Page 114 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, in which the latter’s part is played by the voice only. In this story, the protagonist downloads an operating system that behaves intuitively and in a personalised way for the user who has downloaded it. Communication is oral, and the operating system— known to the protagonist as Samantha—with its attractive voice and infinite capacity to store data about its user, can manage everything that the user thinks of, although Samantha is also able to anticipate, choose, revise, propose, etc. The operating system, which gradually grows as data accumulates and as it connects to other systems and computers to which it has access, acquires more and more personality, to the point where it feels emotions and desires. Human and system fall in love. When the human’s ex‐wife discovers the relationship with Samantha, she even reproaches it for not being able to control its emotions.Early in the film we see how the protagonist relates to his telephone through a sort of slightly more advanced Siri. He asks for melancholy music, to read his e‐mail or the news. Nothing much that cannot be done today with a smartphone. Who can assert that the extremes reached in the film could only happen in science fiction? Samantha, the system, trembles as it speaks. The semantic/emotional metadata that accumulate with its “experiences” (data) gradually form its personality, an artificial personality, nonetheless. It obtains feedback from all possible information, and can recognise the emotions of its user/“lover”. We could say that it is the product of a great organic algorithm of “nature”, that is, that it thinks and acts for itself thanks to all the millions of fresh bits of data that it accumulates as the seconds go by. Data that enable it not only to relate to other systems and converse with them as it learns, but also to write poems or compose symphonies that reflect its emotional state.Yet more science fiction? Regarding communication between computers, technology already exists that makes it possible for robots to share experiences (data) in order to learn new tasks. Communication between them via the Internet has given rise to the first programs devoted exclusively toAC/Ecommunication between machines, as in the Robo Earth project. As for the possibility of a computer acquiring the capacity for being creative, I think one of the most surprising examples is the project by David Cope and his work on musical intelligence. David Cope is a writer, composer, scientist, professor of music and researcher into artificial intelligence in relation to music. While going through a creative dry spell as a composer, he conceived a program that—naturally—through complex algorithms would be able to analyse music to discover patterns in the musical structure.The result of hisresearch was atfirst called Emyand later EmilyHowell, aprogram able tocompose piecesof music in thestyle of different composers: Mozart, Strauss, Bartok or Bach, including chorales similar to those by the latter. In an updated version, Emily was also able to compose haikus. The key to all this lies, first of all, in data and adaptability, and then in the possibility of modifying the ability to respond. The instructions are interpreted and the results are these incredible compositions that some experts in classical music have not been able to recognise as creations by an artificial intelligence nor even distinguish them from work by the original composers who inspired each piece. This, of course, poses many questions, some of them uncomfortable ones, regarding the creative ability of humankind, which—until now?—has been distinguished from that of other living things: “If beauty is present, it is present. I hope I can continue to create notes and that these notes will have beauty for some others”. These words are by Emily Howell.Technology already exists that makes it possible for robots to share experiences (data) in order to learn new tasksAlgorithms. A few months ago, researchers at the University of Granada (Pedro Ángel Castillo Valdivieso, Juan Julián Merelo Guervós and Antonio Miguel Mora García, together with the company Trevenque) announced that they had created a tool called PreTEL which, on the basis of networks ofWHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 9: THE NEW AFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGIES COME TO THE CULTURAL SECTOR CURRENT PAGE...114