Eye in the Sky
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books & arts Eye in the sky E Against the backdrop of software that can visually recognize and track XHIBI increasing excitement crowds and individuals (as examined in the and worry about the documentary Next Level Surveillance, by Paolo T formidable advances Bosonin, Daniel Epstein and Josh Chin, and IO in artificial intelligence interactive installation ‘Data | ergo sum’ by N (AI) made in the last few Ana Marcos, Alfonso Villanueva and Iury years, it is meaningful to Lech). Even HAL 9000’s artistic sense has been review our expectations emulated in the real world, and we are shown about this subject through a machine that can draw a (rather uninspired) contemporary culture portrait of a live subject. and art, and historical The third section investigates the potential perspectives. This was for future AI to become more human-like — cleverly achieved by Beyond 2001: Odysseys will computers learn to process emotions? This of Intelligence, an exhibition curated by is crucial if AI will ever fulfil a posthumanist Claudia Giannetti and hosted by the Espacio transcendance from its origins in human Fundación Telefónica in Madrid wetware, but here the distinction between (31 October 2018–17 February 2019). sci-fi literature and real-world prospects The exhibition takes its inspiration from seems more blurry. Impressive progress has Stanley Kubrick’s unforgettable sci-fi movie been made in individual tasks, but we can 2001: A Space Odyssey and deconstructs it From Ramón y Cajal, S. Comparative Study of the legitimately wonder about integrating a chess- into a set of key themes and questions. What Sensory Areas of the Human Cortex (1899). playing machine with a portrait-drawing one: does it take to make intelligence morph and we would probably get one rather strange kind evolve — first, together with our biological of disembodied Frankenstein. structures and then, outside of them? This and reasoning, and speech and language How all these deep forays in intelligence is a kind of general question with which one processing — to today’s key research areas emulation will eventually come together is could approach the exhibition, and possibly in AI. Each capability is the end point of entire something that the exhibition does not fully no movie could provide a more compelling programmes of research, and we are reminded tackle. The most interesting point here is not framework to think about human and about what an exotic machine this 50-year-old to make a binary prediction about whether artificial intelligence and their relationship. imagined computer is still today. How will we will build higher intelligence, but what Indeed, the exhibition takes inspiration HAL’s ‘strong’ AI emerge through the eventual are the key points we must evaluate as we do. from the three-section structure of 2001: integration of these different fields? Interviews with Arthur C. Clarke and Marvin A Space Odyssey to guide its own review This section reviews the state of the Minsky show they did not have much doubt of the state of the art of AI and its future. art via a set of key questions including: every inconsistency will be smoothed out. The first part concerned the evolution of What is AI? Can a machine think? Can But still, the exhibition leaves us wondering if human intelligence from primates — the AI be creative? Can an AI master human anyone knows for sure. Not knowing did not ape that ‘discovers’ how to use a bone as a language? Can AI act autonomously? Can obstruct the emergence of our own human hammer takes a new path towards a radical an AI system control us? Can AI change intelligence, so for the positively hopeful, this reorganization of cognitive and social our lives? Can AI have emotions? What will might not be bad news after all. structures. The exhibition reminds us how, human intelligence be for AI? For each of It might be that no other movie will ever with the subsequent advances in the cognitive these, what HAL 9000 can do is contrasted match how Kubrick captured our imagination and computational sciences over the last to the track record to date. about the future of intelligence, back in 1968. century and a half, the evolutionary tree Take board-game play. HAL 9000 won Fifty years from now, will other productions can be juxtaposed to cognitive trees — both a chess game against a human in the movie be remembered for how they opened up those that we find in the brain (represented and, less than 50 years later, machines that can questions, expectations and anxieties? For here by some beautiful century-old drawings play chess and Go have also beaten human instance, Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) is a powerful of Santiago Ramòn y Cajal; see image), and intelligence. This completes a long line of exploration of AI, and its consequences for those that we build in silico. It makes us attempts that the exhibition tracks back to the emotional lives of humans; Ex Machina wonder: are we creating, in the computing the automaton developed by Leonardo Torres (2014), as well as the series Westworld, machine, a new tool for the next ‘leap’ of Quevedo a century earlier in 1912. In another investigates themes of meta-consciousness, intelligence into new forms of embodiment? compelling juxtaposition, we can contrast identity and antagonism in higher embodied The difference between an evolution that HAL 9000’s malfunctions and their damaging AI; and even animation Wall-E, now 10 years mostly happened to us through innumerable consequences with events such as the ‘flash old, has invited us to think about artificial small steps in time and that which we are crashes’ of Western stock markets caused by emotional intelligence. ❐ purporting to engineer in electronics should trading algorithms, here explored by Traders Reviewed by Niccolò Tempini1,2 not pass unnoticed. The exhibition, like the 2018, a multimedia visualization by Daito 1 2 movie itself, suggests the case might not be Manabe, You Tanaka, Kenichiro Shimizy University of Exeter, Exeter, UK. Te Alan Turing settled smoothly. and Shogo Kawata (Goraku). Also, parallels Institute, London, UK. The second and largest part of the between HAL 9000’s ability to visually surveil e-mail: [email protected] exhibition maps HAL 9000’s capabilities — the astronauts secretly plotting rebellion can Published online: 1 February 2019 such as vision, learning, planning, search be drawn with the advances in surveillance https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0422-y NATURE PHYSICS | VOL 15 | FEBRUARY 2019 | 109 | www.nature.com/naturephysics 109.