AI

Several people have asked about the story behind our name, MishMash. Some also wonder whether it is an acronym for something. It is not; we are thinking about it as a descriptive part of our full centre name: “MishMash Centre for AI and Creativity”. I can reveal that the name has been heavily discussed in our consortium from the beginning of our application process. If I recall correctly, it first appeared during a conversation with my colleague Ragnhild Brøvig in late April last year. We had to submit a sketch of our application ideas to the Faculty of Humanities and had to come up with a title. Our thoughts were scattered, and we still did not have a clear idea of how to structure things; it all felt like a “mishmash”. We kept it as a working title and even included it in the sketch we submitted to the Research Council of Norway in June last year. ...

Yesterday, we learned that MishMash has been funded. Many people are asking about our plans, so here is a quick overview based on those outlined in the application. What? MishMash will be a large Norwegian centre dedicated to exploring the intersection of AI and creativity. Our primary objective is to create, explore, and reflect on AI for, through, and in creative practices. We will investigate AI’s impact on creative processes, develop innovative CoCreative AI systems, and address AI’s ethical, cultural, and societal implications in creative domains. ...

Yesterday, I received a brief phone call from the Research Council of Norway, where I was asked to come to UiO’s University Library today. The very pleasant message was that our bid for a Norwegian AI centre had been selected by the committee: MishMash Centre for AI and Creativity will be a reality! Today’s press release was a high-profile event with both the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and Minister of Research and Higher Education, Sigrun Aasland, present. ...

I am working on RITMO’s annual report for 2024. Typically, we include world maps showing where people at RITMO are coming from and the various countries we have collaborators in (check out last year’s report for example). These maps are usually made by hand, but I was curious to see if MS Copilot could help. After a little bit of tweaking, I have created a nice Python script that does the job! ...

Today we submitted the proposal “MishMash - Centre for AI & Creativity” to the Research Council of Norway’s call for Norwegian AI centres. If we get funded, the goal is to create, explore, and reflect on AI for, through, and in creative practices. Preparing this proposal has been a fantastic journey. More than 100 researchers from 16 Norwegian higher education institutions, 4 research institutes, and 3 artistic research centres have partnered with the National Library, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), the National Museum, and several other museums, institutions, organisations, and industry partners both within and outside of Norway. ...

I continue exploring how ChatGPT can be used meaningfully in my daily life. Today, I have looked at how it can help me rewrite my bio. Whenever I do some public speaking, I typically need to submit a bio for the event page. Often, the organizers ask about a particular number of words (60, 100, 200, etc.). This falls within the category of “publicazione con variazione”, and is mainly an annoying and time-consuming task. ...

ChatGPT cannot play sounds, but since it is trained on vast amounts of text from the internet, it also scraped numerous pieces with information about music chords. Here is a little exploration of that possibility. Obtaining chord information For accompanying musicians, it is common to look for chords for tunes. I began by asking for some well-known tunes: Q: What are the music chords for the song Yesterday? A: The chord progression for the song “Yesterday” by The Beatles is as follows: Verse: G Em C D7 G Em C D7 Em B7 Em B7 C Am D7 G Bridge: Bm Em Bm Em C Am D D7 G Em C D7 G And it repeats throughout the song. ...

I’m sitting in my office, listening to the noisy ventilation system that inspired my AMBIENT project. Here is a short sample: At the moment, I am primarily focusing on completing my book Still Standing. However, as part of my year-long #StillStanding project, I have also started thinking about the sounds found in indoor environments. Asking ChatGPT for help I have yet to begin a proper literature review on ventilation noise, but as a start, I asked ChatGPT for help. We have had lots of discussions about what students can use ChatGPT for at the university this spring. The consensus is that it is a technology we cannot avoid and should embrace its possibilities and limitations. I have previously explored essay writing with You.com. To prepare myself for advising students on ChatGPT, I have decided to test it for various tasks. ...

There has been much discussion about ChatGPT recently, a chat robot that can write meaningful answers to questions. I haven’t had time to test it out properly, and it was unavailable when I wanted to check it today. Instead, I have played around with YouWrite, a service that can write text based on limited input. I thought it would be interesting to ask it to write about something I know well, so I asked it to write a text based on an abbreviated version of the abstract of my new book: ...

What are the digital competencies needed in the future? Our head of department has challenged me to talk about this topic at an internal seminar today. Here is a summary of what I said. Competencies vs skills First, I think it is crucial to separate competencies from skills. The latter relates to how you do something. There has been much focus on teaching skills, mainly teaching people how to use various software or hardware. This is not necessarily bad, but it is not the most productive thing in higher education, in my opinion. Developing competency goes beyond learning new skills. ...