The Nexus between Artificial Intelligence and Economics

This book is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the notion of the Singularity, a stage in development in which technological progress and economic growth increase at a near-infinite rate. Section 3 describes what artificial intelligence is and how it has been applied. Section 4 considers artificial happiness and the likelihood that artificial intelligence might increase human happiness. Section 5 discusses some prominent related concepts and issues. Section 6 describes the use of artificial agents in economic modeling, and section 7 considers some ways in which economic analysis can offer some hints about what the advent of artificial intelligence might bring. Chapter 8 presents some thoughts about the current state of AI and its future prospects.

Choreographing the extended agent : performance graphics for dance theater

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 448-458).The marriage of dance and interactive image has been a persistent dream over the past decades, but reality has fallen far short of potential for both technical and conceptual reasons. This thesis proposes a new approach to the problem and lays out the theoretical, technical and aesthetic framework for the innovative art form of digitally augmented human movement. I will use as example works a series of installations, digital projections and compositions each of which contains a choreographic component - either through collaboration with a choreographer directly or by the creation of artworks that automatically organize and understand purely virtual movement. These works lead up to two unprecedented collaborations with two of the greatest choreographers working today; new pieces that combine dance and interactive projected light using real-time motion capture live on stage. The existing field of"dance technology" is one with many problems. This is a domain with many practitioners, few techniques and almost no theory; a field that is generating "experimental" productions with every passing week, has literally hundreds of citable pieces and no canonical works; a field that is oddly disconnected from modern dance's history, pulled between the practical realities of the body and those of computer art, and has no influence on the prevailing digital art paradigms that it consumes.(cont.) This thesis will seek to address each of these problems: by providing techniques and a basis for "practical theory"; by building artworks with resources and people that have never previously been brought together, in theaters and in front of audiences previously inaccessible to the field; and by proving through demonstration that a profitable and important dialogue between digital art and the pioneers of modern dance can in fact occur. The methodological perspective of this thesis is that of biologically inspired, agent-based artificial intelligence, taken to a high degree of technical depth. The representations, algorithms and techniques behind such agent architectures are extended and pushed into new territory for both interactive art and artificial intelligence. In particular, this thesis ill focus on the control structures and the rendering of the extended agents' bodies, the tools for creating complex agent-based artworks in intense collaborative situations, and the creation of agent structures that can span live image and interactive sound production. Each of these parts becomes an element of what it means to "choreograph" an extended agent for live performance.Marc Downie.Ph.D

The presentation of masculine experience in the English Gothic novel.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DX207329 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Gerald Heard's natural theology in relation to the philosophy of Henri Bergson

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityThe purpose of this dissertation is to expound and evaluate the natural theology of Gerald Heard in relation to the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and to determine the reason for the relative neglect of Heard's thought in theological and philosophical circles. Gerald Heard is a contemporary thinker who has written widely on the relations among science, philosophy and religion. He has not, however, gained the recognition which the range and number of his books might lead one to expect. The procedure consists in (1) a characterization of the basic philosophy of Henri Bergson as a point of reference for consideration of Heard, (2) a systematic analysis of Heard's thought, noting similarities and differences with regard to Bergson, (3) an evaluation of Heard's thought, and conclusions. [TRUNCATED

The Disappearing Frame.: A Practice-based investigation into composing virtual environment artworks

Through creative art making practice, research seeks to contribute a body of knowledge to an under researched area by examining how key concepts germane to computer based, interactive, three-dimensional, virtual environment artworks might be explicated, potential compositional issues characterised, and possible production strategies identified and/or proposed. Initial research summarises a range of classifications pertaining to the function of interactivity within virtual space, leading to an identification and analysis of a predominant model for composing virtual environment media, characterised as the "world as model": a methodological approach to devising interactive and spatial contexts employing visual and behavioural modes based on the physical world. Following this alternative forms of environmental organisation are examined through the development of a series of artworks beginning with Bodies and Bethlem, and culminating with Reconnoitre: a networked environment, spatially manifest through performative user input. Theoretical corollaries to the project are identified placing it within a wider critical context concerned with distinguishing between the virtual as a condition of simulation: a representation of something pre-existing, and the virtual as potential structure: a phenomena in itself requiring creative actualisation and orientated toward change. This distinction is further developed through an analysis of some existing typologies of interactive computer based art, and used to generalise two base conditions between which various possibilities for practice might be situated: the "fluid" and "formatted" virtual

The disappearing frame: a practice-based investigation into composing virtual environment artworks

Through creative art making practice, research seeks to contribute a body of knowledge to an under researched area by examining how key concepts germane to computer based, interactive, three-dimensional, virtual environment artworks might be explicated, potential compositional issues characterised, and possible production strategies identified and/or proposed. Initial research summarises a range of classifications pertaining to the function of interactivity within virtual space, leading to an identification and analysis of a predominant model for composing virtual environment media, characterised as the "world as model": a methodological approach to devising interactive and spatial contexts employing visual and behavioural modes based on the physical world. Following this alternative forms of environmental organisation are examined through the development of a series of artworks beginning with Bodies and Bethlem, and culminating with Reconnoitre: a networked environment, spatially manifest through performative user input. Theoretical corollaries to the project are identified placing it within a wider critical context concerned with distinguishing between the virtual as a condition of simulation: a representation of something pre-existing, and the virtual as potential structure: a phenomena in itself requiring creative actualisation and orientated toward change. This distinction is further developed through an analysis of some existing typologies of interactive computer based art, and used to generalise two base conditions between which various possibilities for practice might be situated: the "fluid" and "formatted" virtual.

Fungi Media: A Post-Internet Performance of Bodily Mutations as an Enactment of Alternative Sexualities

This theory-practice PhD project investigates post-Internet performance art, i.e. art which is visually inspired by mutations of human bodies on the Internet, to stage a form of bodily decomposition in real-life spaces. As a framing device for my thesis, I propose the concept of ‘fungi media’. This concept builds on the vital role of fungi in the decomposition of individual organisms’ bodies to highlight the role of media, including the Internet, in breaking down and reassembling human and nonhuman bodies into complex ecologies. Body performance that engages with fungi on a visual and material level is used in this project to explore the possibility of enacting alternative sexualities and non-normative lifestyles within the present-day context of the decomposing world. Those alternative sexualities are described in the thesis as ‘fungosexual’. This formulation repositions queer sexualities in the context of the original meaning of the term ‘queer’, which is ‘rot’, and which stands for a fungiinduced process of decomposition. With this, I explore the foundational importance of rot for both breaking down and sustaining bodies, relationships and life as such. Using the mutability of fungal life as a model, I also look at life’s mutation beyond sexual reproduction and beyond binary gender roles. In line with its theory-practice aspect, the PhD has a dual methodology. On the one hand, it uses a humanities framework (drawn from philosophies of posthumanism and new materialism, media theory, and theories of sexuality and the body) to engage, critically and creatively, with bioscience research into microbes and fungi. On the other, it mobilises the concept of ‘fungi media’ for my own performance art and curatorial work. The performance space used for my research, which is a London squat inhabited by both artists and fungi, serves as an important actor in these performances. My overall aim with this thesis is to position bodily mutation unfolding on and off the Internet as a performative form of dark vitalism. This philosophical-artistic approach offers strategies for urban dwelling, which transcend normative family and sexual life to embrace a hybrid fungosexuality

Of One Mind: Proposal for a Non-Cartesian Cognitive Architecture

Intellectually, we may reject Cartesian Dualism, but dualism often dominates our everyday thinking: we talk of “mental” illness as though it were non-physical; we tend to blame people for the symptoms of brain malfunctions in a way that differs from how we treat other illnesses. An examination of current theories of mind will reveal that some form of dualism is not always limited to the non-scientific realm. While very few, if any, cognitive scientists support mind-body dualism, those who support the view of the mind as a symbol-manipulator are often constrained to postulate more than one cognitive system in response to the failure of the symbol-system model to account for all aspects of human cognition. In this dissertation, I argue for an empiricist, rather than a realist, theory of perception, for an internalist semantics, and for a model of cognitive architecture which combines a connectionist approach with highly-specialized, symbolic, computational component which includes functions that provide input to a a causally-inert conscious mind. I reject the symbol-system hypothesis and propose a cognitive architecture which, I contend, is biologically-plausible and more consistent with the results of recent neuroscientific studies. This hybrid model can accommodate the processes commonly discussed by dual-process theorists and can also accommodate the processes which have proved to be so problematic for models based on the symbol-system hypothesis