This week on The Digital Life, we chat about the next step in art and AI. While AI has certainly been used to create artwork like the Next Rembrandt project, these pieces have been more curiosity or proof-of-concept. But, is the art world really ready for pieces generated by Artificial Intelligence? We’ll find out this fall, in October, when Christie’s New York — a branch of the British auction house, founded in 1766 — sells an AI-produced work of for the first time. The print itself was created by an algorithm developed by the French art collective Obvious. Is AI the new tool for artists? Join us as we discuss.

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Is the Art Market Ready to Embrace Work Made by Artificial Intelligence? Christie’s Will Test the Waters This Fall

On The Digital Life this week, we chat with special guest Katja Grace from AI Impacts, whose research is focused is the future of AI. Where will AI be in 10 years and what kind of impact will it have on the world? The buzz now is that deep learning will increasingly automate knowledge work. AI and automation will change creative fields, from research science to journalism, fiction writing to graphic design, software engineering to management activities. Join us as we discuss.

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AI Impacts

Experts Predict When Artificial Intelligence Will Exceed Human Performance

When Will AI Exceed Human Performance? Evidence from AI Experts

This week on The Digital Life, we dig into the broad array of applications of AI and the role that the AI mind has in augmenting human intelligence. When it comes to AI, what kind of intelligence are we talking about? On one end of the continuum, we have Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that’s theoretically capable of human cognition. AGI is an intelligent agent, aware of its surroundings, adaptable to a variety of circumstances, and capable of solving problems and achieving goals. But AGI is a long way from being achieved. On the other end, we have AI services today that specialize in particular tasks, narrow AI that can be used for things like image or speech recognition. Within this continuum, there are, of course, many different ways that we can create and apply AI to augment human intelligence. Join us as we discuss.

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The Space of Possible Minds

On the podcast this week, we examine facial recognition software and digital disguises. It seems like AI-driven facial recognition systems are just about everywhere—from the face-scanning technologies for law enforcement and government to everyday social media tagging. Tools like these can be used for the public good or harm. And there’s no doubt that we’re concerned about facial recognition surveillance encroaching on our personal privacy. While clothing like glasses, hats, or even masks can somewhat inhibit facial recognition, it’s not a huge surprise that disguises of a digital nature, anti-facial-recognition systems, are on the rise as well. For example, researchers at the University of Toronto have developed software to hinder facial recognition using an algorithm that slightly alters the images. And while humans can’t really tell the difference, an AI that scans a photo altered in this way, won’t be able to identify a face. Join us as we discuss.

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This Filter Makes Your Photos Indecipherable to Facial Recognition Software

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss the idea of “super technologies”—the combination and subsequent amplification of emerging technologies like AI, robotics, and the IoT.

The recently released MIT Sloan executive guide “Seven Technologies Remaking the World” highlights pervasive computing, wireless mesh networks, biotechnology, 3D printing, machine learning, nanotechnology, and robotics as “the starting line of a universal technological revolution”. Further, the report continues, “beyond their individual impact, an intriguing and powerful aspect of the seven technologies lies in their potential as combinations.”

On The Digital Life, we’ve previously discussed the concept of super technologies under the moniker of Smartware. Together, these technologies promise to create a radical inflection point at the same scale as personal computers in the 1970s, the Internet in the 1990s, and mobile computing in the 2000s. Join us as we discuss!

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Seven Technologies Remaking the World