SYNTHETIC MEDIA
Week 03 | 09/15/2022
The first time I heard about the word “synthetic” was in a mechanic shop in Tucson, AZ — I was asking them to do an oil change.
One of the employees asked me, “Do you want synthetic oil?'“
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s basically some man-made oil",” he explained, “and it’s better”.
It’s been so many years, but whenever I hear or see the word “synthetic”, the scene in that mechanic shop comes back into my mind, along with the glorious sunset in Tucson.
Deep Empathy
Resource: MIT Media Lab | Deep Empathy
A few years ago, Media Lab ran an experiment — it shows us what would a city look like after a disaster or war. “Researchers utilized deep learning to learn characteristics of Syrian neighborhoods after the war (for example, Homs, Syria), and uses these features to transform images of cities all over the world, simulating how they would look if they suffered disasters like those in Syria.”
Personally, I feel tremendously empathetic when I look at these AI-generated images. The main reason, I think, is that I’ve heard a lot of stories from my college roommate at Pratt, who is from Syria, and personally went through the war.
The lab took more cities as examples to show the results, here is a map. It is machine learning based. Due to the limited time, only 3,000 participants were involved in the testing, one needs to select an image that makes one feel more empathy towards victims of the Syria crisis. Based on the selection, AI learns more about empathy. The survey can still be taken here.
Nightmare Machine
Also from MIT, the Nightmare Machine is like an advanced version of Deep Empathy. It received much larger data base so the AI was able to learn more about what fear feels like to human beings. It generated a series of horror images including human faces, buildings and city. The Nightmare Machine can also generate different themes, such as haunted house, ghost city, alien invasion, etc.
Images will not be posted here. Please note that IMAGES ON THIS WEBSITE ARE GENERATED BTY DEEP LEANING ALGORITHMS AND MAY MORE BE SUITABLE FOR ALL USERS. THEY CONTAIN SCARY CONTENT.
Here is the link.
Norman - World’s First Psychopath AI
Again, a product of MIT — I think it is an advanced version of Nightmare Machine — we can really see how the progress was made from Deep Empathy from Normal. This time, Normal can create horror stories based on images.
Rorschach's tests were run on both Norman and standard Ai, the differences are HUGE.
Please note: SOME TEXTS MIGHT MAKE READERS FEEL HORRIFIED OR UNCOMFORTABLE.
Here is the link.