"Humans Need Not Apply" by Jerry Kaplan (2015)

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the importance of understanding will diminish. Understanding compensates for the limited computational ability and limited data. Why understand what causes individuals to behave in a particular manner if an app can predict behaviour, read off and interpret facial expressions, determine whether someone finds you attractive, and whether someone is lying? There is some intellectual gratification in understanding, as there is in painting, but how often does one reach for a paintbrush instead of an iPhone?

In AI, emotions would be a bug. In humans, emotions are a patch that compensates for the limited computational ability and limited data. Machines will understand humans, but not emphasise. By contrast, humans may learn to emphasise with the machines' (missing) emotions, to better understand the machines. (The anthropomorphisation of machines will be hastened by granting them legal personhood, in order to limit the human liability for the machines' behaviour.)

Because emotions will remain a human prerogative, the only human endeavour that will not be fully outsourced to machines will be art. Some actors, dancers, musicians, script writers, and directors will remain human. Just as humans explore and admire through art the forces of nature, they will stage plays and ballets to explore the “emotional” and aesthetic aspects of the interaction of machines (whether localised or distributed).

Kaplan may be underestimating the importance of art patrons and playboys. Someone must explore the frontier that others would aspire to and ultimately catch up with.

“Sueño de una Tarde Dominical en la Alameda Central” by Diego Reviera (1948) y el Día de Muertos

(1 November 2015)

In a lesser theatre, the audience would occasionally laugh when a protagonist finds himself in a socially awkward situation or subject to violence. The laughter suppresses empathy and dismisses the protagonist's problem as an aberration; laugher is an escapist patch. Laughing off problems might have saved the sanity for some, but has not delivered a blueprint for a better future. By contrast, the contemplation of existential problems has given us Woody Allen and Albert Camus.

Art progresses by uncovering ever purer concepts of beauty.

M's #s (2015)

And so it came to be.