Magic Tricks Created Using Artificial Intelligence For the First Time

An anonymous reader writes Researchers working on artificial intelligence at Queen Mary University of London have taught a computer to create magic tricks. The researchers gave a computer program the outline of how a magic jigsaw puzzle and a mind reading card trick work, as well the results of experiments into how humans understand magic tricks, and the system created completely new variants on those tricks which can be delivered by a magician.

Comments

Next trick

[sinij]

Next trick - Earth disappearing into a black hole at the bottom of the magician's hat.

Maybe we shouldn't ask AI things like these?

Re:Next trick

[i kan reed]

"Ask" is a bit generous. Almost every AI thing like this is the same:
1. Devise a language to describe the broad kind of thing you want(in this case board elements, and instructions to the tricked person).
2. Show the AI some working examples
3. Show the AI some non-working examples
4. Let the inferred characteristics come up.

Every time AI comes up on slashdot, this kind of magical thinking comes up, where an AI becomes capable of the extraordinary after accomplishing something specific and ordinary.

All this AI is is a convolution matrix that essentially describes the relationship of elements to each other in a working "trick".

Re:Next trick

[phantomfive]

After the AI winter, the field has really gone downhill.

Since professors still need to publish, they created a distinction between 'strong AI' and 'weak AI.' For some people, this was fine and yielded useful algorithms (but not AI), but largely it's a way to get published without doing anything substantial. Like this study, for example.

Re:Next trick

[phantomfive]

"Strong AI" for all intents and purposes, is a silly concept.

It's the only AI that's actually AI. "Weak AI" is a way of saying, "we know we're not actually creating intelligent machines, but we like the name so we'll keep it." If people don't understand the algorithm, you can tell them it's AI and they'll believe it.

Re:Next trick

[phantomfive]

The same way IQ tests and most GI tests do. Is that too damn crazy?

ok, so how well does your image recognition algorithm do on an IQ test? Do you think it would help to add more graphics cards?

Re:Next trick

[phantomfive]

Honestly? I haven't tried.

I know. :)

An image matching algorithm would fail hard on an IQ test. Especially when the proctor begins reading word problems to you. Even Watson, being a giant search engine, would have trouble on an IQ test.

It would be interesting to try to build an AI that could pass an IQ test, though. Your suggestion of using such a test to measure the intelligence of a computer is a good one. Your defense of weak AI sucked, though. :)

Re:AI? They taught it.

[mugetsu37]

Who taught you that? :p

Re:AI? They taught it.

[cogeek]

Are you not intelligent then or did your parents, teachers, society not teach you anything, you just popped out knowing it all? Intelligence doesn't mean knowing everything, it's the ability to learn and to expand on concepts.

more like theorem proving

[Champaklal]

it's a variant of theorem proving and relation finding exercise in prolog / horn's clause

Re:Middle School

[TheCarp]

Actually a website that does this tricked someone I know recently. I was actually engaged in a card game when they came up to me exclaiming this website could do math with the numbers in her head, and it worked every time.

It took me about 20 seconds to figure out what was going on, and even despite suggesting "why don't you try again, write out each step" and then "try it again with X for your number, and write out each step", still more than 20 minutes to get them to see what was going on.

Not tricks, illusions.

[SirMasterboy]

A trick is something a whore does for money...

Great plot

[Thanshin]

AI is made to invent magic tricks.
AI starts creating more and more complex magic tricks.
Magician stops understanding the tricks but keeps following the given steps and is as surprised as the audience about the result.
After a while, the AI starts giving really strange steps and it becomes clear that there is no explanation in current science that justifies the results of the tricks.
Humanity has meddled with incomprehensible forces, awakening He who was never dead.

Re:Great plot

[David_Hart]

AI is made to invent magic tricks.
AI starts creating more and more complex magic tricks.
Magician stops understanding the tricks but keeps following the given steps and is as surprised as the audience about the result.
After a while, the AI starts giving really strange steps and it becomes clear that there is no explanation in current science that justifies the results of the tricks.
Humanity has meddled with incomprehensible forces, awakening He who was never dead.

When the "AI" can invent magic tricks outside of the basic programming, then I'll be scared.

Basically, they programmed in one trick and then programmed it to compute more variations of the trick. Not much different than programming a computer to fill out a matrix based on the calculations for a single square.

We'll know that we have a true AI when it can go from calculating new card tricks to counting cards in Vegas.....

Whose idea IS this?

[argStyopa]

The first thing you want to teach an AI is "how to trick humans"?

Is that really smart?

Re:AI? They taught it.

[The Grim Reefer]

[The] ability to read and write English comes from zero active training.

Looking at the way kids write these days, I'd have to agree.

tl;dr

Re:AI? They taught it.

[jones_supa]

If we look at the article, the computer was taught only the specific algorithms to create a jigsaw puzzle arrangement or shuffle a deck of cards. Then the program just ran the data through it to create various optimal results. It didn't have capabilities to expand the concept of the trick, for example.

Careful, one step closer to the AI singularity

[Tablizer]

"Damn! The pod bay doors have been open the whole time. Very clever Hal, but I'm still gonna yank your chips......hey, where did the chips go?"