2. “For the last twenty years neither matter nor space
nor time has been what it was from time immemorial.
We must expect great innovations to transform the
entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic
invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an
amazing change in our very notion of art."
Paul Valéry, The Conquest of Ubiquity, 1928
3. SOCRATES: You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange
feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there
as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they
remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written
words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some
understanding, but if you question anything that has been
said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify
just that very same thing forever….
Plato, The Phaedrus, 370 B.C.
IS TEXT DEAD?
4. REANIMATING THE CORPUS
Can we use neural networks to keep producing new
works of beloved artists? Can we use neural
networks to keep talking to our loved ones? Can a
machine dream in my dreams?
5. RECURRENT NEURAL NETWORKS
• Like all neural networks, RNNs are based on the brain.
• Recurrent Neural Networks resemble our own experience in a compelling way:
they care about time.
• A Recurrent Neural Network with Long Short Term Memory remembers values
and can understand context.
By François Deloche [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
6. “As of 2016, major technology companies including Google, Apple, and Microsoft were using
[RNNs with LSTM] as fundamental components in new product.”
-Wikipedia
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF RNNs
7. Photos from Janelle Shane, aiweirdness.com
PAINT COLORS
GUINEA PIG NAMES
SWEET HEARTS
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF RNNs
KING HENRY V:
And I must not see her, but go'st with
unhappy woe.
KING JOHN:
By Paris, it was fair.
DUCHESS:
Nay, I'll ever throw his honour.
OTHELLO:
Good morrow, amen.
TOMATO NAMES
SHAKESPEARE
8. A neural network is nothing more than the data it trains on. While big
data gives us practical applications, small sets of curated data give
us access to something different.
Could it be a way of understanding, reinterpreting, and reproducing
ourselves?
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DATA
9. REDREAMER
TensorFlow RNN trained on ~200 pages of dream journals now producing
new dream text.
Are these dreams my own? Can a machine dream?
11. dream: it was dark or hooves. I see
that someone is pulling on the
road, and the path was narrow. it is
dark on the fire of the road, and
there explains chasing
12. dream: I think that there are people
running. I want to a replacement
but to the ticket, which is stopped
with me. I roll to go the back of the
tree, and I
night poem, carefully, a rhyming
sonnet.
13. I began to call you but then I
remembered that where you’re
going there’s no reception. you’re
peanut buttering across the last of
the main lines, winding panels
snuck. It’s the government is the
wall.
I am at someone else (I don’t really
understand that)
14. (I don’t know what that means.)
I learn that learned the magic of the
“dog wings” from some other master
and has since used the secret
knowledge for evil and power. they
assume them surprisingly they goes
up, and I am ahead of the party. he
didn’t kill us to give if a story.
________________
dream:
15. dream: I learn that there are many
people in weed. I built up the line
and go to town, but I leave in the
town but I couldn’t later, and I start
writing down to meet on the town
waiting away, but I realize that the
last seems like a world later, and the
counter is prepared.
16. dream: I have to select Malaysia and
Singapore to get the fare that I think
will get me home.
we ride the train to the other side,
but we were very allowed to be at a
recurring dream, but they go into the
coffin, and we can see that we can
find the bridge into a car and
17. reading ended with some
disappointment. the disappointment
derived from the fantasy ending. I
haven’t been sleeping at all.
21. ETHICS
Do we want to be reanimated in text, chat, or voice
form? Will we give our consent to be recreated?
22. WHAT DO WE DO WITH OUR CORPUS?
Our data is already one of our most valuable assets,
yet few of us actually protect it in life, let alone plan
for how it will be used after our deaths.
23. Is there a difference between the “self” and a neural
network model trained on a sufficiently large dataset?
THE SELF
24. “The modern writer is born simultaneously with the
text; they are in no way supplied with a being which
precedes or transcends their writing, they are in no
way the subject of which their book is the predicate;
there is no other time than that of the utterance, and
every text is eternally written here and now.”
Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author
