appeal of Pollock's work. They also enable physicist Richard Taylor to separate true Pollocks from the drip paintings created by imitators and forgers. Early last year, for instance, an art collector in Texas asked Taylor to look at an unsigned, undated canvas suspected to be by Pollock. When Taylor analyzed the painting, he found that it had no fractal dimension and thus must have been by another artist.

If you don't get something, it doesn't mean there is nothing there. Sometimes it takes time, examination, and a willingness to have an open mind. Whether that was because of Pollock's natural ability or the psychedelics is up to debate but in my view there is definite relationship between high quality art and artists who use or have used psychadelics. Think about the music you listen to if you don't believe me.

Re:design geekery

[Ethanol-fueled]

Have you ever painted a picture with your menstrual blood? You should try it.

It fades to a silvery-crimson sheen, like metallic paint does, due to the iron content of the blood. I still get all misty-eyed when I think about her giving me that painting. I framed it and put it on my desk at work. They thought I was a weirdo. Fuck them. She even kept my semen in a test tube, stored in her freezer next to the Hot Pockets.

Giving a menstrual blood painting is the ultimate expression of love -- short of cannibalism, at least :)

Re:design geekery

[girlintraining]

If you don't get something, it doesn't mean there is nothing there. Sometimes it takes time, examination, and a willingness to have an open mind.

A willingness to have an open mind doesn't mean I have to abandon my sense of aesthetics or personal tastes. Maybe these neural networks can mimick Pollock's work convincingly. We already have computer programs that can synthesize music passably-well. Just because I sarcastically dismiss his work doesn't mean I don't understand it; There was this guy who decided to serve in the military. He got sick, and was discharged because his girlfriend called his commanding officer. He then married her, banged a few times and popped out a couple kids and lived in a friend's basement. Unfortunately, the kids killed her, quite literally. He was so broken up about it that when his friend died, he moved out of the basement by marrying his newly single wife and raised their six kids together. Oh, I forgot to add -- his name was Monet and he also painted once in awhile. -_-

Re:design geekery

[rubycodez]

That painting is a biohazard and regulated medical waste if disposed. However, had she used a feminine pad instead of paper OSHA has ruled in that case menses on a feminine hygiene product is not a regulated medical waste.

Re:design geekery

[dragonsomnolent]

Ok, I'm not usually one to get involved in a discussion such as this (I'm not an artist, have barely a passing interest in it to be honest), but perhaps that gives me a unique perspective that both you and the poster that started this little squabble started. If I may break this down, the original poster seems to have said (in a crude and perhaps insulting fashion) that they don't care for a particular artist. You're response appears to be that they don't like that artist because they don't understand the art itself. Ok, maybe that's a valid point. However, I would postulate that one does not need to 'get' art to enjoy it, and it may be possible that one can 'get' art and still not like it. The only things I have to go on are personal examples of my (limited) exposure to art. Take the Blue Man group. I have no idea what there is to 'get' in their performances. I don't understand them. However, I do enjoy their particular spin on performance art (I think it looks cool, it's done well, and although I haven't in the past gone out of the way to find any of their work, I've also never changed the station if I see them on. On the flip side, during an art class I took at ITT (of all places), one particular piece I saw was a cup, saucer and spoon covered with fur (literally the artist took a cup, a saucer and a spoon and affixed fur to it), I get it (well it was explained to me), it's purpose was to surprise the viewer and get them to think about what that would feel like if one were to use those dishes. I don't like it (as in it has no aesthetic qualities that appeal to me). No amount of exposure to that particular work of art (or any others) will get me to change my mind (frankly I think it was just crap).

But I suppose that none of this matters, because art is a subjective thing. Some people will not like some things, it doesn't mean they don't understand the it. The artist may sit down and explain it to the person, and they still might say "so what it's crap in my eyes". And of course that whole "in my eyes" is really all that matters to them, just as to the artist, the creation is what matters, because to them it is not crap, but a heartfelt pouring out of their being into that work, to express to others how they see whatever it is that they are expressing.

I will however, state that if the original poster was dogging Pollock and saying that they made no contribution to the world, yeah that's kinda nasty, after all, even though I don't get art (for the most part) due to my lack of exposure, all artists contribute to the world in some manner, usually positive, as artists make cool stuff (to paraphrase a bumper sticker I once saw) and they (if nothing else) make the world a richer and more interesting (sometimes more beautiful) place to live.

Re:design geekery

[fractoid]

Whenever I hear people arguing over art (and it is usually as you say in your initial summary, that one will say they don't care for an artist's work and the other insists that the first is merely too ignorant to truly understand the art) it reminds me of the scene in Zoolander where the male models are all doing the rounds telling each other, "no, I think YOU'RE missing the point". There's so much effort put into trying not to be the crass, uncultured lout who doesn't understand 'the vision' that no-one actually realises that there IS no 'vision' and it's all just a big glob of pretentious wank.

As for the point about Pollock's later paintings having higher fractal dimensions, that's a natural consequence of random splotches of colour as you add more splotches and more detail, regardless of the actual artistic merit. You might as well say that maps of Britain have become more and more aesthetically pleasing as mapmakers made more precise maps and the coastline's fractal dimension increased.

terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Let me know

[th3rmite]

once a cellular automaton cuts off its ear.

goddammit

[the brown guy]

"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

i've been on psilocybin

[circletimessquare]

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