Daily Archives: June 20, 2022

Theatre review: Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes – ArtsHub

Posted: June 20, 2022 at 2:55 pm

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes is a gripping and timely drama, with the majority of action carried by Dan Spielman as Jon, a multiply divorced, ethically negligent, hedonistic writer and university professor. The tricky narration works, slipping between Jon speaking in third person about himself, and his advantage-taking activities that occur with his 19-year-old undergraduate student, Annie (Izabella Yena), and then flashing forward to potential consequence.

However uncomfortable and unpalatable Jons choices may be, Spielman is fantastically captivating at portraying a certain type of crumpled, charismatic, aging, entitled masculinity that has been complicit with the old school of academia, perpetually excusing himself of culpability.

Yes, it is a #metoo play, but one with an intriguing framing device that only becomes clear toward the end. Its a snappy 80 minutes containing a (relatively) satisfying revelation. Entanglement and responsibility are the key questions, yet Sexual Misconduct refrains from the dogmatic, given the nuanced writing of Hannah Moscovitch and the tight direction by Petra Kalive.

Nothing is laboured here, and the audience is invited to interpret a messy and complicated relationship, foregrounding the power dynamic of age and institutional disparity but also allowing room for the agency of Annie and her maturation and burgeoning retrospective view. Its performed on a sparse, adaptable set, allowing transition from Jons university office to hotel, to front lawn and home.

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes deliberately aligns you with the antihero, Jon, then twists you to consider where your sympathies lie. Its simultaneously welcoming and then challenging to a general audience. Annie, who to begin with is little more than an ingnue cipher in a symbolic red coat playing out a fantasy of Jons gains in her strength and capacity to challenge this man. Its a thorny play, sometimes over-reliant on gender stereotypes, but incredibly worthwhile, parsing consent and the idea that there is ever fulfilling, clear-cut resolution to such cases, which may be morally beyond the pale but perhaps not prosecutable.

Read: Theatre review: Show People

This play holds a mirror to societys differing standards for what can (and does) occur between the powerful, and those under their purview. The sandstone academies, corridors of parliament, and other such synonyms for establishment are seldom held to account, and abuses of supervision mostly let off with leniency. This play is not a straightforward he said/she said and is all the more important for that complexity.

Belvoir presents Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes By Hannah MoscovitchProduced by MTCDirector: Petra KaliveOriginal Set and Costume Designer: Marg HorwellLighting Designer: Rachel BurkeComposer and Sound Designer: Darius KedrosDesign Associate: Matilda WoodroofeAssistant Director: Isabella VadivelooIntimacy Coordinator: Michala BanasMovement Consultant Xanthe BeesleyStage Manager Lisette DrewAssistant Stage Manager Holly FernandaCast: Dan Spielman and Izabella YenaTickets: $70-$91

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes will be performed until 10 July 2022

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The 15 best Australian albums of 2022 so far – NME

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Debuts that were worth the wait, intensely personal records about grief, deliberately impersonal exercises in craft, latter-day career classics its difficult to draw sweeping conclusions about the releases that have made NMEs mid-year report of the best Australian records of the year to date.

We have six more months left in the year and many more incredible releases left to come, but lets celebrate what we have right now. Here are the 15 best Aussie albums of 2022 so far.

Stank face moments abound in Foreign Language, the debut mixtape by Korean Australian hip-hop mavericks 1300. Nerdie and pokari.sweats production is bassy, bold and bright but never predictable witness the deep groove and AutoTuned melodies of UMUM, or the chiming callback to Biggie on Rocksta.

Hopscotching all over these chaotic confections are rappers rako, goyo and DALI HART, who have swag in spades and gleefully shit-talk their haters in both English and Korean. Fuelling their motor-mouthed flows are the thrill of landing an audacious bar and the sheer joy of rapping circles around others no wonder Foreign Language is such an infectious listen. Karen Gwee

1300s Foreign Language is out now.

Few bands make it to LP7 with the same energy or passion they had in the good ol days, but sporting their stickiest hooks, tightest playing and sharpest songwriting, Weirder & Weirder is Ball Park Musics best record yet.

The band wrote it at their lowest point, yet its inescapably upbeat, and although it landed at the start of a brutal winter, it feels tailor-made for summer festivals, road trips and beaches. Even its subtlest flourishes like the grit spiking the otherwise beautiful pop melodies, or the twinkly atmospherics that add an extra dash of magic to the soundscape make Weirder & Weirder a home run for Ball Park Music. Ellie Robinson

Ball Park Musics Weirder & Weirder is out now via Prawn Records.

Of all 2022s debut albums, Body Types had the most scenic route. A half-decade of gigging and EPs had already established the band as a compelling force of Sydney indie music, meaning that Everything Is Dangerous But Nothings Surprising wasnt the proving ground most debuts are.

Perhaps whats most interesting, then, is just how big the band are swinging here. The Charm is career-best throat-shredding fury, Sex & Rage lives up to its title and the six-minute slow-burn of An Animal is completely mesmerising. They may have taken their time, but one thing is perfectly clear: Body Type arent fucking around. David James Young

Body Types Everything Is Dangerous But Nothings Surprising is out now via Poison City Records.

Its been four years since Camp Cope taught us How To Socialise & Make Friends and now theyre back, older, wiser and more mellow than before. Running With The Hurricane is a glorious example of a band stripping back their hard exterior and welcoming us into their new sound.

The trio havent discarded their power emo roots entirely, but the guitars are softer and the drums less commanding. Georgia Maqs lyricism has also become more poignant and introspective, giving the singer space to showcase her stunning vocals on The Screaming Planet and One Wink At A Time. Greta Brereton

Camp Copes Running With The Hurricane is out now via Poison City Records.

Self-aware lyricism meets sick EDM production on Tilt, an album of pure unhinged and untethered hedonism delivered with the unique charm that has become synonymous with Confidence Man and Confidence Man only.

To make an album sound like it doesnt care at all is a tricky task that requires a sharp ear for sound and aesthetic. Luckily, Confidence Man are a band whose drawcard is their ability to revel in the gleefully raucous facets of dance pop and not take things too seriously. They prove across its 12 tracks that theyre sharper than ever and more importantly, their vision for their output is unshakeable. Sosefina Fuamoli

Confidence Mans Tilt is out now via I OH YOU.

The DJ/producers artist album can be predictable, even boring: cut banging beats, bring in big-name vocalists, boom. But, with Palaces, Flume switches things up. Harley Streten conceptualised Palaces while staying in New South Wales riverlands and its a sonic retreat thats alternately ravey and ambient.

Led by a celestial Caroline Polachek, the hyper-glitch Sirens surreally manifests the pandemics dystopian dread, while MAY-A shines on the baile funk hit Say Nothing. Flume also collaborates with Damon Albarn on the meditative title track, which single-handedly gives Gorillazs comeback Humanz a run for its money. Palaces shows Flumes uncanny ability to read a crowd and the culture. Cyclone Wehner

Flumes Palaces is out now via Future Classic.

Gang of Youths have made their Achtung Baby. Their third album Angel In Realtime. presents a matured and refined version of the band and their sound, fusing influences from time spent in the UK Britpop, UK garage and drumnbass with sounds of Oceania that frontman David Leaupepe collected on his journey to reconnect with his Samoan heritage in the wake of his fathers death.

This album is about grief, but also rediscovery and celebration, matching the bands stadium-sized rock to Leaupepes own personal evolution. Sosefina Fuamoli

Gang of Youths Angel In Realtime. is out now via Sony Music Australia.

Hatchie is purposeful and assured on Giving The World Away. In her previous material, including 2019 debut album, Keepsake, she chronicled ill-fated romanic liaisons. But this new record is about self-knowledge, Harriette Pilbeam reliving mental health struggles in the resounding single Quicksand.

For the album cover, Hatchie cosplays as Claire Danes angelic Juliet from Baz Luhrmanns Romeo + Juliet. The cult 90s soundtrack could well have been a sonic touchstone. Embracing heavier guitar, synths and percussion, Hatchie sheds shoegaze nostalgia, instead hybridising industrial, grunge and electronica. Imaginative and regenerative, Giving The World Away finds Hatchie spreading her wings. Cyclone Wehner

Hatchies Giving The World Away is out now via Secretly Canadian & Ivy League Records.

Jaguar Jonzes Bunny Mode is the sound of trauma being exorcised on the dancefloor. You couldve destroyed me, but then I got loud, Deena Lynch declares over staccato synths that owe as much to Alison Goldfrapp as Trent Reznor.

From incandescent rockers (see Punchline) to stadium-ready ballads (Little Fires), Jaguar Jonze has crafted an unpredictable electro-pop album that shows off her versatility as a songwriter, her voice snapping easily from a snarl to a whisper. Bunny Mode is a call to arms and a defiant refusal to be cowed into silence. Chris Lewis

Jaguar Jonzes Bunny Mode is out now via Nettwerk.

Playing together since the members not-so-distant early teens, The Lazy Eyes flex that longstanding rapport all over their confident and self-produced debut album. The four Sydneysiders settle into a pillowy groove while exploring the competing hues of psychedelias sonic rainbow. Theyre not in any rush either, as heard on six-plus-minute voyages like The Seaside and Wheres My Brain???.

Tempering King Gizz-esque jams with the dreamy depth of Tame Impala, The Lazy Eyes dish up intense freakouts naturally alongside the sweetest and most optimistic of melodies. This psych-pop isnt confined to past glories rather, it has infinite room to grow. Doug Wallen

The Lazy Eyes Songbook is out now.

Mallrat and earnest songwriting go hand in hand. Grace Shaw has long had the ability to take the ups and downs of adolescence and weave them into relatable, bright and catchy pop numbers that soundtrack the Australian teenage experience.

We get the same lyrical honesty on Butterfly Blue, but Mallrat is older now, and its reflected in the maturity of her music. Though some songs still bottle that childlike innocence (Wish On An Eyelash and Butterfly Blue), she exudes a newfound vulnerability and contemplative edge, baring it all in Arms Length and Im Not My Body, Its Mine. Greta Brereton

Mallrats Butterfly Blue is out now via Dew Process.

Jake Webbs ghosts are far more than mere spectres. On the Perth art-pop polymaths fourth album a former lover played by Stella Donnelly demands recognition on Proof, the planets plight intrudes on Something to Worry About, while Neon Cheap suggests the seductively sharp edge of social media.

With an eclectic palette of jagged synths and jinking rhythms, these songs are invocations that pivot between clarity and confusion so that they form their own reality. Dispensing with boundaries, Webb makes the unknown tactile. Hes called the album his least personal record yet, but these spirits bear his distinct fingerprints at every turn. Craig Mathieson

Methyl Ethels Are You Haunted? is out now via Future Classic.

Purely on premise, Partner Look could have been dismissed as too cutesy: two musician couples combining to create a band named after identical dressing. But their debut album is a perfect storm of indie-rock pedigree (the band sport members from Cool Sounds and The Ocean Party) and the exciting premise of a blank slate to work with.

With a sonic spectrum that ranges from steadily-building jangle-pop (Partner Look) to Play School whimsy (Grasshopper), By The Book revels in its charm and doesnt hide its dorkiness in order to score cred points. And really, why should it? David James Young

Partner Looks By The Book is out now via Spunk Records.

The world is run by people who show up, and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever are as consistent as a grandfather clock. The Melbourne quintets third album Endless Rooms arrives bang on time with a healthy advancement of their jangly guitar sound courtesy of more overt political themes (Tidal River) and winding, cinematic touches (My Echo).

Somehow, the triple threat vocals of Fran Keaney, Tom Russo and Joe White never crowd each other. On The Way It Shatters, White steps forward and scathingly asks If you were on the boat, would you turn the other way? in a neat extension on the forward-thinking lines from previous cuts (Mainland). Mikey Cahill

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fevers Endless Rooms is out now via Sub Pop Records.

Romero arrive fully formed on this head rush of a debut album. Bolstering anxious proto-punk momentum with Alanna Olivers soul-trained vocal swagger she once sang in a Blues Brothers tribute act the Melbourne five-piece joyfully split the difference between The Strokes and Sheer Mag.

For a band that rarely slows down to catch its breath (especially live), its surprising that the best song here might just be Halfway Out the Door, a hook-riddled ballad halfway through the tracklist. Its also the clearest showcase of Olivers casually passionate delivery, which promises a crossover appeal well beyond even those gloriously scuffed guitar runs. Doug Wallen

Romeros Turn It On! is out now via Cool Death Records & Feel It Records.

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Versace Mens SS23 was all about brazen sexiness and homeware? – i-D

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Lets get one thing clear: Versace isnt just a brand its a whole damn lifestyle! Its a fact that you soon realise on attending one of the houses shows, staged in the sprawling garden of the Milanese palazzo that it calls home. While the usual coterie of press, buyers and co. turned out for what was its first mens runway show in three years, the most notable attendees were the die-hard fans who showed up in full force, decked head to toe in decadent silks printed with Versaces signature brazen Greco-Roman-inspired prints.

Its a testament to the cultish appeal that Donatella has managed to cultivate those that buy into brand buy into it. And were not just talking clothes the truly obsessed out eat off Versace plates, sleep in Versace bed linens, stay in Versace hotels, and, after last night, will be drinking rhinestoned reusable Versace drinking coffee cups the moment they hit stores, too! Yes, in what almost felt like a nod to the creative ingenuity born of having spent so much time in our goddamn houses over the past few years, homeware pieces were translated into keystone accessories - think: cup-and-saucer belt clip-ons, the aforementioned glitzy refillables, and even gigantic, ornately decorated ceramic urns, tucked under the arm like clutches.

The clothes toed a similar line between familiarity and zany eccentricity, with easily palatable louche suiting in muted stripes and cerulean blue and cargo-pocketed coats offset by the zing of acid python-effet outerwear and highlighter-hued zippered hobo bags and Pompeiian death-mask prints on inky satin polos and trousers that billowed with every step. A flair for logomania proudly declared itself in allover Versace prints on silky separates and roomy structured totes if youre a Versace boy, youre gonna wanna let the world know it! as well as the houses instantly recognisable glinting gold leaf Medusa motifs.

The only thing thats more distinctly Versace than that is, of course, the shameless sex appeal it exudes. Here, that came through with gusto, from pieces that could just about be worn in chaste daytime context like interpretations of the seasons boxy shirting in glossy leather, slashed to create a grid of lozenges that offered peaks of flesh beneath through to gasp-inducingly slinky tanks tops with naked backs and oblique cut-outs and subtly seedy latex coats clothes you (well, probably) wouldnt wear to visit your granny in.

That bubbling hedonism spilled over into the after-show, with Donatellas bow swiftly followed by the emergence of a slick army of champagne-tray-toting waiters, an exponential jump in the volume. As revellers bobbed along, drinks in hand, to the thumping bass, it was immediately clear why so many people buy so heavily into the fantasy that the Milanese house sells: as we said, Versaces not just a brand, its a whole lifestyle and a bloody fun one at that.

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All images via Gorunway.com

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Dsquared2 Spring 2023 Men’s Fashion Show Review – The Impression

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Review of Dsquared2 Spring 2023 Mens Fashion Show

Is this (the Summer of) Love?

By Angela Baidoo

Dean and Dan of DSquared2 took us on a world tour for their Spring Summer 2023 presentation, merging influences from countries and cultural icons. This season, the DSquared2 man came down from the mountains and hit the waves, as Californias surf culture (not a new concept admittedly, but one that is being refreshed by new voices, such as South Africas Mami Wata Surf) was given new life with the heritage of Bob Marley, Honda-backed biker fits, and Balinese culture.

Believing in the power of collaboration, DSquared2 looked to Honda for their expertise in developing authentic biker gear, which gave the collections hybrid jackets a credibility that cant be bought

Presenting the collection in a sun-drenched space, matched only by the sweltering Milanese streets outside, the brothers Caten gave us a laidback mash-up of Cali-surf (a popular theme of late, see Kim Jones Resort 2023 for Dior Men, shown in and inspired by Venice beach for reference) by way of Jamaica, as an unexpected yet expertly executed collaboration with the Bob Marley foundation, saw the reggae icons image being harnessed literally, in the form of T-shirts emblazoned with the musicians likeness, worn by the Directors to take their bow. Items that are sure to be clamoured after by the brands fans, yet it was unclear whether they were part of the show and would go into production. While Marleys personal brand of laidback cool played into the red, gold, and green stripe track jacket (a nod to his Rastafarian culture and love of football), as well as a suede trucker and flared jean combination.

Fully embracing the return to hedonism as a viable way-of-life, the designers played with inspiration from the coastlines of LA and brought us a luxe version of thrift. Encouraging the wearer to get dressed, and then keep on going, the layering of textures, lengths, and prints is key to what makes this collection work, as each expertly styled item will work perfectly well individually, but combined they created a new narrative for the brand.

Not explicitly alluded to, but the entire vibe and construction of the collection could very easily lend itself to the brands sustainability efforts. Patch-worked denim could be made from up-cycled jeans, andnatural dyes used for the ombre shirts, not to mention the achingly obvious cannabis motif jeans, which we can only hope will be redeemed by the fact they will be revealed as made from hemp.

As an extension of its One Life, One Planet capsule, it wouldnt be a stretch to incorporate elements of this collection into the range and re-brand it as One Love, One Life, One Planet.

Having fallen off-the-radar, we could see the return of David Beckham as muse, with the number of looks reminiscent of the former footballers days as a style icon, when he donned a sarong and soft knitted beanie hat in the late 90s

It wouldnt be a DSquared2 outing without a tailoring call-out, but these bold blazers in emerald green, wavey checks, or hybridised with wet-suits were made for the guy who wants to be in the boardroom at 9 and boogie boarding by lunch.

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Rosie Green: There’s nothing sexier than having fun – YOU Magazine

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My boyfriend sent me this message last week: You are killing me. And he meant it, literally.

For context, he has a new fitness gadget a bracelet thingy that measures body stress and recovery. Its called a Whoop but I, for one, am not cheering because its incessant updates on his physical wellbeing are coming between us.

It tells him how healthy or not his actions are. He loves it a little too much for my liking. He sends me screen grabs of his data. Look at the night you stayed over, he will message. You are putting me in the red zone. Indeed, the graphs generated do show that me being around does have a detrimental effect on his health.

When I slept over at his house his average overnight resting heart rate was 71 bpm. The nights he slept solo either side of my stay it was 57 and 58 respectively.

Surely its a good thing I make his heart beat faster? Apparently not.

Next, it pings his recovery score. For the uninitiated (and if this is you, I suggest you stay that way) this reveals how well his nights sleep worked to repair his body. During my sleepover his percentage was woefully low and his average hours of sleep also plummeted (no comment).

I feel the Whoop might have to go missing or have a freak accident whereby it somehow meets a blunt object with force.

Because its only a matter of time before the Whoop starts detecting my presence and sending out flares.

This makes me consider the balance between health and fun in relationships. For all my complaints about the Whoop, my lifestyle is also fairly controlled. On the whole, I eat healthily. I exercise, get my recommended hours of sleep and dont drink much on school nights. But romance and relationships, while mainly flourishing under healthy mental and physical habits, do sometimes benefit from taking your foot off the brake.

To test my theory I allowed the wheels to come off rather spectacularly last week. I had a craving for the kind of night where you lose a shoe and some decorum.

It was Friday evening and the boyfriend and I went to a party. I had worked hard all week and wanted a shot of hedonism. Or at the very least a shot of gin.

Reader, I drank my weekly allowance in three hours and ate only beige things with a high saturated fat content. I had to be helped out of my jumpsuit at bedtime. I did not take off my make-up.

The next morning I woke up with crippling hangxiety. As I stared at myself in the mirror (oh hello, Alice Cooper) I tried to remember what I had said to whom.

When the boyfriend awoke I was nervous I may have done irreparable harm to my reputation. But he was overjoyed.

I need to see Four Gins Green more often, he said.

And I realised that, for me, and for him, sometimes cutting loose shows you are in it together. That you can be vulnerable enough to drop your guard.

And its FUN.

I have friends who go on dates, dont drink then leave early to get enough sleep. Which, while understandable, isnt that sexy.

David Beckham says whatever restaurant he and Victoria go to she orders steamed fish and vegetables. Again, not sexy. I guess you dont look like Victoria Beckham on vats of white wine and bar snacks. But still, sometimes letting go is essential.

And as for the Whoop? Well, it cant measure happiness. Theres no graph for the oxytocin/dopamine/serotonin hit that comes from a kiss. No chart that measures contentment or a performance index for pleasure.

Maybe I need to create one. The Love-o-meter.

See you on Dragons Den.

@lifesrosie

Read more of Rosie Greens columnshere

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Foals’ Yannis Philippakis Breaks Down Every Song on Life Is Yours – Spin

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For the first time in nearly three years, British rockers Foals are back with new music. Titled Life Is Yours, even with the world in the tumultuous state its in, the group tries to be optimistic about their outlook. This is reflected by the strength of its lyrics and the experimental nature of the bands sound.

With the album out now, we asked Foals singer Yannis Philippakis to give us the stories behind the songs on Life Is Yours. Heres what he had to say.

Life Is Yours contains the sentiment of the album at large, which is about an optimistic spirit, and being in rapture at the possibilities of life. With the shadow of the pandemic and climate change, and the feeling of jeopardy thats out there, I think that was an important sentiment to tap into. The song is set in the Pacific Northwest where Ive spent quite a lot of time. Theres something really fresh about the boreal forests on the coast. It felt fresh, and sonically its fresh for us too. Weve not touched upon that aesthetic before, or that way of putting a song together.

Theres a journey that the band has gone on experimenting with different palettes of sound. This time there was a desire to take it back to more of the initial idea of the band, where the rhythm, the grooves and the guitars are interlocking architecturally. We wanted to tap into the physicality of music. And we wanted it to feel good. Lyrically, I just wanted to write a song about transporting yourself to a better, idyllic situation.

Musically 2am is one of the poppiest songs weve ever written. Its about repetitive cycles of destructive behavior, which I think lots of people can relate to, and certainly its an expression of something that I struggle with. Theres something cathartic about expressing that feeling to this upbeat music thats got a sense of release and the hope ofresolution.

2001 feels like a postcard from the past. Its a very summery, disco-sounding track, and I felt the visual landscape for it should be Brighton. We moved there around that time, we were a young band, and there was the feeling of the first taste of independence. The moment you get those freedoms, youre surrounded by temptation. The references to beachside candy and Brighton rock are symbols for drugs and hedonism. This was written in the depths of the pandemic winter, and theres an escapist desire to break out from the feeling of being cooped up, both in terms of the pandemic and adolescence.

Flutter is one of my favourite songs on the record. Ive always been a fan of Malian and Senegelese guitar players, and this song evolved very naturally out of a jam that came from that kind of groove. We wanted this song to just chug, we didnt want to take it into a huge dynamic range. Its one of the more narrative songs on the album. Its essentially about someone fleeing and you never see them again. Theres no closure, and no neat tying up of the emotion that comes from someone departing so suddenly.

Lyrically this is looking back to a more hedonistic time in my life, and a more innocent time in society in general, pre-pandemic and before the existential threat of climate change. It takes place in an alley in Oxford with two clubs-The Cellar and The Wheatsheaf-that all of the citys nightlife gravitated towards. It was before clubs started to close down and before our cities started to change into more corporate, arid places. Theres an element of being haunted by nightlife thats no longer there. Jimmy wrote the demo for this, and it was originally a kind of a slower, Prince-ier creature. When we took it into the live room, the tempo accelerated. We were reveling playing live together again and feeding off each others energy.

This is one of the most new wave songs weve ever written. It felt like a forgotten Pixies song to me, like a view of the future from the 1950s with a surreal, slightly sci-fi element to it. Its talking about isolation and loneliness in the modern age and wanting to be transported to anywhere else other than where you are at that time. But I wanted it to keep it very playful rather than being heavy-handed, with fractured images and a collage of images in its emotions and words.

A portion of it existed in 2011, and we had demoed it in Australia and just left it for years. But it was one of those songs which had always been at the back of our minds, like there was some unfinished business there. As we wereplaying around with it with some of the themes on this record, we cracked it open and really revelled in adding lots of layers to it in the studio. Its another transportive song. Its set in St. Lucia, which has always struck me as being very powerful visually, with the mountain plummeting into the sea.

The Sound couldve been played at one of the nights I was talking about in Looking High. Musically its interesting in how it takes from UK dance, house and garage, but then the guitar top line comes from a different world. Somehow the combination of all of those facets makes something really fresh and fun. Its going to be a really great one to play live. Aesthetically I wanted it to be surreal and industrial, and contrast the precision of the tune with the freedom of its words.

We recorded this in Real World Studios, where we looked out at this verdant British summer scene, with dragonflies and kingfishers flying around. Its a song that feels alive in the same way that the summer time feels alive with pollen and creatures; this tapestry of life thats reemerging. Hopefully it mirrors the reemergence of our world coming back together out of the pandemic. Its optimistic, but theres a melancholy to it. However long a summer is, we know its ephemeral So, the second half turns into a farewell, an elegy. We knew right from the beginning that this was going to be the album closer and its one of my favorite songs on the record.

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Blood Harmony review sombre three-hander mourns a lost mother – The Guardian

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Anna is in her late mothers attic brandishing a book. It is called Grief and Grieving and she has two more copies in her bag. They are for her wayward sister Maia and kid sister Chloe, the one who stayed at home as a carer, hanging on while Anna forged a career abroad and Maia lived it up in the city.

None of them seems interested in the book. They dont need any lessons in grief. In Matthew Bulgos play, created with directors Jonnie Riordan and Jess Williams for ThickSkin, grieving is pretty much all they do. Having got the funeral over, they relive childhood memories, air old arguments and wallow in a state of inertia.

Feels like the beginning, says Chloe when the play is very nearly at an end. Perhaps it would have been a better place to start, because Blood Harmony is a play in which almost nothing happens.

How could it? Grief is an emotion that is backward looking. It is a denial of the present-tense movement on which drama thrives. It is a state to be experienced, not a dilemma to be resolved. Bulgo tries to spice things up with a standard-issue pregnancy plot and some interplay about the women being at a turning point in their lives, but it is not enough to bring any sense of urgency.

Tellingly, the songs scattered through the show do nothing to forward the plot. There isnt a plot to forward. Instead, they strike an elegiac note and luxuriate in it. Written by indie folksters the Staves, they are pretty and melodic and, with the harmonic arrangements of Kate Marlais, strikingly sung by actors Eve De Leon Allen, Keshini Misha and Philippa Hogg.

The three performers fight their corners with feeling: De Leon Allens sweet-natured Chloe contrasting with the hedonism of Mishas Maia and the narcissism of Hoggs Anna. They are attractive performances but the show really finds its theatrical life when they turn the struts of Hayley Grindles attic set into a climbing frame and stand silhouetted against the strip lights concealed by lighting designer Charly Dunford. Grief might be no friend of drama, but in moments like these, it is not bad for visual poetry.

At the Lowry, Salford, until 18 June. Then touring until 28 August.

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What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? | Micro Focus

Posted: at 2:51 pm

What is AI? Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a machine or computer to imitate the capabilities of the human mind. AI taps into multiple technologies to equip machines in planning, acting, comprehending, learning, and sensing with human-like intelligence. AI systems may perceive environments, recognize objects, make decisions, solve problems, learn from experience, and imitate examples. These abilities are combined to accomplish actions that would otherwise require humans to do, such as driving a car or greeting a guest.

Artificial intelligence may have entered everyday conversation over the last decade or so but it has been around much longer (see the History of AI section below). The relatively recent rise in its prominence is not by accident.

AI technology, and especially machine learning, relies on the availability of vast volumes of information. The proliferation of the Internet, the expansion of cloud computing, the rise of smartphones, and the growth of the Internet of Things has created enormous quantities of data that grows every day. This treasure trove of information combined with the huge gains made in computing power have made the rapid and accurate processing of enormous data possible.

Today, AI is completing our chat conversations, suggesting email responses, providing driving directions, recommending the next movie we should stream, vacuuming our floors, and performing complex medical image analyses.

The history of artificial intelligence goes as far back as ancient Greece. However, its the rise of electronic computing that made AI a real possibility. Note that what is considered AI has changed as the technology evolves. For example, a few decades ago, machines that could perform optimal character recognition (OCR) or simple arithmetic were categorized as AI. Today, OCR and basic calculations are not considered AI but rather an elementary function of a computer system.

Artificial intelligence asserts that there are principles governing the actions of intelligent systems. It is based on reverse-engineering human capabilities and traits onto a machine. The system uses computational power to exceed what the average human is capable of doing. The machine must learn to respond to certain actions. It relies on historical data and algorithms to create a propensity model. Machines learn from experience to perform cognitive tasks that are ordinarily the preserve of the human brain. The system automatically learns from features or patterns in the data.

AI is founded on two pillars engineering and cognitive science. The engineering involves building the tools that rely on human-comparable intelligence. Large volumes of data are combined with series of instructions (algorithms) and rapid iterative processing. Cognitive science involves emulating how the human brain works, and brings to AI multiple fields including machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, cognitive computing, computer vision, natural language processing, and knowledge reasoning.

Artificial intelligence isnt one type of system. Its a diverse domain. Theres the simple, low-level AI systems focused on performing a specific task such as weather apps, business data analysis apps, taxi hailing apps, and digital assistants. This is the type of AI, called "Narrow AI", that the average person is most likely to interact with. Their main purpose is driving efficiency.

On the other end of the spectrum are advanced systems that emulate human intelligence at a more general level and can tackle complex tasks. These include thinking creatively, abstractly, and strategically. Strictly speaking, this kind of truly sentient machine, called "Artificial General Intelligence" or AGI, only exists on the silver screen for now, though the race toward its realization is accelerating.

Humans have pursued artificial intelligence in recognition of how invaluable it can be for business innovation and digital transformation. AI can cut costs and introduce levels of speed, scalability, and consistency that is otherwise out of reach. You probably interact with some form of AI multiple times each day. The applications of AI are too numerous to exhaustively cover here. Heres a high level look at some of the most significant ones.

As cyberattacks grow in scale, sophistication, and frequency, human-dependent cyber defenses are no longer adequate. Traditionally, anti-malware applications were built with specific threats in mind. Virus signatures would be updated as new malware was identified.

But keeping up with the sheer number and diversity of threats eventually becomes a near impossible task. This approach was reactive and depended on the identification of a specific malware for it to be added to the next update.

AI-based anti-spam, firewall, intrusion detection/prevention, and other cybersecurity systems go beyond the archaic rule-based strategy. Real-time threat identification, analysis, mitigation, and prevention is the name of the game. They deploy AI systems that detect malware traits and take remedial action even without the formal identification of the threat.

AI cybersecurity systems rely on the continuous feed of data to recognize patterns and backtrack attacks. By feeding algorithms large volumes of information, these systems learn how to detect anomalies, monitor behavior, respond to threats, adapt to attack, and issue alerts.

Also referred to as speech-to-text (STT), speech recognition is technology that recognizes speech and converts it into digital text. Its at the heart of computer dictation apps, as well as voice-enabled GPS and voice-driven call answering menus.

Natural language processing (NLP) relies on a software application to decipher, interpret, and generate human-readable text. NLP is the technology behind Alexa, Siri, chatbots, and other forms of text-based assistants. Some NLP systems use sentiment analysis to make out the attitude, mood, and subjective qualities in a language.

Also known as machine vision or computer vision, image recognition is artificial intelligence that allows one to classify and identify people, objects, text, actions, and writing occurring within moving or still images. Usually powered by deep neural networks, image recognition has found application in self-driving cars, medical image/video analysis, fingerprint identification systems, check deposit apps, and more.

E-commerce and entertainment websites/apps leverage neural networks to recommend products and media that will appeal to the customer based on their past activity, the activity of similar customers, the season, the weather, the time of day, and more. These real-time recommendations are customized to each user. For e-commerce sites, recommendations not only grow sales but also help optimize inventory, logistics, and store layout.

The stock market can be extremely volatile in times of crisis. Billions of dollars in market value may be wiped out in seconds. An investor who was in a highly profitable position one minute could find themselves deep in the red shortly thereafter. Yet, its near impossible for a human to react quick enough to market-influencing events. High-frequency trading (HFT) systems are AI-driven platforms that make thousands or millions of automated trades per day to maintain stock portfolio optimization for large institutions.

Lyft, Uber, and other ride-share apps use AI to connect requesting riders to available drivers. AI technology minimizes detours and wait times, provides realistic ETAs, and deploys surge-pricing during spikes in demand.

Self-driving cars are not yet standard in most of the world but theres already been a concerted push to embed AI-based safety functions to detect dangerous scenarios and prevent accidents.

Unlike land-based vehicles, the margin for error in aircraft is extremely narrow. Given the altitude, a small miscalculation may lead to hundreds of fatalities. Aircraft manufacturers had to push safety systems and become one of the earliest adopters of artificial intelligence.

To minimize the likelihood and impact of human error, autopilot systems have been flying military and commercial aircraft for decades. They use a combination of GPS technology, sensors, robotics, image recognition, and collision avoidance to navigate planes safely through the sky while keeping pilots and ground crew updated as needed.

Artificial Intelligence accelerates and simplifies test creation, execution, and maintenance through AI-powered intelligent test automation. AI-based machine learning and advanced optical character recognition (OCR) provide for advanced object recognition, and when combined with AI-based mockup identification, AI-based recording, AI-based text matching, and image-based automation, teams can reduce test creation time and test maintenance efforts,and boost test coverage and resilience of testing assets.

Artificial intelligence allows you to test earlier and faster with functional testing solutions. Combine extensive technology support with AI-driven capabilities. Deliver the speed and resiliency that supports rapid application changes within a continuous delivery pipeline.

Both IT and business face the challenges of too many manual, error-prone workflows, an ever-increasing volume of requests, employees dissatisfied with the level and quality of service, and more. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technology can take service management to the next level:

Read How AI Is Enabling Enterprise Service Management from the resource list below for more thoughts and information on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the adoption and expansion of enterprise service management (ESM).

What is true of IT support, is also true for ESM; AI makes operations and outcomes better. To find out more read Ten Tips for Empowering Your IT Support with AI.

Robotic process automation (RPA) uses software robots that mimic screen-based human actions to perform repetitive tasks and extend automation to interfaces with difficult or no application programming interfaces (APIs). Thats why RPA is perfect for automating processes typically completed by humans or that require human intervention. Resilient robots adapt to screen changes and keep processes flowing when change happens. When powered by AI-based machine learning, RPA robots identify screen objects even ones they havent seen before and emulate human intuition to determine their functions. They use OCR to read text (for example, text boxes and links) and computer vision to read visual elements (for example, shopping cart icons and login buttons). When a screen object changes, robots adapt. Machine learning drives them to continuously improve how they see and interact with screen objects just like a human would.

There are plenty of ways you could leverage artificial intelligence for your business to stay competitive, drive growth, and unlock value. Nevertheless, your organization doesnt possess infinite resources. You must prioritize. Begin by defining what your organizations values and strategic objectives are. From that point, assess the possible applications of AI against these values and objectives. Choose the AI technology that is bound to deliver the biggest impact for the business.

The world is only going to grow more AI-dependent. Its no longer about whether to adopt AI but when. Organizations that tap into AI ahead of their peers could gain a significant competitive advantage. Developing and pursuing a well-defined AI strategy is where it all begins. It may take a bit of experimenting before you know what will work for you.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) tries to enable computers to do the things that minds can do. These things include seeing pathways, picking things up, learning categories from experience, and using emotions to schedule one's actionswhich many animals can do, too. Thus, human intelligence is not the sole focus of AI. Even terrestrial psychology is not the sole focus, because some people use AI to explore the range of all possible minds.

There are four major AI methodologies: symbolic AI, connectionism, situated robotics, and evolutionary programming (Russell and Norvig 2003). AI artifacts are correspondingly varied. They include both programs (including neural networks) and robots, each of which may be either designed in detail or largely evolved. The field is closely related to artificial life (A-Life), which aims to throw light on biology much as some AI aims to throw light on psychology.

AI researchers are inspired by two different intellectual motivations, and while some people have both, most favor one over the other. On the one hand, many AI researchers seek solutions to technological problems, not caring whether these resemble human (or animal) psychology. They often make use of ideas about how people do things. Programs designed to aid/replace human experts, for example, have been hugely influenced by knowledge engineering, in which programmers try to discover what, and how, human experts are thinking when they do the tasks being modeled. But if these technological AI workers can find a nonhuman method, or even a mere trick (a kludge) to increase the power of their program, they will gladly use it.

Technological AI has been hugely successful. It has entered administrative, financial, medical, and manufacturing practice at countless different points. It is largely invisible to the ordinary person, lying behind some deceptively simple human-computer interface or being hidden away inside a car or refrigerator. Many procedures taken for granted within current computer science were originated within AI (pattern-recognition and image-processing, for example).

On the other hand, AI researchers may have a scientific aim. They may want their programs or robots to help people understand how human (or animal) minds work. They may even ask how intelligence in general is possible, exploring the space of possible minds. The scientific approachpsychological AIis the more relevant for philosophers (Boden 1990, Copeland 1993, Sloman 2002). It is also central to cognitive science, and to computationalism.

Considered as a whole, psychological AI has been less obviously successful than technological AI. This is partly because the tasks it tries to achieve are often more difficult. In addition, it is less clearfor philosophical as well as empirical reasonswhat should be counted as success.

Symbolic AI is also known as classical AI and as GOFAIshort for John Haugeland's label "Good Old-Fashioned AI" (1985). It models mental processes as the step-by-step information processing of digital computers. Thinking is seen as symbol-manipulation, as (formal) computation over (formal) representations. Some GOFAI programs are explicitly hierarchical, consisting of procedures and subroutines specified at different levels. These define a hierarchically structured search-space, which may be astronomical in size. Rules of thumb, or heuristics, are typically provided to guide the searchby excluding certain areas of possibility, and leading the program to focus on others. The earliest AI programs were like this, but the later methodology of object-oriented programming is similar.

Certain symbolic programs, namely production systems, are implicitly hierarchical. These consist of sets of logically separate if-then (condition-action) rules, or productions, defining what actions should be taken in response to specific conditions. An action or condition may be unitary or complex, in the latter case being defined by a conjunction of several mini-actions or mini-conditions. And a production may function wholly within computer memory (to set a goal, for instance, or to record a partial parsing) or outside it (via input/output devices such as cameras or keyboards).

Another symbolic technique, widely used in natural language processing (NLP) programs, involves augmented transition networks, or ATNs. These avoid explicit backtracking by using guidance at each decision-point to decide which question to ask and/or which path to take.

GOFAI methodology is used for developing a wide variety of language-using programs and problem-solvers. The more precisely and explicitly a problem-domain can be defined, the more likely it is that a symbolic program can be used to good effect. Often, folk-psychological categories and/or specific propositions are explicitly represented in the system. This type of AI, and the forms of computational psychology based on it, is defended by the philosopher Jerry Fodor (1988).

GOFAI models (whether technological or scientific) include robots, planning programs, theorem-provers, learning programs, question-answerers, data-mining systems, machine translators, expert systems of many different kinds, chess players, semantic networks, and analogy machines. In addition, a host of software agentsspecialist mini-programs that can aid a human being to solve a problemare implemented in this way. And an increasingly important area of research is distributed AI, in which cooperation occurs between many relatively simple individualswhich may be GOFAI agents (or neural-network units, or situated robots).

The symbolic approach is used also in modeling creativity in various domains (Boden 2004, Holland et al. 1986). These include musical composition and expressive performance, analogical thinking, line-drawing, painting, architectural design, storytelling (rhetoric as well as plot), mathematics, and scientific discovery. In general, the relevant aesthetic/theoretical style must be specified clearly, so as to define a space of possibilities that can be fruitfully explored by the computer. To what extent the exploratory procedures can plausibly be seen as similar to those used by people varies from case to case.

Connectionist systems, which became widely visible in the mid-1980s, are different. They compute not by following step-by-step programs but by using large numbers of locally connected (associative) computational units, each one of which is simple. The processing is bottom-up rather than top-down.

Connectionism is sometimes said to be opposed to AI, although it has been part of AI since its beginnings in the 1940s (McCulloch and Pitts 1943, Pitts and McCulloch 1947). What connectionism is opposed to, rather, is symbolic AI. Yet even here, opposed is not quite the right word, since hybrid systems exist that combine both methodologies. Moreover, GOFAI devotees such as Fodor see connectionism as compatible with GOFAI, claiming that it concerns how symbolic computation can be implemented (Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988).

Two largely separate AI communities began to emerge in the late 1950s (Boden forthcoming). The symbolic school focused on logic and Turing-computation, whereas the connectionist school focused on associative, and often probabilistic, neural networks. (Most connectionist systems are connectionist virtual machines, implemented in von Neumann computers; only a few are built in dedicated connectionist hardware.) Many people remained sympathetic to both schools. But the two methodologies are so different in practice that most hands-on AI researchers use either one or the other.

There are different types of connectionist systems. Most philosophical interest, however, has focused on networks that do parallel distributed processing, or PDP (Clark 1989, Rumelhart and McClelland 1986). In essence, PDP systems are pattern recognizers. Unlike brittle GOFAI programs, which often produce nonsense if provided with incomplete or part-contradictory information, they show graceful degradation. That is, the input patterns can be recognized (up to a point) even if they are imperfect.

A PDP network is made up of subsymbolic units, whose semantic significance cannot easily be expressed in terms of familiar semantic content, still less propositions. (Some GOFAI programs employ subsymbolic units, but most do not.) That is, no single unit codes for a recognizable concept, such as dog or cat. These concepts are represented, rather, by the pattern of activity distributed over the entire network.

Because the representation is not stored in a single unit but is distributed over the whole network, PDP systems can tolerate imperfect data. (Some GOFAI systems can do so too, but only if the imperfections are specifically foreseen and provided for by the programmer.) Moreover, a single subsymbolic unit may mean one thing in one input-context and another in another. What the network as a whole can represent depends on what significance the designer has decided to assign to the input-units. For instance, some input-units are sensitive to light (or to coded information about light), others to sound, others to triads of phonological categories and so on.

Most PDP systems can learn. In such cases, the weights on the links of PDP units in the hidden layer (between the input-layer and the output-layer) can be altered by experience, so that the network can learn a pattern merely by being shown many examples of it. (A GOFAI learning-program, in effect, has to be told what to look for beforehand, and how.) Broadly, the weight on an excitatory link is increased by every coactivation of the two units concerned: cells that fire together, wire together.

These two AI approaches have complementary strengths and weaknesses. For instance, symbolic AI is better at modeling hierarchy and strong constraints, whereas connectionism copes better with pattern recognition, especially if many conflictingand perhaps incompleteconstraints are relevant. Despite having fervent philosophical champions on both sides, neither methodology is adequate for all of the tasks dealt with by AI scientists. Indeed, much research in connectionism has aimed to restore the lost logical strengths of GOFAI to neural networkswith only limited success by the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Another, and more recently popular, AI methodology is situated robotics (Brooks 1991). Like connectionism, this was first explored in the 1950s. Situated robots are described by their designers as autonomous systems embedded in their environment (Heidegger is sometimes cited). Instead of planning their actions, as classical robots do, situated robots react directly to environmental cues. One might say that they are embodied production systems, whose if-then rules are engineered rather than programmed, and whose conditions lie in the external environment, not inside computer memory. Althoughunlike GOFAI robotsthey contain no objective representations of the world, some of them do construct temporary, subject-centered (deictic) representations.

The main aim of situated roboticists in the mid-1980s, such as Rodney Brooks, was to solve/avoid the frame problem that had bedeviled GOFAI (Pylyshyn 1987). GOFAI planners and robots had to anticipate all possible contingencies, including the side effects of actions taken by the system itself, if they were not to be defeated by unexpectedperhaps seemingly irrelevantevents. This was one of the reasons given by Hubert Dreyfus (1992) in arguing that GOFAI could not possibly succeed: Intelligence, he said, is unformalizable. Several ways of implementing nonmonotonic logics in GOFAI were suggested, allowing a conclusion previously drawn by faultless reasoning to be negated by new evidence. But because the general nature of that new evidence had to be foreseen, the frame problem persisted.

Brooks argued that reasoning shouldn't be employed at all: the system should simply react appropriately, in a reflex fashion, to specific environmental cues. This, he said, is what insects doand they are highly successful creatures. (Soon, situated robotics was being used, for instance, to model the six-legged movement of cockroaches.) Some people joked that AI stood for artificial insects, not artificial intelligence. But the joke carried a sting: Many argued that much human thinking needs objective representations, so the scope for situated robotics was strictly limited.

In evolutionary programming, genetic algorithms (GAs) are used by a program to make random variations in its own rules. The initial rules, before evolution begins, either do not achieve the task in question or do so only inefficiently; sometimes, they are even chosen at random.

The variations allowed are broadly modeled on biological mutations and crossovers, although more unnatural types are sometimes employed. The most successful rules are automatically selected, and then varied again. This is more easily said than done: The breakthrough in GA methodology occurred when John Holland (1992) defined an automatic procedure for recognizing which rules, out of a large and simultaneously active set, were those most responsible for whatever level of success the evolving system had just achieved.

Selection is done by some specific fitness criterion, predefined in light of the task the programmer has in mind. Unlike GOFAI systems, a GA program contains no explicit representation of what it is required to do: its task is implicit in the fitness criterion. (Similarly, living things have evolved to do what they do without knowing what that is.) After many generations, the GA system may be well-adapted to its task. For certain types of tasks, it can even find the optimal solution.

This AI method is used to develop both symbolic and connectionist AI systems. And it is applied both to abstract problem-solving (mathematical optimization, for instance, or the synthesis of new pharmaceutical molecules) and to evolutionary roboticswherein the brain and/or sensorimotor anatomy of robots evolve within a specific task-environment.

It is also used for artistic purposes, in the composition of music or the generation of new visual forms. In these cases, evolution is usually interactive. That is, the variation is done automatically but the selection is done by a human beingwho does not need to (and usually could not) define, or even name, the aesthetic fitness criteria being applied.

AI is a close cousin of A-Life (Boden 1996). This is a form of mathematical biology, which employs computer simulation and situated robotics to study the emergence of complexity in self-organizing, self-reproducing, adaptive systems. (A caveat: much as some AI is purely technological in aim, so is some A-Life; the research of most interest to philosophers is the scientifically oriented type.)

The key concepts of A-Life date back to the early 1950s. They originated in theoretical work on self-organizing systems of various kinds, including diffusion equations and cellular automata (by Alan Turing and John von Neumann respectively), and in early self-equilibrating machines and situated robots (built by W. Ross Ashby and W. Grey Walter). But A-Life did not flourish until the late 1980s, when computing power at last sufficed to explore these theoretical ideas in practice.

Much A-Life work focuses on specific biological phenomena, such as flocking, cooperation in ant colonies, or morphogenesisfrom cell-differentiation to the formation of leopard spots or tiger stripes. But A-Life also studies general principles of self-organization in biology: evolution and coevolution, reproduction, and metabolism. In addition, it explores the nature of life as suchlife as it could be, not merely life as it is.

A-Life workers do not all use the same methodology, but they do eschew the top-down methods of GOFAI. Situated and evolutionary robotics, and GA-generated neural networks, too, are prominent approaches within the field. But not all A-Life systems are evolutionary. Some demonstrate how a small number of fixed, and simple, rules can lead to self-organization of an apparently complex kind.

Many A-Lifers take pains to distance themselves from AI. But besides their close historical connections, AI and A-Life are philosophically related in virtue of the linkage between life and mind. It is known that psychological properties arise in living things, and some people argue (or assume) that they can arise only in living things. Accordingly, the whole of AI could be regarded as a subarea of A-Life. Indeed, some people argue that success in AI (even in technological AI) must await, and build on, success in A-Life.

Whichever of the two AI motivationstechnological or psychologicalis in question, the name of the field is misleading in three ways. First, the term intelligence is normally understood to cover only a subset of what AI workers are trying to do. Second, intelligence is often supposed to be distinct from emotion, so that AI is assumed to exclude work on that. And third, the name implies that a successful AI system would really be intelligenta philosophically controversial claim that AI researchers do not have to endorse (though some do).

As for the first point, people do not normally regard vision or locomotion as examples of intelligence. Many people would say that speaking one's native language is not a case of intelligence either, except in comparison with nonhuman species; and common sense is sometimes contrasted with intelligence. The term is usually reserved for special cases of human thought that show exceptional creativity and subtlety, or which require many years of formal education. Medical diagnosis, scientific or legal reasoning, playing chess, and translating from one language to another are typically regarded as difficult, thus requiring intelligence. And these tasks were the main focus of research when AI began. Vision, for example, was assumed to be relatively straightforwardnot least, because many nonhuman animals have it too. It gradually became clear, however, that everyday capacities such as vision and locomotion are vastly more complex than had been supposed. The early definition of AI as programming computers to do things that involve intelligence when done by people was recognized as misleading, and eventually dropped.

Similarly, intelligence is often opposed to emotion. Many people assume that AI could never model that. However, crude examples of such models existed in the early 1960s, and emotion was recognized by a high priest of AI, Herbert Simon, as being essential to any complex intelligence. Later, research in the computational philosophy (and modeling) of affect showed that emotions have evolved as scheduling mechanisms for systems with many different, and potentially conflicting, purposes (Minsky 1985, and Web site). When AI began, it was difficult enough to get a program to follow one goal (with its subgoals) intelligentlyany more than that was essentially impossible. For this reason, among others, AI modeling of emotion was put on the back burner for about thirty years. By the 1990s, however, it had become a popular focus of AI research, and of neuroscience and philosophy too.

The third point raises the difficult questionwhich many AI practitioners leave open, or even ignoreof whether intentionality can properly be ascribed to any conceivable program/robot (Newell 1980, Dennett 1987, Harnad 1991).

Could some NLP programs really understand the sentences they parse and the words they translate? Or can a visuo-motor circuit evolved within a robot's neural-network brain truly be said to represent the environmental feature to which it responds? If a program, in practice, could pass the Turing Test, could it truly be said to think? More generally, does it even make sense to say that AI may one day achieve artificially produced (but nonetheless genuine) intelligence?

For the many people in the field who adopt some form of functionalism, the answer in each case is: In principle, yes. This applies for those who favor the physical symbol system hypothesis or intentional systems theory. Others adopt connectionist analyses of concepts, and of their development from nonconceptual content. Functionalism is criticized by many writers expert in neuroscience, who claim that its core thesis of multiple realizability is mistaken. Others criticize it at an even deeper level: a growing minority (especially in A-Life) reject neo-Cartesian approaches in favor of philosophies of embodiment, such as phenomenology or autopoiesis.

Part of the reason why such questions are so difficult is that philosophers disagree about what intentionality is, even in the human case. Practitioners of psychological AI generally believe that semantic content, or intentionality, can be naturalized. But they differ about how this can be done.

For instance, a few practitioners of AI regard computation and intentionality as metaphysically inseparable (Smith 1996). Others ascribe meaning only to computations with certain causal consequences and provenance, or grounding. John Searle argues that AI cannot capture intentionality, becauseat baseit is concerned with the formal manipulation of formal symbols. And for those who accept some form of evolutionary semantics, only evolutionary robots could embody meaning (Searle, 1980).

See also Computationalism; Machine Intelligence.

Boden, Margaret A. The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2004.

Boden, Margaret A. Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. See especially chapters 4, 7.i, 1013, and 14.

Boden, Margaret A., ed. The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Boden, Margaret A., ed. The Philosophy of Artificial Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Brooks, Rodney A. "Intelligence without Representation." Artificial Intelligence 47 (1991): 139159.

Clark, Andy J. Microcognition: Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and Parallel Distributed Processing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.

Copeland, B. Jack. Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.

Dennett, Daniel C. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.

Dreyfus, Hubert L. What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.

Fodor, Jerome A., and Zenon W. Pylyshyn. "Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis." Cognition 28 (1988): 371.

Harnad, Stevan. "Other Bodies, Other Minds: A Machine Incarnation of an Old Philosophical Problem." Minds and Machines 1 (1991): 4354.

Haugeland, John. Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.

Holland, John H. Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems: An Introductory Analysis with Applications to Biology, Control, and Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.

Holland, John H., Keith J. Holyoak, Richard E. Nisbett, and Paul R. Thagard. Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning, and Discovery. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.

McCulloch, Warren S., and Walter H. Pitts. "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity." In The Philosoophy of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Margaret A. Boden. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. First published in 1943.

Minsky, Marvin L. The Emotion Machine. Available from http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E1/eb1.html. Web site only.

Minsky, Marvin L. The Society of Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.

Newell, Allen. "Physical Symbol Systems." Cognitive Science 4 (1980): 135183.

Pitts, Walter H., and Warren S. McCulloch. "How We Know Universals: The Perception of Auditory and Visual Forms." In Embodiments of Mind, edited by Warren S. McCulloch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965. First published in 1947.

Pylyshyn, Zenon W. The Robot's Dilemma: The Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1987.

Rumelhart, David E., and James L. McClelland, eds. Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.

Russell, Stuart J., and Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2003.

Searle, John R. "Minds, Brains, and Programs," The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1980), 417424. Reprinted in M. A. Boden, ed., The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1990), pp. 6788.

Sloman, Aaron. "The Irrelevance of Turing Machines to Artificial Intelligence." In Computationalism: New Directions, edited by Matthias Scheutz. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.

Smith, Brian C. On the Origin of Objects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Margaret A. Boden (1996, 2005)

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Business Course Wharton

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Many have suggested that AI-based algorithms represent the greatest current opportunity for human progress. But their unpredictability represents the greatest threat as well, and it has not been precisely clear what steps should be taken by us as end users. Kartik Hosanagar, John C. Hower Professor; Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions, The Wharton School

Artificial Intelligence for Business is an online program for learners seeking the competitive edge in emerging business technology. Technology-oriented professionals, online marketers, statisticians, automation innovators and data professionals will benefit from this 4-week certificate.

In the artificial intelligence course, youll learn the fundamentals of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning, and how to deploy these technologies to support your organizations strategy. Professor Kartik Hosanagar of the Wharton School has designed this course to help you gain a better understanding of AI and Machine Learning, using real-life examples. Youll learn about the different types and methods of Machine Learning, and how businesses have applied Machine Learning successfully. Youll also cover the ethics and risks of AI in business management, and how to design governance frameworks for proper implementation. By the end of this course, youll have a foundational understanding of artificial intelligence in business and be able to incorporate these technologies into your business strategy.

The Artificial Intelligence for Business program is designed to provide learners with insights into the established and emerging developments in AI for business. This includes Big Data, Machine Learning in finance, and the operational changes AI will bring. The lessons within this course are applicable to multiple industries and dynamic markets. This course is taught by internationally-recognized internet marketing and media business professor, Kartik Hosanagar, PhD, and takes into account the latest data and insights in the AI realm.

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