AI Agents

You may know virtual bots like "Siri" or "Alexa", and you may have chatted to a bot to order a pizza, but virtual beings take these foundations to the next level. Even now we imagine personalities for our virtual assistants which amount to lines of code; we give them pronouns and ask them if they love us (just for a joke). But what happens when there is a reality like that depicted in the Hollywood films “Her”, or in "Bladerunner 2049"? Virtual assistants and chatbots have integrated into our lives without much fuss, but what about the more complex 'beings' that are being developed in virtual reality? Will these be accepted so easily? What could we use them to do if they are? Agent Marcus Endicott joins the art intelligent agency to answer these questions and discuss his foundational work in the field.

You can find more of Marcus' work and follow his moderated community on Facebook.

This Podcast was Produced by Tim Whiffen ofWhimsy Productionsin Association with Art Intelligence Agency, theAustralian Institute for Machine Learning, andSia Furler Instituteof theUniversity of Adelaide.

Support the show: https://arts.adelaide.edu.au/music/sia-furler-institute/engagement#

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So far we've shown some ways in which artists and engineers are using AI in creative ways or in creative processes and it has been a fascinating philosophical journey. In this episode, we bring Agent David Olney (as featured in episode 4) back on the podcast to discuss why AI can be 'boring' and still innovative. High reliability is a quality in contention with creativity in many ways. As a blind academic, David uses AI to get around, assess his surroundings, or even read to him and those processes have to be reliable. These programs aren't creative in conventional ways, they don't interpret art or have creative expression, but designing these programs requires thinking beyond your own limitations, and considering the needs of people with different perceptions of the world.

Find David's work on his website, or follow him on Twitter.

This Podcast was Produced by Tim Whiffen ofWhimsy Productions in Association with the Art Intelligence Agency, the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, and the Sia Furler Instituteof theUniversity of Adelaide.

Support the show: https://arts.adelaide.edu.au/music/sia-furler-institute/engagement#

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The act of using code or data and giving them aesthetic outcomes is the project of the 21st century, the information age. With all of this information and computing power at our disposal, it doesn't seem like we are far from the kinds of machine learning that can autonomously visually impress us if it were even inclined to produce such things. Dr Mitchell Whitelaw of the Australian National University is sceptical about Artificial intelligence being inclined to produce art autonomously in ways we would accept or appreciate but has a thorough understanding of ways this technology can be used to create art with human direction or collaboration. As an expert in generative art, Mitchell's work has looked into the randomness and surprise we can get from code, but it is always the human directing the data for the truly creative work. In this discussion, we drill down into the considerations of generative art, the limitations of AI art, and how representing data is a creative and artistic exercise worthy of cultural appreciation.

Find Mitchell's work on his website, or follow him on Twitter.

This Podcast was Produced by Tim Whiffen ofWhimsy Productions in Association with the Art Intelligence Agency, the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, andSia Furler Instituteof theUniversity of Adelaide.

Support the show: https://arts.adelaide.edu.au/music/sia-furler-institute/engagement#

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When we look at a painting or gaze upon a movie scene, we gather the visual information on what objects are, why something may be moving, and what that might mean. For a machine, these inputs break down to 1s and 0s to make sense of this information through algorithms and patterns. Visual systems are incredibly complex, and replicating them for those without sight is a significant technological challenge. Agent Saqib Shaikh is a software engineer at Microsoft and project lead of Seeing AI, a mobile application that narrates the world around us. To address the capability of AI for visually impaired people, Agent Saqib, co-founder of Seeing AI joins Tim and guest host Agent David Olney to discover more about the program.

Learn more about Seeing AI here.

Agent David Olney is a blind academic at the University of Adelaide and a Human Performance Consultant. You can follow his work here.

This Podcast was Produced by Tim Whiffen ofWhimsy Productionsin Association with Art Intelligence Agency, theAustralian Institute for Machine Learning, andSia Furler Instituteof theUniversity of Adelaide.

Support the show: https://arts.adelaide.edu.au/music/sia-furler-institute/engagement#

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Professor Jon McCormack of Monash University joins the Art Intelligence Agency to discuss the considerations of pairing human creative endeavours with the strict logic of computer technology. Jon's understanding of art and science give him great insight into the relationship humans have with computers. With AI being incorporated into more creative tools and forming the modern zeitgeist, why should humans care? What about these new technologies appeals to creatives and engineers and what is yet to come? Jon's experience directing Sensilab make for a perfect platform to leap from as this podcast explores the nexus between creativity and machine learning.

See more of Jon's work from hisresearch profile, Portfolio, or at Sensilab.

This Podcast was Produced by Tim Whiffen ofWhimsy Productions in Association with the Art Intelligence Agency, the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, and the Sia Furler Instituteof theUniversity of Adelaide.

Support the show: https://arts.adelaide.edu.au/music/sia-furler-institute/engagement#

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Jonathan Opie and Benjamin Lancer join the Art Intelligence Agency to dispense their collective expertise on how machines can resemble organic intelligence. While machines have been able to solve the traveling salesman problem for decades, mould has been able to solve it for millions of years. If humans are capable of imagination and creativity, AI has a long way to catch up with evolved brains. So are machines capable of creativity? And are humans even capable of 'new' thoughts? This episode discusses the human (organic) brain and consciousness, and how we can model and compare artificial intelligence to gain insight on artistic machines now, and in the future.

See more of Jon's work from his research profile.

See more of Ben's work from his research profile.

This Podcast was Produced by Tim Whiffen of Whimsy Productions in Association with the Art Intelligence Agency, the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, and Sia Furler Institute of the University of Adelaide.

Support the show: https://arts.adelaide.edu.au/music/sia-furler-institute/engagement#

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sam Leach joins the podcast to discuss his artistic work in his latest collection titled Fully Automatic, which featured at Sullivan & Strumpf in Sydney in 2020. Sam excels as an artist by his own merit, but what if we pair him up with some machine learning? Dr Matthew McAuley from Belfast helped Sam implement algorithms from a DCGAN, (Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network) to automate the process of studying aesthetics through time. Sam's previous award-winning work also went into the mix allowing the AI to produce images which Sam painted resulting in a truly surreal outcome. This episode discusses the realities of working with AI as an artist and the future prospects of creative augmentation using machine learning.

See more of Sam's work on his Instagram, or check out his website.

This Podcast was Produced by Tim Whiffen of Whimsy Productions in Association with Art Intelligence Agency, the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, and Sia Furler Institute of the University of Adelaide.

Support the show: https://arts.adelaide.edu.au/music/sia-furler-institute/engagement#

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.