Three Laws Blog: Law and Artificial Intelligence

AI and Film

Zachary Tomlinson offers a look at the history of AI in films in Artificial Entertainment: A Century of AI In Film, an article for IE: Interesting Engineering. He notes,

 

 

We may be advancing into a new age of artificial intelligence, but humans have been dreaming about the possibilities of AI for far longer. It was almost 100 years ago when an AI first appeared on the silver screen, and the technology’s prevalence has only grown since then.

Sone on Robots in Performance

ICYMI:

Yuji Sone, More Than Objects: Robot Performance In Japan's Bacarobo Theatre, 30 Studies in Theatre and Performance 341-353 (2010). Here is the abstract.

This article examines Bacarobo, a Japanese comedy contest for robots that are designed to perform and entertain the audience with laughter. In the theatre of Bacarobo, robots can be comedians because the theatrical space and dynamics of Bacarobo attribute a performance capacity to its robots that makes them much more than just objects in themselves. The robot competition unites strategies typical of the Japanese variety show context with effects creating a temporary, consensual reality to present robots as integral players in humorous situations. In this inclusive mise-en-scène, Bacarobo combines the concept of robot as a magical object with the transformative power of the clown to draw upon the Japanese idea of the robot's role in forging a technologically advanced future. The result is that the uncertain and indeterminate aspects of the robotic machines—machines otherwise without practical use and, therefore, important social referents—are turned into something acceptable and even endearing in the name of comedy. The Japanese robot comedy show provides useful material to consider recent thinking within theatre and performance studies on the subject—object relation and on the activation of theatrical space, audience and objects.

AI and the (Paint) Colors of the Rainbow

AI tries to come up with names for paint colors. Now admittedly, that is a difficult task. House Beautiful Magazine runs contests for paint color names, as do paint manufacturers.

But the ones this particular AI offered up were a little unfortunate. Dry Custard. Shy Bather (well, maybe). Parp Green (say what?) Bull Cream (oh, no). Farty Red (definitely not). Back to the mixing board (um, pot). (Via Ars Technica).

Of Machines and Men

The Los Angeles Review of Books discusses chess, humans, and AI, here, in a review of chess champion Garry Kasparov's Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins (Public Affairs, 2017).  See also Acculurated's discussion of the book review here.

Ramalho on a Proposed Model for the Legal Status of AI's Creations @Copytwilight @MaastrichtU

Ana Ramalho, Maastricht University, has published Will Robots Rule the (Artistic) World? A Proposed Model for the Legal Status of Creations by Artificial Intelligence Systems. Here is the abstract.

While currently artificial intelligence (AI) is not completely independent from human input, the speed and direction of technology development seem to anticipate a not-so-distant future where it will be. From a copyright perspective, this scenario challenges traditional conceptions, notably that of authorship. In many jurisdictions, authorship seems to be somewhat connected to the conditions for protection, which might imply that, absent a human author, a work will not be original and therefore not copyrightable. This may leave many works that would otherwise be copyrightable without protection, thereby causing legal uncertainty; but it also raises questions about whether protection should at all be available, and about whether copyright is fit for purpose in face of technological progress in the area of AIS. The first part of this paper focuses on whether the current copyright framework can accommodate AIS as creators for purposes of copyright protection. To that end, I examine and compare requirements of authorship in Europe, the US and Australia. I then analyse current legal constructions that could accommodate non-human authorship, such as the specific regime of computer-generated works existent in some common law jurisdictions. The second part of the paper enquires whether copyright should protect AIs as creators. To answer that question, I look into the different rationales of copyright protection. Building on the data from the previous parts, I propose a model for the legal regime of AIs’ creations.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Should AI Have Intellectual Property Rights? @technollama @SussexLaw @ConversationUK

Andres Guadamuz, a professor at the University of Sussex, examines whether AI should have copyright in artwork. He gives as an example a computer that analyzed the work of Rembrandt, and then produced artwork "after" the famous artist. More at The ConversationUK. 

Stop Copying Me! @atlasobscura

Atlas Obscura discusses this piece of public art near the Tate Modern that copies random passers-by.

Seriously creepy or creepily serious? Maybe just keep walking. 

A Bot In Hollywood

From ArsTechnica:  A new film, It's No Game, has as one of its screenwriters an AI named Benjamin. It's No Game is no game for Benjamin. It's been in the screenwriting game before--as the writer for last year's film Sunspring.  Well, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that AI is really to infiltrate the Writers Guild. There are bots writing poetry (see @metadata_haikus, Trakl_Bot, and Google's poetry bot).

There's even a website to help you try to determine whether a bot or a human wrote a particular poem: Bot Or Not.  Maybe we don't even need human poets for that? Oh, is that a bad sign?