AI and Art

Slate currently has a slideshow that gives a brief introduction into the use of Information Visualization in modern art. Information Visualization is concerned with displaying incredibly large amounts of data in an intuitive way that highlights interesting properties of the data in an easy to analyze format. Due to both the aesthetic quality of these visualizations and the informational value inherent in them, it is no surprise that such work can be interpreted in an artistic fashion.

The image in the slideshow, that particularly piqued my interest - due in no small part to the fact that the application is tangentially related to my research area - is a system that visualizes the reasoning done by a computer chess program called the Thinking Machine 4. In the picture above taken from the system's website, a large number of lines of play are depicted for each player simultaneously, with green arcs indicating the possible movement of players by white (on the bottom), and the orange arcs depict possible plays by the black player (on the top). The lighter the arc, the better the move is believed to be by the program for the white player (and consequently the worse it is believed to be for black). Anyone is free to play the available chess-playing program and watch it "think" in real-time.

From what I can gather from the authors' website, the playing ability of the program has been set to allow it to be easily defeated by reasonable chess players. However, the algorithm at the program's core, minimax search, is just a simplified version of the system which is the basis of all of the strongest chess-playing programs currently out there, as well as the famous Deep Blue.

Essentially, minimax search works by considering every possible state that the board can be in, some number of moves into the future. This number is generally small due to the incredibly high number of possible board states, and the limit on reasoning time imposed by the rules of chess. In the above image, all future board states, up until some depth, are represented simultaneously - each being the result of the combination of some number of arcs.

Each future board state is then evaluated, using expert knowledge about chess that has been programmed in by the system designer. The program then selects the move which pushes the game towards the best board state it can get to, assuming the opponent is trying to oppose this goal.

What is particularly interesting about this image is that it illustrates that the computer is reasoning about the game in a completely different way than any human would. While a human player does in fact peer into the future when constructing a strategy, at each step only a small number of moves are considered for any one player. This is not only because the human is unable to consider such a large number of board states in such a small period of time, but also because the human is remarkably effective at immediately recognizing that most of the moves can be disregarded.

The program, as the image suggests, is much more thorough in its approach. As such, it is forced to consider many unpromising moves because it lacks any intuition, thereby limiting how far into the future it can plan. On the flip side, the computer is more willing to consider unorthodox play, and is never going to mistakenly disregard a line play due to any bias for move removal.

Many people believe that the top human players and the top computer players are about on par in the world of chess. As such, this visualization not only highlights the thoroughness of the computerized approached to chess, but it also provices a beautiful reminder that usually "there is more than one way to skin a cat."

For the sake of brevity, I have kept the description of minimax as non-technical as possible. The interested reader should look into a more complete description of the algorithm and its game theoretic properties. There are also many enhancements which increase the quality of the search, such as alpha-beta pruning and quiescence (both used by Thinking Machine 4), which try to help avoid unpromising lines of play.

Not So Live From Commonwealth Stadium

In a constant attempt to remain obsolete at all times, I thought I would mention my trip to Commonwealth Stadium last Thursday to watch the surprisingly competent Edmonton Eskimos host the league-leading Saskatchewan Roughriders. A big crowd of over 48,000 people showed up, making it the largest crowd I have ever witnessed live at a CFL game.

This was the second time I have been to a Riders-Esks game in Edmonton, and from what I can tell, there exists some natural law ensuring that whenever these two teams tangle it is extremely cold outside. Last time I went, the temperature dropped to -10 Celsius. Luckily, this time it was in the 4-5 Celsius range. Keep in mind it is the middle of August, there is a significant amount of wind in the upper deck (where we sat) and only a couple of days earlier, Edmonton experienced one of the warmest days for the city in recorded history (over 35 degrees Celsius).

The cold weather did not seem to discourage Riders fans from showing up, who probably accounted for more than half of the patrons in attendance (perhaps even 60%). Riders fans have to be described as completely die hard, but generally not in an obnoxious way. I can't even count the number of fans I saw wearing Riders flags as capes, green and white face paint, and half a watermelon on their head. My personal favourite piece of paraphernalia was the fellow wearing a Transformers mask that had been repainted green and white. But while they made more noise during Edmonton offensive plays than Esks fans could muster during Rider drives, the ribbing between the fans was generally good-natured (aside from the few altercations in which, predictably, alcohol was involved).

Commonwealth itself is a pretty nice stadium with a similar problem to the SkyDome in that it is so big that it looks emptier than it is unless the crowd is huge. Having said that, the sight lines for football are excellent, at least from the upper deck. I also find the price at the concession stands to be more reasonable than at any other professional sports stadium I have been to. For example, I had a hot-dog for $4.50 and a beer for $5.50, which is not unreasonable for sporting events.

I was also shocked by the amount of participation in the 50/50 draws. For those unfamiliar with such a contest, it is merely a raffle of which 50% of the ticket price goes to a charity and 50% goes to the winner. I have now been to several different sporting events, and every time am amazed by the prize money that ends up being won. For this game, the winner took home over $38,000 which means more than 1 ticket was purchased on average per person. I have never seen even close to that kind of participation at any other sporting event in any other city I have been to.

After a Long Hiatus, Some Live Music

On Saturday, a friend and I went to the Starlite Room in Edmonton for an Oxfam benefit concert headlining Eamon McGrath and the Wild Dogs. I met Eamon several months ago through Matt, a good friend of mine in Toronto. Eamon was performing a live set at the York University radio station CHRY and as the musical director of the station, Matt invited me along to videotape the performance.

Unlike the CHRY set which consisted of Eamon alone with a mic and an acoustic guitar, the Starlite Room concert involved a full band playing a punk show. In this setting, Eamon and the Wild Dogs just throw themselves into the performance and pretty much completely let go on stage. These guys appear to absolutely love playing live, and the joy they exude is simply infectious. Between Eamon charging into the crowd to dance and sing, and the rest of the band going wild on stage, I was completely in awe of the amount of energy these guys played with.

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was particularly interesting to recognize some of the songs from the acoustic set. While the lyricism may be harder to appreciate in the punk show, I loved being able to hear such a completely different interpretation of the songs, particularly "Badlands", a personal favourite of mine.

One of the opening acts, Sam Hate and the Jackals also had a very impressive sound. I'm not sure how to describe it - let's go with hard rockabilly - but I was quite entertained. Of note, the bassist was adding an extra layer of percussion by somehow slamming the strings against the neck of his double bass while playing. At least this is the way he described it to us at the end of the show, but something might have been lost in translation due to the ringing in my ears.

Here is part of the video I filmed from the CHRY set, although I have to give credit to Matt for putting things together and editing the footage. Admittedly, the film is all washed out (that is my fault, not Matt's), but I think you will enjoy it.