Computers Intelligence (ai) & Semantics
Ascenti: Humans Opening to AI
- Publisher
- Durvile Publications Ltd.
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2024
- Category
- Intelligence (AI) & Semantics, Digital
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781990735509
- Publish Date
- Apr 2024
- List Price
- $37.50
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
“The Ascenti-AI Project” explores the question: How might professionals in the creative arts collaborate with AI programs to discover new tools and techniques for their work? The overall project encompasses a book, Ascenti: Humans Opening to AI, a dedicated website at ascenti-project.com, a two-day symposium, and "The Ascenti Exhibition of Original Human and AI Art." The Ascenti book features a lineup of creatives who specialize in visual art, writing (prose, poetry, and playwriting), animation, audiobook performance, sound design, and videogames. They experiment with AI by making original works within their respective artistic mediums, inspiring an AI program(s) to generate works based on prompts derived from their original creations, and then evaluate the AI-generated output. Then they interpret AI’s potential to enhance their original works or ways AI helps them overcome visual or other challenges. Alternatively, the creatives might express downsides of AI.
About the authors
Lorene Shyba PhD is publisher at Durvile & UpRoute Books and series editor of the Durvile True Cases series.
Dr. James R. Parker is a Professor of Art at the U of Calgary and author of Generative Art: Algorithms as Artistic Tool.
James R. Parker's profile page
Besides being a caveman, Rich is a genius talent at painting and drawing. His art hangs here and there in prominent homes and galleries but he prefers not to boast about it. Rich is founder of Calgary’s Rumble House gallery and happens to also teach junior high school art. He is the author and illustrator of Stop Making Art and Die, and the co-author of the poetry book, A Wake in the Undertow, along with his partner Jess Szabo. Intriguingly, he calls himself a tomato can. He and his gang exist/co-exist in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Uchechukwu Umezurike's profile page
Editor Eveline Kolijn is a writer and printmaker living and working in Calgary. She uses the arts to promote energy literacy, awareness, and discussion about responsible energy transition for the world.
Rosemary Griebel's profile page
Clem Martini is an award-winning playwright, novelist, and screenwriter with over thirty plays and nine books of fiction and non-fiction to his credit, including Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness, winner of the Calgary Book Award, and his most recent anthology of plays, Martini with a Twist. He has served on the boards of numerous writing organizations including the Alberta Playwrights Network, the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs. His texts on playwriting, The Blunt Playwright and The Greek Playwright, are used in universities and colleges across the country. He is currently a professor in the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary.
Dagmar Jamieson's profile page
Using Cognitive Science as a basis for artistic work, Dr. Steve DiPaola, and his IVIZLAB research team at Simon Fraser University, attempt to model aspects of human creativity in AI. They use Neural Networks (and evolutionary systems) in the form of Deep Learning, CNNs, RNNs and other modern techniques of Generative Design to model aspects of human expression and creativity.
Excerpt: Ascenti: Humans Opening to AI (edited by Lorene Shyba & James R. Parker; by (author) Verna Vogel, Rich Théroux, Uchechukwu Umezurike, Eveline Kolijn, Rosemary Griebel, Clem Martini, Kenna Burima, Julian Hobson & Dagmar Jamieson; foreword by Steve DiPaola)
Commentary, by James R. Parker PhD
The question is: “When a robot takes a job from a person, what should that person do now”? In my view, the use of robots for human work is fine, but humans should not have to suffer on that account. This is not a situation where, for example, the job has become obsolete because the product is no longer needed (eg. buggy-whip makers) or due to the resources being mo longer there (eg. fishing). The replacement of humans by robots—AI—is purely a matter of convenience and cost savings on the part of a small group, at the expense of the creative human workers. This is unacceptable. And yet [certain companies] insist they will aggressively push ahead with using AI. What are the options? Well, we could forbid AI from doing human jobs, but that seems impractical. We could expand copyright laws so that the training of the AI involved payment to those who created the training data. That’s going on now, and is a beginning. I suggest that AI use be allowed at a price, and part of that price would be paid to the humans who were no longer able to do those jobs due to the use of AI. Call it a levy or a tax, it would in my opinion be more like the old concept of profit sharing. This will not be voluntary, and would have to be attached to the AI tools or the products they generate.
Editorial Reviews
“The cultural and artistic roles of AI have received little attention so far. The Ascenti book is a welcome opening in that direction. It deals with AI used in creating visual arts, literature, and computer games, and analyzes both the new opportunities and limitations in these areas.” —Frans Mäyrä, PhD, Researcher of Culture and Society
