The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence? Conspiracy or Not?
My comments to follow are in regard to a required class reading of the following:
Paul: Chap. 13, Themes in Digital Art–Artificial Life, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Agents (IAs), pp. 139 – 153.
Wardrip-Fruin: Reading #4: Norbert Weiner, “Men, Machines, and the World About,” pp. 65 – 72.
In regards to the Paul reading, I found the works on links between aesthetics and evolution extremely intriguing. Since I’m especially into biology and the science of the natural world, I found the choice of implementing the themes of biology into new media art to be inspiring.
I liked Karl Sims’s Genetic Images (1993) and Galapagos (1997) and how you could simulate the mutation and reproduction of computer-generated organisms on a twelve-screen arc. It becomes an analogy for how real creatures evolved to overcome the obstacles they experienced and how we can change by facing our own personal obstacles.
Here’s a video of interactive computer-generated evolving organisms like Karl Sim’s later to be presented in Galapagos:
Christa Sommerer’s A-Volve was even more interesting because it allowed you to directly interact with a virtual creature and you could be a factor in how their “lives” played out. You could have a hand in their survival or their demise and like Galapagos, you could influence the reproduction of the species. It’s a work of art that’s pretty much a virtual game as well!
Here’s a video to give you a better explanation of Sommerer’s A-Volve:
The reading then addressed a subject we’ve already previously discussed: Alan Turing’s famous Turing Test and his theories of AI. It related the test’s questions to determine the difference between the intelligence of a human and of a machine to the pre-prepared responses of AI characters: the Eliza and ALICE bots. People actually have implemented his theoretical work into actual robots solely for the experimentation in the complexity of their responses. It’s an intriguing concept, but the question comes to mind that if we create too complex of an AI like the Deep Blue Supercomputer created to beat a world chess champion, is it possible for that intelligence to “evolve” and eventually become self-aware to calculate and scheme for its own machinations? A spooky thought…
This is among some of the concepts touched as well in the Wardrip-Fruin reading. Wiener was concerned by the war-like intentions we were putting machines to after the experiences he witnessed during World War II. In my opinion, I agree. We really do need to be careful what direction we take the AI of our machines in and how far we should let them develop and evolve…
You can’t help but think of movies like The Terminator; The Matrix; and I, Robot when the discussion of AI is brought up these days. I wonder if the situation will ever get to the state reached in those movies… Is AI really that scary? Please share your thoughts! 
wiedha414’s Digital Art History Class Blog
Hello readers!
So I will address this on the “About” page as well, but I suppose I should start this post by stating that I’ve made this blog for the purpose of making it a collected archive of what my Digital Art History at LSU discusses. It’s here to extend our discussions further than just the confines of our classroom into the infinite reach of the Internet.
Therefore, feel free to comment on everything or anything that I post here! Input is crucial to the nature of a discussion and will be highly appreciated! 
You can refer back to the blog of my entire class which we view practically every meeting here:
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The main focus of this course is New Media Art and its expansive possibilities.
What is New Media Art?
Well, it can be defined as the art genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies like computer graphics, computer animation, the Internet, interactive technologies, robotics, biotechnologies, etc.
It’s a very young art form and it’s still changing and growing with every new technological leap and discovery. You will probably see me post here some very interesting concepts you’d never otherwise see in the art world.
To start things off, I want to bring this to the discussion table:
If interactivity is an aesthetic trait of new media art, it can encompass a lot of things you may encounter every day on the Internet. Take the website, YouTube for example. People post videos of all kinds of things all the time that stimulates an entire spectrum of reactions from the viewers. We have people posting tv shows and movie clips, personal video journals, comedic skits, creative observations, and artistic scenarios, every few seconds.
Take this video for example:
Then we have people interactively commenting and discussing those videos. It’s the very definition of interactivity. Therefore, are websites like YouTube–or even WordPress–examples of new media art?
I’d like to think so. Share your thoughts. 
