Algorithm for Art
Computer programmers in companies like Platinum Blue (US) & Orixa Productions in Madrid are working on what they call “Music Intelligence”.
It entails developing software that would predict which songs would become hits.
The software uses a technique called “Spectral Deconvolution”. It isolates & analyses around 30 parameters that define a piece of music. These companies have compiled database of more than 3 million successful musical arrangements including data on their popularity in different markets.
They claim that they can reveal striking similarities in the underlying parameters of two songs from different eras - for example between U2 & Beethoven!
You are beautiful by James Blunt is one of the many songs that were predicted to be big hits by Platinum Blue.
Algorithm for ideas & creativity
A company called Icosystem has developed the Hunch Engine. The software explores characteristics of products, images or names that appeal to a client. It then applies those characteristics to the automated design of new objects that can be displayed on screen. The Hunch Engine can be customized for corporate clients. Icosystem is now experimenting with a version that will spit out striking original brand and product names.
Algorithm for daily needs
And Google, as some publication recently indicated, could be the World Brain in making.
Why?
It helps us search everything from Paper Clips to PDFs and Power Points. Now we can even create our own word spreadsheets that would be housed on a Google server. In many ways Goolle is leading the emergence of central & networked intelligence simultaneously. First it helped us find anything, anywhere & anytime and now it is prompting us to do everything that we do, at the one place. Google has been the guide map and Google could well become the final destination too.
I am not a scientist thus I can’t say this as an expert but as an observer I feel that what strings the above three together (Algorithm for art, ideas & needs of everyday life) is their reliance on predictive matrices. In other words trying to predict different things in future, basis all the things that have happened in the past.
If history repeats itself and if there is some kind of order in the chaos of business, economy & everyday life; a kind of Order that can be sensed only by a well-trained eye or a bloody-good algorithm, then we cannot be overestimating the enthusiasm of developer-entrepreneurs like Brin & Page (Google) and others behind things like Music Intelligence & Hunch Engine.
What surpasses my imagination is what role would instinct & intuition play in a world of predictive algorithms.
Would the meaning of creativity change?
Would we stop using some of our intellectual faculties (a lot of our thinking anyway has been reduced to typing search strings on search engines!)?
Would there be a counter intelligence that would emerge – intelligence that is less algorithmic and more intuitive?
Would there be a division of roles between Algorithmic Intelligence & Intuitive Intelligence in a way that the former would drive the maintenance of order in this world, and the latter would explore new frontiers of development?
Computer programmers in companies like Platinum Blue (US) & Orixa Productions in Madrid are working on what they call “Music Intelligence”.
It entails developing software that would predict which songs would become hits.
The software uses a technique called “Spectral Deconvolution”. It isolates & analyses around 30 parameters that define a piece of music. These companies have compiled database of more than 3 million successful musical arrangements including data on their popularity in different markets.
They claim that they can reveal striking similarities in the underlying parameters of two songs from different eras - for example between U2 & Beethoven!
You are beautiful by James Blunt is one of the many songs that were predicted to be big hits by Platinum Blue.
Algorithm for ideas & creativity
A company called Icosystem has developed the Hunch Engine. The software explores characteristics of products, images or names that appeal to a client. It then applies those characteristics to the automated design of new objects that can be displayed on screen. The Hunch Engine can be customized for corporate clients. Icosystem is now experimenting with a version that will spit out striking original brand and product names.
Algorithm for daily needs
And Google, as some publication recently indicated, could be the World Brain in making.
Why?
It helps us search everything from Paper Clips to PDFs and Power Points. Now we can even create our own word spreadsheets that would be housed on a Google server. In many ways Goolle is leading the emergence of central & networked intelligence simultaneously. First it helped us find anything, anywhere & anytime and now it is prompting us to do everything that we do, at the one place. Google has been the guide map and Google could well become the final destination too.
I am not a scientist thus I can’t say this as an expert but as an observer I feel that what strings the above three together (Algorithm for art, ideas & needs of everyday life) is their reliance on predictive matrices. In other words trying to predict different things in future, basis all the things that have happened in the past.
If history repeats itself and if there is some kind of order in the chaos of business, economy & everyday life; a kind of Order that can be sensed only by a well-trained eye or a bloody-good algorithm, then we cannot be overestimating the enthusiasm of developer-entrepreneurs like Brin & Page (Google) and others behind things like Music Intelligence & Hunch Engine.
What surpasses my imagination is what role would instinct & intuition play in a world of predictive algorithms.
Would the meaning of creativity change?
Would we stop using some of our intellectual faculties (a lot of our thinking anyway has been reduced to typing search strings on search engines!)?
Would there be a counter intelligence that would emerge – intelligence that is less algorithmic and more intuitive?
Would there be a division of roles between Algorithmic Intelligence & Intuitive Intelligence in a way that the former would drive the maintenance of order in this world, and the latter would explore new frontiers of development?
More importantly who would control whom?
And most importantly – what role would human intelligence play in all this?
And most importantly – what role would human intelligence play in all this?
1 comment:
Fantastic post Saurabh!
Am just thinking aloud now, my feel is that the future of intelligence will be a combination of "intuitive" & "algorithm". Since however complicated an alogorithm one might develop, it is inherently based on the programmer's intuition (which is why you see multiple programe codes, rather different methods to do the same thing).
It many ways it will be the way God meant it to be (left brain & right brain working together rather than in compartments)
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