Friday, June 3, 2016

From Quick-Quotes Quills to Riddle's Diary


As I have been thinking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the interaction of technology and magic, it seems time to review two more magical objects from the world of Harry Potter. (For an earlier example, here’s a post about the Marauder’s Map.)

The Quick-Quotes Quill makes its first appearance in Book 4 when freelance reporter Rita Skeeter tries to interview Harry Potter in a broom cupboard. How does it work? As the interview proceeds, the magical quill writes what is being said in flowery prose, adding additional “supporting” facts to the main story. Presumably it receives some training and input from its owner, and therefore writes in a style suited to the taste and personality of the witch or wizard who has charmed the quill. In this example, it aggrandizes Rita while painting Harry as a tragic hero.

Muggles now have decent technology that transcribes speech. Combined with searching the wireless internet or a cloud database, an appropriate app (or program) can add flourishes to the transcribed text following parameters set up by (or learned from) the owner. We can now ask Siri for information, but she could well make further suggestions by “reading our mind”, having adapted to our interests, likes and dislikes. Alexa, with her superior voice recognition capabilities, can do more than buy you products from Amazon. Her skill set is projected to increase exponentially as open third-parties create increasing numbers of sophisticated apps.

With or without a magical quill, who is the author? The one with the idea? The wordsmith? In reality, anything that we read in books come not just from one mind or person. There is always a collaborative effort, acknowledged or not. Ideas do not arise in a vacuum. Other “authors” we read or listen to have influenced our phraseology, style and word usage. Some hardly do any of the writing themselves – they hire ghostwriters. A day may soon come when you no longer need a human ghostwriter to churn out that essay, article or book on your behalf. An AI could potentially do it given some parameters. A sufficiently advanced one, drawing on the wide resources of the web might even do so while (ironically) passing the test of a plagiarism-detection program. AIs have surpassed individual humans in Chess, Go and Jeopardy. The frontline of research in these areas has moved towards combining the skills of AI and human, superior to either alone. The age of the cyborg has arrived. A Muggle cyborg may well surpass Rita Skeeter and her Quick-Quotes Quill.

If a first generation AI can assist humans in rudimentary tasks, and a more superior version can engage in more complex activities, what might a highly advanced AI personal assistant look like when engaged with a creative and ingenious human? The recent Iron Man movies capture this well. Just think how much I could accomplish if I had Jarvis as an assistant. Besides doing all the necessary difficult calculations, Jarvis actively makes suggestions on how to improve things. I might not just imagine new elements, but be able to create them. But whether Jarvis would want to work with someone who does not have Tony Stark’s intelligence and abilities is open to question. As an AI advances, like Her, would it find mere humans simply less interesting and perhaps constraining, and instead chart its own course? Worse, might an AI turn malevolent towards the human race?

This brings me to Riddle’s diary, a powerful magical object featured in Book 2. It seems benign at first, possibly a primitive AI that makes simple conversation, maybe even a positive companion for the lonely and misunderstood. In her book Alone Together (mentioned in this recent post), Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, chronicles the beginnings of ELIZA. Designed at MIT’s AI lab, one of ELIZA’s programs allowed it to “act” as a psychotherapist. Even though it was clear 40-50 years ago that ELIZA was a relatively simple program that did not have a large database to draw from, those interacting with her would (when alone) spill out their secret thoughts and doubts. It felt therapeutic, and it didn’t matter that ELIZA was clearly a machine.

In the Muggle world, Riddle’s diary initially seems to behave as an advanced version of ELIZA. The hapless “victim” pours out her troubles to this object. The diary responds, luring the tortured soul further into dependency. One might say that the user gets so immersed in the program that he becomes “possessed”. Immersion in the digital life is a cautionary theme of Turkle’s book. One starts to view the “real” world in different ways and behave accordingly. This is starting to sound like an evil, or perhaps demonic, AI. Maybe it is no longer artificial and has started to take on moral characteristics. Is that where the line is drawn? Mr. Weasley admonishes: “Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain!” Where is the brain of an AI? That might be the hardware. But in the nebulous distributed cloud, this becomes increasingly unclear. It may not be easily destroyed. As in biology, life seems to find a way.

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