The human mind and the digital age

As technology gets more advanced with age, more computers are able to seem more human in more than one way.  The movie A.I. depicts this, and Vocaloids, as blogged about by Praveena, is another example.  In the recent New York Times article, Virginia Heffernan wrote about how scary it can be to interact with computers on the same levels as a human being.  As an example of this, Heffernan wrote that when the Russian Chess Champion Garry lost his his final match to the I.B.M. computer Deep Blue in 1997, he was completely disheartened.  As he had put it, he “lost his fighting spirit”.  After going so long without being beaten once, he loses his match to something that doesn’t even “have a heartbeat”.

The author uses this example to compare how she has often felt with Pandora.  For those who are unfamiliar with Pandora, it is an internet radio service (free) where you listen to different songs play according to your tastes.  The way Pandora figures out what you like is from comparing the different aspects of the songs that you said you either liked or disliked.  These can include instrumentation, lyrics, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.  I think the way they figure out what parts of the songs that you like is by comparing which parts of liked songs are similar.  After that, Pandora will try to decide which songs you might like by choosing those with similar vocals, harmony, rhythm, etc.

Heffernan felt like Pandora, like the computer Deep Blue, turned human activities that are based on emotions into a “set of flow charts”.  This leads to what she calls “spiritual exhaustion”, since what we usually do with other emotional minds (like sharing music and playing a chess game) is now done with emotionally cold computers.  Like meeting the child robot of A.I., it is “creepy”.  The author also made a good point in saying that when we listened to music in the past, we depended on the fact that it is mostly subjective.  But Pandora makes the users seem “predictable”.  What you liked and didn’t like is now being followed by a computer.

But with changing times, humans are meant to change with it.  The author had boycotted music because of this, but found that she was not hurting anyone but herself, so she gave Pandora another try.  The truth is, Pandora really can tell what kind of music she liked, even if she was unwilling to admit it.  After the defeat, Kasparov was able to get over the loss and played I.B.M. again in 2003.  So basically, they both managed to return from defeat at the “hands of digital culture”.  Being a Pandora user myself, I rarely ever put in any preferences for songs that I liked and didn’t like, because I was afraid of the computer telling me what my preferences are.  But after reading this article, I think I might actually start doing so, especially if it is accurate in reading my likes and dislikes.  I do think it is a little scary how accurate computers can be, but I’m not too afraid of them replacing humans, since I think they will ever be able to generate human emotions and mistakes accurately.