The exhibition ‘AI: more than human’ (explored in the previous issue of felix) is taking place at the barbican right now, where visitors can explore the topic of artificial intelligence and machine learning, spanning back to the middle ages, then jumping to 1940’s alan turing to today’s newest gimmicks in the field.Cognitive factors in learning psychology in my eyes, the exhibition gives rise to more questions than it does answers. In an attempt to answer some of these questions, I spoke to takashi ikegami, professor at the university of tokyo and one of the main (human) brains behind alter 3.Cognitive factors in learning psychology

Basically, I am interested in what life is. People, or even physicists like schrödinger, the father of quantum mechanics, want to know why some matter becomes life, and some matter doesn’t, and what the distinction between the two is.Cognitive factors in learning psychology then came the personal computer back in the 80’s, and now everybody has a computer. There’s still so many things to discover, and that’s how I started doing systems studies.Cognitive factors in learning psychology we didn’t call it AI, we call it “A(rtifical) life”, life comes first, intelligence might come as a by-product or a side effect.

Well it’s a difficult question, but humans are the ones who decide what is and isn’t life.Cognitive factors in learning psychology we came up with the turing test. The turing test is a more language based distinction between human and non-human. You interact with an android and judge how human-like they are.Cognitive factors in learning psychology it’s based on a lot more than just appearance, but once you think you could be in love with her/him, and you don’t care whether it’s a machine or not, that’s when we’ve reached the goal.Cognitive factors in learning psychology

Hopefully. But I’m not sure. Like I said, on some level people don’t care what something is made out of, whether it’s a computer programme or not.Cognitive factors in learning psychology when you become friends with someone, you don’t just suddenly stop liking them or stop being friends with them because they consist of a programme.Cognitive factors in learning psychology that’s why artificial life is more important than artificial intelligence. Artificial life is more about how you can interact with the mind, if there is such a thing as the mind.Cognitive factors in learning psychology mind can emerge on top of computational processes and chemical processes.

We don’t call it life, but we do think it is a different type of robot.Cognitive factors in learning psychology it’s an alternative robot in the sense that it is not based on the task, it’s not based on computational functions, instead it is based on artificial life principles.Cognitive factors in learning psychology alter 3 has been given the basic task to mimic a human being. If a person steps up in front of alter 3, he will try to mimic the person, but also to consult his memory of behaviours to try and pick up and match the human in front of him.Cognitive factors in learning psychology he will try to retrieve past behaviours from his memory.

Yeah I consider myself an artist after 5 pm. When you conduct scientific research, you have to produce papers for journals, and that’s what everything revolves around.Cognitive factors in learning psychology however, there’s a lot of things you can’t show through simple figures and numbers. Art is a totally different way to present these ideas to people, and can be easily understood.Cognitive factors in learning psychology

Yeah, usually people think life emerges from neural networks. One of my theories is based on the work of artist nam june paik. Usually you build a robot in a laboratory-setting and you experiment on it there.Cognitive factors in learning psychology but paik took the robot to the city. And in the city the robot was hit by a car, and then became the first robot to ever have been involved in a traffic accident.Cognitive factors in learning psychology the world is so messy, so complex, and that’s the challenge you’re really facing in all of this. I think the difference between alter 3 and other robots has to do with its complex environment.Cognitive factors in learning psychology autonomy is not performing random acts regardless of what’s going on in the environment, life-like autonomy is interacting with your environment.Cognitive factors in learning psychology the mind is not encapsulated in the body, the mind is constantly interacting with the environment. Alter 3 is not trying to stop the massive data flow, instead to receive it all and be more adaptive towards it.Cognitive factors in learning psychology

The market needs more robot-to-robot interaction. It might be interesting for creating a new kind of mathematics. I always think of the human as a bottleneck.Cognitive factors in learning psychology with big data, AI don’t need to visualise and write down equations like we do. They just go from big data to big data, bypassing the rest. They can therefore create their own mathematics and own languages.Cognitive factors in learning psychology how we understand things is different from how AI understands things, so we need better translation between these two.

After talking to ikegami I’m left pondering about AI and the definition of life.Cognitive factors in learning psychology could the future really contain some sort of ex machina-style androids for us to fall in love with? Will a version of alter 3 one day be someone I come home to find on the couch, eating ben & jerry’s and watching love island?Cognitive factors in learning psychology I can’t help but view takashi ikegami as a bit of a victor frankenstein, perhaps a misunderstood genius, but so devoted to his craft of creating life that this might not be the last we hear from him.Cognitive factors in learning psychology