{"id":413,"date":"2018-08-29T19:55:46","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T19:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidtrend.com\/?p=413"},"modified":"2018-08-29T19:55:46","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T19:55:46","slug":"teaching-robots-to-imagine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidtrend.com\/?p=413","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Robots to Imagine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can robots be taught to imagine? Google\u2019s DeepMind artificial intelligence group is doing just that \u2013\u2013 developing computer versions of what many consider humanity\u2019s quintessential trait. The software world long has pursued sentient consciousness as its holy grail. But until now, it\u2019s only been found in science fiction movies like A.I., Ex Machina, and Transcendence. <\/em>DeepMind engineers say they have cracked the code by combining two kinds of machine-learning. The first is linear, which is nothing new, with the computer applying a predefined algorithm over-and-over till it finds answers and then remembering them. In the second more radical approach, the computer tries many algorithms to find which work best, and then changes the very way it approaches problems. Combining the purely linear with a more systemic approach, DeepMind\u2019s \u201cImagination-Augmented Agent\u201d mimics intuitive learning in a way prior software hasn\u2019t. It\u2019s not exactly<\/em>the same as human imagination, but it comes closer than ever before to what neuroscientists say the brain does.<\/p>\n

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While robotic imagination may be improving, human thought isn\u2019t faring as well. Most people feel uncreative and without inspiration, as discussed in earlier chapters. Corporations say innovation is withering as well. Novelist Ursula Le Guin recently observed that, \u201cIn America today imagination is generally looked on as something that might be useful when the TV is out of order. Poetry and plays have no relation to practical politics. Novels are for students, housewives, and other people who don\u2019t work.\u201d<\/a>[i]Beyond the abandonment of a creative genre or two, American society also is undergoing a wholesale commodification of imagination itself. Disney is most famous for this, its \u201cImagineering\u201d (imagination + engineering) brand one of the most viciously protected anywhere. But hundreds of companies evoke imagination to conjure an aura of specialness \u2013\u2013seen in promotions like Bombay Safire\u2019s \u201cInfused with Imagination,\u201d GE\u2019s \u201cImagination at Work,\u201d Electrolux\u2019s \u201cPower to Capture Imagination,\u201d Lego\u2019s \u201cImagine,\u201d Microsoft\u2019s \u201cImagine Academy,\u201d Nestle\u2019s \u201cFeed your Imagination,\u201d Samsung\u2019s \u201cImagine,\u201d and Sony\u2019s \u201cMade of Imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The connection of imagination to commercial products reflects the powerful linkage of purchasing to consumer self-image. Expressing oneself through buying brings a passing feeling of agency, maybe even of accomplishment. Some critics say that shopping is more meaningful than voting for many Americans. Henry A. Giroux speaks of \u201cdisimagination\u201d in describing how public consciousness is overwritten in this process, as people lose abilities to imagine on their own. To Giroux \u201cThe power to reimagine, doubt, and think critically no longer seems possible in a society in which self-interest has become the \u2018only mode of force in human life and competition\u2019 and \u2018the most efficient and socially beneficial way for that force to express itself.\u2019\u201d Going even further, Giroux links disimagination to a rising collective amnesia, stating \u201cWhat I have called the violence of organized forgetting signals how contemporary politics are those in which emotion triumphs over reason, and spectacle over truth, thereby erasing history by producing an endless flow of fragmented and disingenuous knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imagination can be seen positively, of course. With this in mind, much of this chapter exploresways people can envision a better and more just world. Obviously this might take a little encouragement in an age of disimagination. But it\u2019s far from impossible. Most definitions describe imagination as the mental process behind creativity, as seen in the Oxford Dictionary<\/em>: \u201cImagination: The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.The ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.\u201d Put another way, creativity is imagination actualized for a purpose \u2013\u2013 generally assumed a positive one. As stated by a leading expert in the field, \u201cCreativity is putting your imagination to work. It\u2019s applied imagination.\u201d Dig a little deeper into this lexicon, and one finds that very problem that worries Le Guin and Giroux. A quick look at Roget\u2019s Thesaurus<\/em>lists such synonyms for \u201cimaginative\u201d as \u201cdreamy,\u201d \u201cfanciful,\u201d \u201cfantastic,\u201d \u201cquixotic,\u201d \u201cromantic, and \u201cwhimsical.\u201d Nice as these sound, such vaporous associations equate imagination with the same romantic idealism and inconsequentiality dogging creativity. This explains why advertisers seem so keen on imagination. As one marketing firm put it, \u201cWe don\u2019t see imagining as a real task. It\u2019s an enjoyable game. By asking a prospect to imagine something, you bypass that critical part that throws up objections, and sneak into their mind through the back door of the imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

How about seeing imagination differently? Maybe as a roadmap for one\u2019s life or future?\u00a0 Or a way to imagine important people in one\u2019s life? Perhaps even a vision for community, country, and the larger world? After all, isn\u2019t society itself an imaginary construct? Doesn\u2019t everyone want to make it better? To Le Guin, \u201cTo train the mind to take off from immediate reality and return to it with new understanding and new strength, nothing quite equals poem and story.\u201d She concludes that \u201cHuman beings have always joined in groups to imagine how best to live and help one another carry out the plan. The essential function of human community is to arrive at some agreement on what we need, what life ought to be, what we want our children to learn, and then to collaborate in learning and teaching so that we and they can go on the way we think is the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can robots be taught to imagine? Google\u2019s DeepMind artificial intelligence group is doing just that \u2013\u2013 developing computer versions of what many consider humanity\u2019s quintessential trait. The software world long has pursued sentient consciousness as its holy grail. But until now, it\u2019s only been found in science fiction movies like A.I., Ex Machina, and Transcendence. … <\/p>\n

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