Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

#72 Prof. KEN STANLEY 2.0 - On Art and Subjectivity [UNPLUGGED]

Mar 29, 2022

Prof. Ken Stanley, a pioneer in the study of open-endedness and author of 'Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned,' challenges conventional goal-setting. He argues that rigid objectives often stifle creativity, advocating for a focus on subjectivity and serendipity. The discussion spans artificial intelligence's link to art, the deceptive nature of ambitious objectives, and the unexpected paths innovation can take. By embracing uncertainty, Stanley posits that we can unlock profound creative insights and truly understand the interplay between intelligence and artistic expression.

01:24:48

Creator website

Episode guests

Ken Stanley

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Intro

2min

The Value of Serendipity and Subjectivity

13min

Exploring New Dimensions in Creative Storytelling

1min

Navigating Knowledge: Engineering, Exploration, and Communication

4min

Art, Intelligence, and AI

22min

Consciousness and Machine Learning: A Provocative Dialogue

12min

Exploring the Frontiers of Creativity in Machine Learning Algorithms

6min

The Paradox of Specialization and Understanding

25min

YT version: https://youtu.be/DxBZORM9F-8

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst

Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB

Prof. Ken Stanley argued in his book that our world has become saturated with objectives. The process of setting an objective, attempting to achieve it, and measuring progress along the way has become the primary route to achievement in our culture. He’s not saying that objectives are bad per se, especially if they’re modest, but he thinks that when goals are ambitious then the search space becomes deceptive.

Is the key to artificial intelligence really related to intelligence? Does taking a job with a higher salary really bring you closer to being a millionaire? The problem is that the stepping stones which lead to ambitious objectives tend to be pretty strange, they don't resemble the final end state at all. Vaccum tubes led to computers for example and Youtube started as a dating website.

What fascinated us about this conversation with Ken is that we got a much deeper understanding of his philosophy. He lead by saying that he thought it's worth questioning whether artificial intelligence is even a science or not. Ken thinks that the secret to future progress is for us to embrace more subjectivity.

[00:00:00] Tim Intro

[00:12:54] Intro

[00:17:08] Seeing ideas everywhere - AI and art are highly connected

[00:28:40] Creativity in Mathematics

[00:30:14] Where is the intelligence in art?

[00:38:49] Is AI disappointingly simple to mechanise?

[00:42:48] Slightly conscious

[00:46:27] Do we have subjective experience?

[00:50:23] Fear of the unknown

[00:51:48] Free Will

[00:54:22] Chalmers

[00:55:08] What's happening now in open-endedness

[00:58:31] Generalisation

[01:06:34] Representation primitives and what it means to understand

[01:12:37] Appeal to definitions, knowledge itself blocks discovery

Make sure you buy Kenneth's book!

Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective [Stanley, Lehman]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Greatness-Cannot-Planned-Objective/dp/3319155237

Abandoning Objectives: Evolution through the

Search for Novelty Alone [Lehman, Stanley]

https://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/~meeden/DevelopmentalRobotics/lehman_ecj11.pdf

Twitter

https://twitter.com/kenneth0stanley

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