The Creativity Code: How AI is learning to write, paint and think. Marcus Sautoy du
Читать онлайн.| Название | The Creativity Code: How AI is learning to write, paint and think |
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| Автор произведения | Marcus Sautoy du |
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| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9780008288167 |
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019
Copyright © Marcus du Sautoy 2019
Marcus du Sautoy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All reasonable efforts have been made by the author and the publisher to trace the copyright holders of the images and material quoted in this book. In the event that the author or publisher are contacted by any of the untraceable copyright holders after the publication of this book, the author and the publisher will endeavour to rectify the position accordingly.
Diagrams redrawn by Martin Brown
Cover image © Hands of God and Adam, detail from The Creation of Adam, from the Sistine Ceiling, 1511 (fresco) (pre restoration), Buonarroti, Michelangelo (1475-1564) / Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City / Bridgeman Images
Author photo © Oxford University Images/Joby Sessions
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008288150
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008288167
Version: 2019-01-28
To Shani, for all her love and support, creativity and intelligence
CONTENTS
Copyright
Dedication
4 Algorithms, the Secret to Modern Life
10 The Mathematician’s Telescope
11 Music: The Process of Sounding Mathematics
16 Why We Create: A Meeting of Minds
Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.
Claude Debussy
The machine was a thing of beauty. Towers of gears with numbers on their teeth pinned to rods driven by a handle that you turned. The seventeen-year-old Ada Byron was transfixed as she cranked the handle of Charles Babbage’s machine to watch it crunch numbers, calculate squares and cubes and even square roots. Byron had always had a fascination with machines, fanned by the tutors her mother had been happy to provide.
Studying Babbage’s plans some years later for the Analytical Engine, it dawned on Ada, now married to the Earl of Lovelace, that this was more than just a number cruncher. She began to record what it might be capable of. ‘The Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own, and the considerations it suggests are more interesting in their nature.’
Ada Lovelace’s notes are now recognised as the first inroads into the creation of code. That kernel of an idea has blossomed into the artificial intelligence revolution that is sweeping the world today, fuelled by the work of pioneers like Alan Turing, Marvin Minsky and Donald Michie. Yet Lovelace was cautious as to how much any machine could achieve: ‘It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever