Machine learning, unconstrained from the memes or tropes or expectations of human empirical understanding, produces what can best be appreciated as accidental art as it strives to compute a formula for the human mind. If you want to put it in a philosophical way, like. This also reminds me of something I read last year on the phenomenon of Afghan war rugs, and how the iconography divorced from context results in a similar semiotic clash — yet one produced by human beings, not computers. (I couldn’t find the source for that, but Phil Gyford just blogged about it. Serendipity!) #link
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Jason Kottke let IBM’s Watson AI system profile his personality via his Twitter feed; the results were mixed, to say the least. I gave it a go with my own tweets (you can try it too, with tweets or a body of text) and here’s what Watson had to say about me, with my own comments appended.
You are skeptical, inner-directed and unconventional.
Generally speaking, yes. But the degrees of each vary, I’d say.
You are authority-challenging: you prefer to challenge authority and traditional values to help bring about positive changes. You are solemn: you are generally serious and do not joke much. And you are self-conscious: you are sensitive about what others might be thinking about you.
Yes, no, and yes. I might seem sour and grumpy on social media sometimes but I’m not so bad in person. I’m just an introvert is all. More…
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“For Tinsley, the spiritualist, the metaphor of checkers as a well without end was both poetic and true. But Schaeffer, the engineer, knew that no well is bottomless. And humans will always sound the depth.” #link
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