Is it OK to torture a robot?

[SteampunkBanana]

Is making shaddack think about poetry a form of robot torture?

[daneel]

@jamesnsc

In other news Google’s DeepMind AI Team is set to play Go against Lee Sedol, one of the greatest Go players in the world - tomorrow.

Sounds like it was torture for Sedol, though.

[zfirphdn]

As to poetry, I’ve never understood it much myself. But looking around just now I realized that it’s something that can be studied and learned about, picked apart and analyzed—how it’s built, what it’s made of, history and use, etc., just like some chemical compound or machine—which strikes me as something that @Shaddack (and I) could really get into!

[OtherMichael]

@chgoliz

I thought random poetry generators were for shits and giggles

#RAGEFACE 

[SteampunkBanana]

Like any art, you just need a way in that’s personal to you. I once had to explain Jackson Pollack to my mom, which was a trial but we eventually got past the idea that his work is supposed to look like a physical thing and that it’s supposed to just make you feel something instead.

I think Williams Carlos Williams, with his career as a doctor and scientific bent is a great start for the more concrete thinkers, I mean it worked for me.

Spring and All

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast – a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines –

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches –

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind –

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined –
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance – Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken

[Mindysan33]

I know you’re not, but it looks like you’ve replied to yourself? Did the comments upthread get removed or something?

[Mindysan33]

This reminds me of that MJ Hibbett Song:

I love that guy!

[Israel_B]

Can’t tell where you are seeing that. Can you permalink my reply to myself?

[daneel]

Is it OK to torture a robot?

I didnt mention any religion at all. Didnt hint at one or insinuate or imply or hint either. I figure by now you know that when I want to say a thing I say it clearly. True and I’m not thoroughly insensitive. To keep it relevant to this thread, while robots have no feelings, people do have feelings about them but on this particular subject, facing the fact that robots dont feel has been my point all along.

[Israel_B]

Can’t tell why it’s gone bad but was replying to you it seems

[shaddack]

@chgoliz

I thought random poetry generators were for shits and giggles. But according to you, they’re the pinnacle of poetry because they’re produced by robotic programming.

Looks pretty similar to the “real thing” to me. Also consider it is usually just a simple Markov chain or something of that class. With deep learning algorithms, output more similar to what humans can do is likely to be possible.

@chgoliz

If this is as good as can be engineered, we will never have to worry about torturing robots, because they’ll never be human enough to be “tortured”.

Maybe it would count to have them to be irrational or getting denied any sort of closer contact.

@daneel

Sounds like it was torture for Sedol, though.

Heee. Another human bites the dust.

@Mindysan33

This reminds me of that MJ Hibbett Song:

Programming cannot be poetry. It usually makes sense and often is even readable.
Maybe unless it’s perl, but that’s a special category.

@SteampunkBanana

I think Williams Carlos Williams, with his career as a doctor and scientific bent is a great start for the more concrete thinkers, I mean it worked for me.

Sorry, didn’t work for me. Tried multiple times, the words are there, the meaning not. Sounds like a convoluted description of scenery.

@zfirphdn

As to poetry, I’ve never understood it much myself. But looking around just now I realized that it’s something that can be studied and learned about, picked apart and analyzed—how it’s built, what it’s made of, history and use, etc., just like some chemical compound or machine—which strikes me as something that @Shaddack (and I) could really get into!

Tried years ago. Because of somebody else. Did not work either way. Just ate effort and yielded neither success nor pleasure.

Then there’s the opportunity cost. Too many other books to read which are actually fun.

[anon33466019]

@shaddack

Looks pretty similar to the “real thing” to me. Also consider it is usually just a simple Markov chain or something of that class. With deep learning algorithms, output more similar to what humans can do is likely to be possible.

It’s funny this is brought up on the eve of AlphaGo beating the (forgive me if this is wrong) ninth Dan and worlds best Go player.

Written word is harder than Go. Music is harder than Go. As Randall Munroe observed, Seven Minutes in Heaven is harder than Go.

Because something appears to be similar (poetry and Markov poetry) does not mean they have the same problem space. Try solving Go with a Markov chain. Try solving why joy is created by Trehaerhn using neural networks.

Hell, analyze Coltrane’s Countdown–it is mathematical, and will blow your mind.

TL;Dr poetry is useful, and algorithms have not made good poetry.

[chgoliz]

@shaddack

Maybe it would count to have them to be irrational or getting denied any sort of closer contact.

So, robots would be more human if they acted like a man who was angry and irrational because he couldn’t get laid? Do we really need more of that in this world?

Humans have a beautiful side. We are nowhere near imbuing robots with any of the qualities that make us worth something more than electronics and specific usefulness. Our complexity is greater than we can imagine at this point in our development as a species, and thus currently beyond our ken to break down into programmable bits. But even when we gain the technical knowledge of the chemistry and mechanics, how can we make robots more human if the people doing the programming don’t value what makes us greater than the sum of our parts?

[Israel_B]

@chgoliz

how can we make robots more human

How can we make deep space breathable? While the beauty and complexity of humanity (or the difficult to deal with humans) cant change some realities.

EDIT, changed will to while. Typo made meaning unclear.

[chgoliz]

I’m trying to keep my posts OT.

[Israel_B]

I was really just restating what I’ve said throughout. We can make devices which easily trick others into perceiving “humanity” already but as I said in my first comment, life like isnt life.

[anon33466019]

@Israel_B

life like isnt life

i don’t really understand that.

[OtherMichael]

Even a robot could tell you, without being tortured for the information, that if all of your encounters with women end poorly, it’s time to look at the dataset, extract the common elements, and derive the only logical conclusion:

#date men

[chgoliz]

And I’m out of likes…

[OtherMichael]

It’s time to promote logic
It’s time to diss the feels
It’s time to torture the Robots on the Robot Thread tonight
It’s time to put on make up
It’s time to dress up right
It’s time to raise the curtain on the Robot Thread tonight

Why do we always come here
I guess we’re soft in the head
It’s like a kind of torture
To have to read this thread

But now let’s get things started
Why don’t you get things started
It’s time to get things started
On the most sensational, inspirational, torturational, robotational
This is what we call That Robot Thread