Artificial Intelligence: A Guide to Intelligent Systems

                This book covers Artificial Intelligence in a very simple way for everyone to understand. In the beginning of this book it talks about intelligent machines and what they can/can’t do. One of the things I found of most interest to me was the ‘Turing Test’. This test was conducted to see if it was possible to spot the differences between man and machine in an unbiased setting using only questions. The machine itself was set up to think and act like a human in order to catch out the person asking the questions and convince them otherwise; with the human also trying to convince that they weren’t the machine. It then goes on to talk about how machines that act exactly like humans are almost beside the point, as a machine is supposed to aid us with our weaknesses.

                                     The ‘Turing Test’ then reminded me of ‘Clever Bot’; an AI system that I remembered from being a child. Although I am already aware that it is a computerised system, I wanted to see if maybe it could compose a solid enough argument to convince me that it might be human. I started off simple:

                      Not very convinced at this point but, assuming I was unaware it’s a machine, I would have no reason to believe it was lying either.

To which it replied: ‘Ugh you’re not romantic at all’. I did find it interesting how it has these human qualities with saying things like ‘ugh’; something you wouldn’t really expect from AI. However, although it can string a sentence together in proper English, it can’t really have a conversation.

 Although I haven’t really determined anything from this little experiment, it was fun to revisit my childhood a bit!

Mon 20^th – Fri 24^th March, 2017

• Creating testers to see how different peg plans work with my warp
• Testing colours and combinations

   

               As a group, we all travelled to the MOSI (Museum of Science & Industry) to try and get some first-hand research relating to technology. There was some great inspiration for shapes, presentation and other areas to research into that we hadn’t yet thought of. It was also great to have us all working as a team and collecting the same first-hand research; allowing us to link our work together better.

Mon 13^th – Fri 17^th March, 2017

• Generating a colour scheme
• Dying yarns to create the right shades   

• Warp Planning to get on the loom as soon as possible; to allow for errors and changes
• Discussing linking binary with weave with Christina and Rebecca - Finding a way to create peg plans from words using binary, using one's as lifts

Hand Studies

     As part of my initial research, I chose to look at hands to draw as a machine. It was discussed in our group tutorial with Lesley that it would be a good idea to look at a softer element to machines; with hands being one. Since machine can’t take over a creative and their mind, are their hands considered to be their machine?

'Artificial Intelligence'

Mon 6^th – Fri 10^th March, 2017

     To begin Unit X my group and I all gathered together to start to come up with ideas that could work for us. After much discussion down different paths we finally settled on ‘Artificial Intelligence’; focusing on machines being a fundamental part of life that is taking over jobs, but will never be able to replace a creative mind. From this I then went away and began to think about my initial perception of ‘Artificial Intelligence’. It is something we had discussed in our meeting which I wanted to try and generate ideas and colour schemes (etc.) from. This process really allowed me to visually see a starting point for our project to help me to progress with refining ideas that we can all branch out and work with.

                 Within our specialism we are all capable of doing an array of things with very specific skills. We all very much want to group these together and pass our samples around the group to be worked on by each other. Therefore with only having 7 weeks, this alerted me to thinking about my warp; how it needs to be to work with the group (as well as myself); and the type of yarns that will provide me with the right aesthetic.  Jack and I then went to see what yarns were available to us and how they fit with our brief.

                After collating a mood board together of all of our ideas it was then easier to see a colour scheme and textures that might come into play. This then aided me with narrowing down ideas for a warp which I hope to begin making next week. Over the weekend I will be refining yarn weights, colours and threading to hopefully have a set idea to work from.