Monthly Archives: August 2009

The Auto-Myth

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monomythA couple of years ago I helped a friend (@JulianFriedmann who is a UK film/book agent) launch a site  for screenwriters, TwelvePoint.  I’ve talked to him many times over the years about storytelling.  In fact I contributedpart of a chapter to his book “How to Make Money Screenwriting“.   That chapter talked about the physiological/psychological effects of watching a movie, and what screenwriters might do with that information.  For instance, did you know that if you sympathise with a character on the screen who is running, your leg muscles will twitch in sync to their running?

Of course one of the basic truths about screenwriting (particularly US screenwriting) is the common structure of movie screenplay.  There’s a focus point in the narrative around page 15, a turning point around page 30, another focus point around midway, and a final turning point about 15 pages or so from the end (each page translates roughly to a minute).  Analysis shows that the vast majority of US movies are based on this formula – next time you watch a movie, check it out, it works.

This, and countless books and research, all point towards stories having a basic, common structure.  So it made perfect sense to me when I read about people looking at the concept of an ”Automyth“.  People (mainly in and around computer gaming) are looking at this, so there’s a lot of reference to fairy tales and ghosts and wizards and everything Terry Pratchett-esque.  For instance someone has created an online “Fairy Tale Generator” at http://www.brown.edu/Courses/FR0133/Fairytale_Generator/gen.html which does an okay job of fixing up a tale based on a bunch of selected inputs like “victory”, “rescue” or “difficult task”.

True, mainstream Automovies or Autobestseller novels are a little way away, it seems, but can it be that long before the first computer-generated bestseller hits a screen near you.  The technology to create the visual image, spoken word and automated music are there already.  All we’re missing is a piece of software that can generate a decent story.

UPDATE: Julian just sent me the following tweet: @alexkelleher I am the friend Alex helped; great blog in light of claims the 3 acts doesn’t work. Read Bettleheim Uses of Enchantment.

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Posted in AI, software

Artificial Life – 4 months away!

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210px-EscherichiaColi_NIAIDApparently. 

Craig Venter, one of the guys behind the Human Genome breakthrough, has just claimed that after a decade-long effort, his instituate is that close to creating artificial life.  Here’s how you can do it at home:

Step 1:Build the entire genetic code for a single bacteria
Step 2: Insert this code into a “host” cell
Step 3: “Reboot” host cell

Until 2007, Step 3 is where the process got stuck, the resulting bacterium just wasn’t viable.   Just recently, Craig and his Institute think they’ve cracked it using “methylation”, a way of protecting this new DNA from the cell’s defence systems. 

This breakthrough could give biology and medicine some great tools – in fact Venter is working on bacteria that transform coal into cleaner natural gas.  Pretty good for a guy who’s already helped us understand our own DNA, and is on a quest to “put everything Darwin missed into context” through his oceanographic surveys.

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Posted in Genes, Technology

An Average Day

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The New York Times chose to lead this story by pointing out that “the unemployed have more time for leisure and socializing“.   Yes, that seems pretty likely.

But in any case the interactive graph they created from their data is a pretty interesting breakdown of how different groups spend their days, by time of day. 

graphday

It’s full of “obvious” information, like men seem to watch more TV and do less housework, but it’s intriguing to play around with the different groups, they’ve certainly tried to analyze the data.  Here are some facts that I’m sure you wanted to know:

  • Women shop for an average of half an hour a day
  • At midnight, 2% of all Americans (which equates to 6m people) are working
  • At noon, 4% of all Americans (12m) are asleep…
  • 25% of people spend more than an hour travelling to work
  • At 8:50pm, 2 fifths of people are in front of the television

More evidence that we’re a pretty predictable bunch of beings…

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Posted in data mining, visualization

Robot Soldiers

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“Robots that can decide where to kill, who to kill and when to kill are high on all the military agendas,” according to some recent commentsby AI professor Noel Sharkey. 

I’ve talked previously about the early steps machines are making towards autonomy, and combine this with weaponry and you’ve got yourself the plot of a couple of dozen Hollywood movies.  Isaac Asimov’s 3 rules for robots may be needed sooner than we thought! (In case you hadn’t seen them before, they are:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.)

ScreenHunter_01 Aug. 06 20.23Now that’s all very well for I, Robot, but autonomy in robots will inevitably be reached well before they’re intelligent enough to use that autonomy, or are capable of sticking to rules.  Relatively simple AI will be used in machines that potentially have access to damaging/lethal technology.

Think that’s impossible?  The headline above is real, and to quote the article “the robot suddenly came to life and grabbed a tight hold of the victim’s head. The man succeeded in defending himself but not before suffering serious injuries.”

Prof. Sharkey is calling for debate on autonomous military robots, and it’s timely – but probably won’t happen until one of these military robots does something “wrong”, such as a friendly fire incident.  Be that as it may, A.I. (or at least highly trained autonomous machines) is of course being developed on in a lot of diverse areas.  And given military budgets, it’s quite possible some of the first properly autonomous and intelligent machines will carry a weapon…

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Posted in AI, Military

Finally, a use for bacteria

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Okay, there are some other benefits of bacteria (as the TV ads for live yogurts keep reminding us), but I’m talking about something altogether more powerful: bacterial computers.

180px-Hamiltonian_path.svgA group of scientists in Missouri and North Carolina have used bacteria to find solutions to an (essentially mathematical) problem: navigating a group of dots so that each dot is only crossed through once, and then returning the first dot – as in the image on the right.  It’s called the Hamiltonian Path Problem, if you’re interested.

So, it’s not quite Windows 8 yet.   In fact, the importance of the study has been questioned variously, but the reason I love it is that it’s using living organisms to find correct answers to mathematical problems, by simply chucking a designed molecule at them.  We’re starting simple (and slow), but then so did computers.   Anyone remember the ZX81?

Some other developments in this space over recent years include:

So why is this all important? Solving hugely difficult computational problems like predicting the weather or curing complex diseases has two approaches now.  The first is “synthetic”: computers, silicon, small machines with cogs and motors, and the like.

The second is “organic”: recognising millions of years of evolution, and saying – how can we use that?  Given that a lump of biological material can create something as fantastically capable as a human brain, why not harness the same systems to do other things?

And that’s where the genius is: short-cutting innovation by harnessing what’s already out there.

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Posted in AI, Technology