AI where you least expect🤯[HTC #46]
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For our today’s edition of Hold the Code, we cover AI’s journey to attain common sense and how an AI algorithm wins an art competition! Lastly, the weekly feature explores AI as a tool for political parties.
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It's Common Sense Right?
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Can AI ever possess common sense? We have all seen the movies where machines begin to reason but in reality this has never happened. Programs are exceptional at processing large amounts of data and then conveying information from data.
Each year we see significant improvements in the capabilities of AI programs, with some arguing that they contain common sense.
Elemental Cognition
In 2015, David Ferrucci, leader of IBM's team for building the renowned AI Watson, founded the tech startup Elemental Cognition. Ferrucci founded his company with the vision of bring AI one step closer to actually fusing AI with common sense.
“To me, the Watson project was always a small part of a bigger story of where we want to go with A.I.,” said Ferrucci.
Researchers at Elemental Cognition have sought to replicate human cause-and-effect logic by giving computers simple sets of facts, also known as a knowledge base, in order to reach a certain conclusion.
Consider the following facts:
Sunlight helps plants grow
Windows let sunlight in
Plants have leaves
Using these facts, a program would be able to assess why a person has placed a plant near a window; for the plant to grow! For the human mind, this type of logic is simple yet programs can still error with even the slightest change of word choice.
How is this useful?
It can be hard to see how having a program that can make simple conclusions can be useful, however, these conclusions act as building blocks for applications in the workforce today.
Elemental Cognition has developed a program to create an itinerary of flights based on user input. This program could take inputs like a set of desired locations and create a travel plan based on the current location of the user. Users can also modify the plan with phrases such as “add Paris before Tokyo”, prompting the program to modify the current itinerary.
Simple reasoning for programs, like above, require a large amount of code simply to establish the preconceived knowledge people already have stored. While machines can imitate common sense, they are far from nearing human capacity to think.
Algorithmic artist wins competition
Source: New York Times, image by Jason Allen
At the Colorado State Fair’s annual art competition, each artist spent hours pouring their hearts into each stroke of their paintings, yet the ultimate winner never picked up a brush at all. Jason M. Allen, of Pueblo West, Colorado, took home the blue ribbon prize with his “Théâtre D’opera Spatial,” which was generated by an artificial intelligence program called Midjourney.
“I couldn’t believe it. I felt like this was exactly what I set out to accomplish,” said Allen
What happened?
Allen posted the “Théâtre D’opera Spatial” onto a Discord thread, and it eventually blew up on Twitter as well. While the competition that Mr. Allen submitted to was just a state fair’s annual art competition, social media had a furious debate about the legitimacy of Mr. Allen’s win.
Some defended Allen, saying that there was no reason why “Théâtre D’opera Spatial” shouldn’t have been able to win the competition. After all, Allen submitted to the digital category, which according to its rules, allow any artistic practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process. Two judges of the competition said that while they didn’t know “Théâtre D’opera Spatial” was created with an artificial intelligence program, they would’ve given top prize to Allen anyway.
What was the backlash?
There seemed to be more backlash online, though.
“We’re watching the death of artistry unfold right before our eyes,”said an anonymous Twitter user.
“I can see how A.I. art can be beneficial, but claiming you’re an artist by generating one? Absolutely not,” said another Twitter user
Allen responded to artists who feared that this new generative art technology would put them out of work, saying that their fear and anger should be directed towards corporations who replace artists with artificial intelligence, not individuals like him who simply view it as a tool to create cool visualizations.
“Ethics isn’t in the technology. It’s in the people,” he said.
A new political “super-weapon”
Image Source: Brendan Lynch/Axios
There is a new player shaping the political campaigning landscape. Artificial intelligence, with its recent innovations, allows political campaigns to more effectively seek out and extract money from voters–and at a lower cost.
What’s going on?
Political consultants for both the Democratic and Republican parties are analyzing enormous amounts of voter data to determine advanced fundraising and persuasion strategies. By synthesizing large data sets ranging from purchasing habits to income, AI can predict how individuals will vote and donate.
The Sterling Data Company, which works with Democrats, says it can more than double digital fundraising in the immediate term.
Numinar, a Republican startup, says it “provides best-in-class voter file and commercial data out-of-the-box with over 400 data points to build an individualized profile of each voter.”
These analyses are especially useful for smaller, local races.
How does the software work?
Both Sterling and Numinar feed political and consumer data into an ever-improving algorithm that predicts voter and donor behavior.
In its marketing materials, Sterling says it identifies fundraising strategies tailored to each client:
“No data analyst in the world could look at over 500 variables, from household income to magazine subscriptions, and determine what factor played the biggest role in the success (or failure) of a fundraising campaign and rework the targeting to maintain or improve results — especially not in less than a minute.”
Software that relies on AI also allows firms to identify new donors quicker by calculating who has the highest tenancy to contribute to a campaign.
Do they work?
Martin Kurucz, managing partner for Sterling, says the company has worked with around 1,000 Democratic campaigns and political committees.
“This is a super-weapon that Democrats have…It's probably one of the most overlooked reasons why the Democrats are winning the small-dollar fundraising wars against Republicans,” said Kurucz.
Numinar’s founder Will Long said AI and machine learning can “make a pretty difference” in how down-ballot local races perform. FEC records reveal that some candidates in key Senate and House campaigns paid for services from Numinar.
The bottom line?
Despite criticism from skeptics, who doubt that AI-software is truly advancing political data technology and claim that “AI” as a term is often misused in the political world, the technology behind political campaigns is drastically improving.
Long acknowledges the term “AI” can be misused, but says AI is an apt description of the advanced technology that political races are using across the country.
“We actually are using machine learning in a very core, fundamental way," he said.
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Written by Dwayne Morgan, Evan Chen, and Ian Lei
Edited by Dwayne Morgan