Experts Predict When Artificial Intelligence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writing Essays, Books & Songs, to Performing Surgery and Driving Trucks

in Economics, Life, Science, Technology | June 7th, 2017

We know they’re coming. The robots. To take our jobs. While humans turn on each other, find scapegoats, try to bring back the past, and ignore the future, machine intelligences replace us as quickly as their designers get them out of beta testing. We can’t exactly blame the robots. They don’t have any say in the matter. Not yet, anyway. But it’s a fait accompli say the experts. “The promise,” writes MIT Technology Review, “is that intelligent machines will be able to do every task better and more cheaply than humans. Rightly or wrongly, one industry after another is falling under its spell, even though few have benefited significantly so far.”

The question, then, is not if, but “when will artificial intelligence exceed human performance?” And some answers come from a paper called, appropriately, “When Will AI Exceed Human Performance? Evidence from AI Experts.” In this study, Katja Grace of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford and several of her colleagues “surveyed the world’s leading researchers in artificial intelligence by asking them when they think intelligent machines will better humans in a wide range of tasks.”

You can see many of the answers plotted on the chart above. Grace and her co-authors asked 1,634 experts, and found that they “believe there is a 50% chance of AI outperforming humans in all tasks in 45 years and of automating all human jobs in 120 years.” That means all jobs: not only driving trucks, delivering by drone, running cash registers, gas stations, phone support, weather forecasts, investment banking, etc, but also performing surgery, which may happen in less than 40 years, and writing New York Times bestsellers, which may happen by 2049.

That’s right, AI may perform our cultural and intellectual labor, making art and films, writing books and essays, and creating music. Or so the experts say. Already a Japanese AI program has written a short novel, and almost won a literary prize for it. And the first milestone on the chart has already been reached; last year, Google’s AI AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, the South Korean grandmaster of Go, the ancient Chinese game “that’s exponentially more complex than chess,” as Cade Metz writes at Wired. (Humane video game design, on the other hand, may have a ways to go yet.)

Perhaps these feats partly explain why, as Grace and the other researchers found, Asian respondents expected the rise of the machines “much sooner than North America.” Other cultural reasons surely abound—likely those same quirks that make Americans embrace creationism, climate-denial, and fearful conspiracy theories and nostalgia by the tens of millions. The future may be frightening, but we should have seen this coming. Sci-fi visionaries have warned us for decades to prepare for our technology to overtake us.

In the 1960s Alan Watts foresaw the future of automation and the almost pathological fixation we would develop for “job creation” as more and more necessary tasks fell to the robots and human labor became increasingly superfluous. (Hear him make his prediction above.) Like many a technologist and futurist today, Watts advocated for Universal Basic Income, a way of ensuring that all of us have the means to survive while we use our newly acquired free time to consciously shape the world the machines have learned to maintain for us.

What may have seemed like a Utopian idea then (though it almost became policy under Nixon), may become a necessity as AI changes the world, writes MIT, “at breakneck speed.”

via Big Think/MIT Technology Review

Bertrand Russell & Buckminster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

Artificial Intelligence Program Tries to Write a Beatles Song: Listen to “Daddy’s Car”

Hayao Miyazaki Tells Video Game Makers What He Thinks of Their Characters Made with Artificial Intelligence: “I’m Utterly Disgusted. This Is an Insult to Life Itself”

Artificial Intelligence: A Free Online Course from MIT

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl Manuscripts Now Digitized & Put Online, Revealing the Beat Poet’s Creative Process

in Poetry | June 7th, 2017

Somehow you have to imagine that, from its very opening — “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix” — Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” simply emerged fully formed and launched itself permanently into American culture. But deep down we all know that no work, poetic or otherwise, actually does that, no matter how widely read it becomes, no matter how vividly it captures a time and a place, no matter how many generations look to it as an example. Ginsberg had to work on “Howl,” and now, thanks to Stanford Libraries, we have an up-close way to see some of that work in progress.

“From its first public reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in October 1955 to the notorious obscenity trial that followed in the wake of its first publication in 1956,” writes Stanford Curator for American and British Literature Rebecca Wingfield, “the poem is indelibly tied to the Beat Generation and their critique of the staid morals and customs of Eisenhower-era America.”

Before all that, it began with a seven-page first draft written in Ginsberg’s North Beach apartment, gained a second section before that now-legendary Six Gallery reading, and finally, after Ginsberg tried out different compositional techniques and followed different suggestions in search of a way to capture America as he saw it, evolved into a long poem comprising three sections and a footnote, published alongside other works by City Lights Books as the paperback that made him famous.

“The ‘Howl’ manuscripts and typescripts in the Allen Ginsberg Papers,” which you can view online at Stanford Libraries, “document the formal development of the poem, tracing Ginsberg’s experiments with different structures and wording in each of the poem’s sections.” These pre-“Howl” “Howl“s, manuscripts and typescripts both, retain the corrections and annotations that reveal details about Ginsberg’s distinctive creative process. But given the most well-known aspect of the poem’s construction, that each line lasts as long as exactly one breath, a full understanding can only come from hearing it as well as reading it. You can hear Ginsberg’s earliest recorded performance of the poem, at Portland’s Reed College (alma mater of Ginsberg’s Beat colleague Gary Snyder) in 1956, at the top of the post, and a later reading on record here. (The text of the completed poem can be viewed here.) Look and listen closely, and you’ll find that a cri de coeur, especially as Ginsberg cried it, demands deliberate craftsmanship.

See the Howl manuscripts online here.

via Stanford News/Boing Boing

Allen Ginsberg Reads His Famously Censored Beat Poem, “Howl” (1959)

James Franco Reads a Dreamily Animated Version of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celestial Homework”: A Reading List for His Class “Literary History of the Beats”

Allen Ginsberg Recordings Brought to the Digital Age. Listen to Eight Full Tracks for Free

Allen Ginsberg’s Handwritten Poem For Bernie Sanders, “Burlington Snow” (1986)

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Everything You Need to Know About Modern Russian Art in 25 Minutes: A Visual Introduction to Futurism, Socialist Realism & More

in Art | June 7th, 2017

Few things fascinated me as a child more than Russia. I wasn’t alone in this. Everyone experienced it. And it wasn’t only the Soviet Union—though it played the bogeyman in Cold War films, loomed over history textbooks, and seemed to exist in a forbidden parallel universe in Reagan’s America. But what came before it was equally outsized and tragic: the Romanovs, Rasputin, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible.… Russia’s modern history came into focus through its novelists—the intricate social distinctions and complicated family dynamics, the palace intrigues, the gallows humor, discontent, and resignation of ordinary Russians….

After 40 years of uneasy détente with the world’s other superpower, Americans found the pieces of their view of Russia falling into place almost imperceptibly. But nothing—I repeat, nothing—prepared The West for Russian modernism. It drove the CIA to such distraction that they secretly funneled money to jazz artists and Abstract Expressionists to fight a culture war. It made no sense to us. “This is completely ridiculous!” says Brian Cox above, expressing a sentiment shared by many when they encounter Russian Formalism, or Suprematism, or Futurism, and other avant-gardisms.

Cox, narrating the “Quickest History of 20th Century Art in Russia,” does an excellent job of conveying the shock, excitement, and bewilderment we feel when we encounter Malevich and Mayakovsky, the startling folk Neoclassicism of Russian Art Nouveau—where the film begins—the Conceptualists of the Thaw, and the outrageous performance artists of the post-Soviet era. None of this, to quote Tristan Tzara, is art made to “cajole the nice nice bourgeois”—with the ironic exception of Socialist Realism, which outlawed the Russian avant-garde and said “look, everything we have is so grand, abundant! We have everything aplenty!”

Socialist Realism resembles nothing so much as American magazine advertising of the Life magazine and Norman Rockwell eras, a reminder of one way the two belligerent empires came to increasingly resemble each other over time. “Socialist Realism,” says Cox, “is almost a caricature, only with incredible pathos.” It is “the first tendency to rule out criticism completely.” It absorbed critique and turned it into celebration and denunciation, both of them noble acts of State. Where American didactic art sold hundreds of products and a handful of ideological poses, the Soviet variety sold one thing: the Party. This does not, however, mean that Socialist Realism is “bad”—not entirely. It is, instead, like so much modern Russian Art to non-Russian eyes… uncanny.

The 25-minute “Quickest History of 20th Century Art in Russia” comes from a series of “Crash Courses” from Arzamas Academy that includes “Ancient Rome in 20 minutes” and “Ancient Greece in 18 minutes.” All of them feature the wry, mellifluous voice of Cox, and I highly recommend them all.

via Coudal

Download 144 Beautiful Books of Russian Futurism: Mayakovsky, Malevich, Khlebnikov & More (1910–30)

The History of Russia in 70,000 Photos: New Photo Archive Presents Russian History from 1860 to 1999

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Lou Reed Curates an Eclectic Playlist of His Favorite Songs During His Final Days: Stream 27 Tracks Lou Was Listening To

in Music | June 6th, 2017

Lou Reed was a voracious listener. Rather than consume music, he imbibed it, drank it down in draughts, then sweated it out through his pores. His inexhaustible thirst for songs resulted in a body of work that has always sounded intimately familiar, even when it takes us to places no songwriters had before: the bitter, tender, violent underside of glamour, art, and romance.

But where, exactly, did Reed’s wry, bleak, yet tender sensibility come from? How did he manage so much complex emotional resonance in such seemingly simple songs as “Sunday Morning” and “Perfect Day”? Part of the answer comes from his veneration of Beat poets and writers like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, as well as his one-time mentor Delmore Schwartz. “I thought if you could do what those writers did,” he said, “and put it to drums and guitar, you’d have the greatest thing on earth.”

This was no easy accomplishment. It took someone like Reed, steeped in pop, folk, rock, and jazz songcraft, to pull it off in such a way that Rolling Stone could call the Velvet Underground “the most influential American rock band of all time”—largely, writes the Daily Dot, “because of Reed’s sonic and lyrical contributions.” For most of Reed’s career, however, discovering the sources of his magic could be difficult.

Reed’s interview moods ranged from irascibly confrontational to disdainfully taciturn to facetiously garrulous. “Everything is jokes to this bibulous bozo,” remarked Lester Bangs in a 1973 interview. “He really makes a point of havin’ some fun!” But age, it seems, and the internet, mellowed him out and made him more likely to share. He opened up about his love for Kanye West’s Yeezus and other things. He appeared on Saturday Night Live to dispute internet rumors that he had died in 2001.

And when he did die, in 2013, he left behind the Spotify account “he was curating… himself,” keeping “playlists of songs he liked from the radio,” and showing both serious and casual students of Lou Reed that “the best online source on Lou Reed is… Lou Reed.” In the two volume playlist above called “What I’m Listening To,” Reed shows us just how serious he was about soaking up all of the sounds around him.

Nicki Minaj, Prince, Waylon Jennings, indie funk/soul Canadians King Khan & BBQ, psychedelic indie chamber pop band Of Montreal, Tom Waits, Miles Davis, Deerhoof, post-hardcore band Fucked Up, brilliant neo-soul singer/rapper/songwriter Georgia Anne Muldrow, Captain Beefheart… and that’s just volume one. Name a genre—Reed has found what he clearly considers its perfect exemplar. You can almost see him taking notes, scowling with envy, smirking with appreciation for how his own influence has permeated the past few the decades.

Famous musicians aren’t always the most interesting people, though Reed’s private life was sensational enough to warrant retelling. But many fans will find it much more interesting to get into the mind of Reed the artist. And for that, you’ll need to try and hear what he heard. Or, at least, listen to what he listened to.

If you need Spotify’s free software, download it here. Here are the direct links to the two Spotify playlists: Playlist 1 — Playlist 2.

Teenage Lou Reed Sings Doo-Wop Music (1958–1962)

An Animation of The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” … for Your Sunday Morning

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear Bob Dylan’s Newly-Released Nobel Lecture: A Meditation on Music, Literature & Lyrics

in Literature, Music | June 6th, 2017

The furor surrounding Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize win in Literature last October now seems several ages away. What was all that about again? Could it possibly have meant, as many a disgruntled writer suggested, that “people don’t care about books anymore”? Was this an “ill-conceived nostalgia award,” as Irvine Welsh bitterly proclaimed, bestowed by a committee of “senile, gibbering hippies”? Even Dylan himself seemed confused and embarrassed. He remained silent after the announcement, ignoring the Swedish Academy’s calls and seeming to one Academy member “impolite and arrogant.”

As anyone who has ever seen a Dylan interview from the mid-sixties can attest, these qualities once defined his public persona. And yes, he isn’t nearly as culturally relevant now as he was in those days, when he played the near-untouchable superstar and mercurial pop culture savant. But the Swedish Academy voted to celebrate Dylan as a literary writer, not a celebrity. And while writers may fall in and out of fashion, we like to think of literature as timeless. Many, perhaps most, authors awarded the Nobel have been “past their prime,” in the sense of having a lifetime’s worth of work behind them. Dylan is certainly no exception.

The question of whether folk and rock and roll songs can be properly considered literature is another matter, but you’d have to be naïve not to know that all literature began its life as song. Maybe much of it will return to this primordial state in the future. Sensing that songcraft needed an advocate before critics of literature, when he recorded his Nobel lecture–with musical accompaniment, on June 4th, six months after his win (hear him read it above)–Dylan discussed the interdependence of the two. He pointed to Homer’s Odyssey, an epic song in verse before it assumed written form, as the source for not only so much Western literature, but also so much American folk song, including his own.

“The Odyssey is a great book whose themes have worked its way into the ballads of a lot of songwriters,” says Dylan, then he concedes that “songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read.” That’s okay. “The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage,” not read by groups of students in uncomfortable desks and airless rooms. No one became furiously angry when playwright Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize in 2005. Should they have? But Dylan doesn’t pursue this line of reasoning, and he doesn’t necessarily compare himself to Shakespeare. Not quite.…

He did, however, make a similar argument in his short acceptance speech (read it here)—which he wrote and handed to the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji, to read in his place at the ceremony (see her deliver it above)–asking whether Shakespeare, and hence Dylan, should be considered literature: “I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist… I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare’s mind was the question ‘Is this literature?’” Like Shakespeare, Dylan writes, he has been busy with the exigencies of touring, creating ensembles, and performing: “not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, ‘Are my songs literature?’” (Believe that or not.) He thanks the Swedish Academy for taking up the question, and “for providing such a wonderful answer.”

In his newly-released recorded lecture, at the top, Dylan also doesn’t answer the question directly. He carefully considers it—“wondering, exactly, how my songs relate to literature.” He confesses needing to “reflect on it, and see where the connection was.” It is in the influence of The Odyssey, Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and other great works. It is also, he suggests, in the way music participates in literary traditions, trading similar themes and establishing similar affiliations. But he expresses no commitment to collapsing the distinctions between them. “His apparent attitude throughout the process” of winning the Nobel Prize, writes Emily Temple at Lit Hub, “has been… something along the lines of: ‘okay, if you say so.”

“The fact that Bob Dylan doesn’t consider his songs literature doesn’t make them not literature, of course,” writes Temple. We’re free to agree or disagree with him, but in either case his lecture might make us “consider the possibility that they will become literature, as William Shakespeare’s plays have.” By that time, Shakespeare was long dead. While he still lives, Dylan concludes, “I hope some of you will get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, ‘Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.’”

You can read the transcript of Dylan’s lecture here.

Patti Smith Sings Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rains Gonna Fall” at Nobel Prize Ceremony & Gets a Case of the Nerves

Kurt Vonnegut on Bob Dylan: He “Is the Worst Poet Alive”

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Marley, Public Enemy, Billy Bragg & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Ennio Morricone’s Iconic Song, “The Ecstasy of Gold,” Spellbindingly Arranged for Theremin & Voice

in Music | June 6th, 2017

You know Ennio Morricone’s “The Ecstasy Of Gold,” a musical composition first made famous in Sergio Leone’s 1966 spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It has since been covered by everyone from Metallica, to Yo-Yo Ma. And now you can add German electronic musician Carolina Eyck to the list.

Above, watch Eyck take “The Ecstasy Of Gold” in new, intriguing directions, using a theremin and a voice looper. It’s pretty mesmerizing.

Below, watch Carolina’s introduction to the theremin. And down in the Relateds, find much more on the theremin, including vintage footage of Russian inventor Leon Theremin giving a demo of the newfangled electronic instrument.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newsletter, please find it here. Or follow our posts on Threads, Facebook, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to support the mission of Open Culture, consider making a donation to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere. You can contribute through PayPal, Patreon, and Venmo (@openculture). Thanks!

Watch Jimmy Page Rock the Theremin, the Early Soviet Electronic Instrument, in Some Hypnotic Live Performances

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy Played With 167 Theremins Placed Inside Matryoshka Dolls in Japan

“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” Played on a 1929 Theremin

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear the Musical Compositions of A Clockwork Orange Author Anthony Burgess, and Download His Musical Scores for Free

in Music | June 6th, 2017

Most of us remember Anthony Burgess not as the author of dozens of novels, as well as short stories, essays, and poems, but as the author of A Clockwork Orange. This owes, for better or for worse, to Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film adaptation of the “badly flawed” American edition of Burgess’ 1962 dystopian satire, although even if A Clockwork Orange didn’t overshadow the rest of his literary career, his literary career would probably still overshadow what he considered his life’s truly serious endeavor: music.

“I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels,” Burgess once went so far as to say, “instead of a novelist who writes music on the side.” Since even those of us who’ve read widely in his bibliography may never have heard any of the over 250 pieces of music he wrote in his lifetime, today we offer you a listen as well as a look at his orchestral compositions.

In the Spotify playlists embedded here (and if you don’t have Spotify’s free software, you can download it here), you can hear the albums Burgess: Orchestral Music, The Piano Music of Anthony Burgess, and the anthology Anthony Burgess: The Man and His Music (the title of that last a reference to This Man and His Music, the book that brought together his two great pursuits most directly).

“Music was at the heart of Anthony Burgess’s creative life,” says the site of The Burgess Foundation, who there have made “scores of his music available free of charge to anybody who wishes to study or play it.” Prolific in his writing as well as his composing, Burgess’ music includes a piece only discovered in 2012, nearly twenty years after death; the news clip at the top of the post briefly tells the story of Burgess’ “lost sonata,” his earliest surviving complete musical work.

Many of Burgess novels, including but hardly limited to A Clockwork Orange, suggest a deep interest and understanding of music, but they also (recall the Droogs’ wide lexicon of invented slang) reveal a similar capacity for linguistics. Call no Burgess fan a completist, then, unless they’ve read his books, heard his music, and also read his translations. “Translation is not a matter of words only,” the man once said. “It is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.” Practiced in fields as “untranslatable” as poetry and as translation-independent as orchestral music, he should know. But one wonders: what other little-known cultural side career remains hidden in the depths of the Burgess archives?

A Clockwork Orange Author Anthony Burgess Lists His Five Favorite Dystopian Novels: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & More

Anthony Burgess’ Lost Introduction to Joyce’s Dubliners Now Online

Hunter S. Thompson Writes a Blistering, Over-the-Top Letter to Anthony Burgess (1973)

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Dr. Jane Goodall Will Teach an Online Course About Conserving Our Environment

in Environment, Nature, Online Courses | June 5th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a MasterClass course by clicking on the affiliate links in this post, Open Culture will receive a small fee that helps support our operation.

A quick heads up: The great primatologist and anthropologist Dr. Jane Goodall–now 83 years old–will soon teach her first online course ever. Hosted by Masterclass, the course, consisting of 25 video lectures, will teach students how they can conserve the environment. It will also share Goodall’s research on the behavioral patterns of chimpanzees and what they taught her about conservation. The course won’t get started until this fall, but you can pre-enroll now. The cost is $90.

Other courses currently offered by Masterclass include:

Find more courses taught by star instructors here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newsletter, please find it here. Or follow our posts on Threads, Facebook, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to support the mission of Open Culture, consider making a donation to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere. You can contribute through PayPal, Patreon, and Venmo (@openculture). Thanks!

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Experts Predict When Artificial Intelligence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writing Essays, Books & Songs, to Performing Surgery and Driving Trucks

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl Manuscripts Now Digitized & Put Online, Revealing the Beat Poet’s Creative Process

Everything You Need to Know About Modern Russian Art in 25 Minutes: A Visual Introduction to Futurism, Socialist Realism & More

Lou Reed Curates an Eclectic Playlist of His Favorite Songs During His Final Days: Stream 27 Tracks Lou Was Listening To

Hear Bob Dylan’s Newly-Released Nobel Lecture: A Meditation on Music, Literature & Lyrics

Ennio Morricone’s Iconic Song, “The Ecstasy of Gold,” Spellbindingly Arranged for Theremin & Voice

Hear the Musical Compositions of A Clockwork Orange Author Anthony Burgess, and Download His Musical Scores for Free

Dr. Jane Goodall Will Teach an Online Course About Conserving Our Environment

Essentials

Support Us

Free Courses

Receive our Daily Email

FREE UPDATES!

GET OUR DAILY EMAIL

Free Movies

Free Language Lessons

Free eBooks

Free Audio Books

Free Textbooks

K-12 Resources

Free Art & Images

Free Music

Writing Tips

Archive

Personal Finance

Categories

Great Lectures

Sign up for Newsletter

About Us

Great Recordings

Book Lists By

Syllabi

Favorite Movies

Archives

Search