The round table discussion of the 🔗 Hungarian Academy of Sciences held on November 22, 2023 on the intersection of virtual reality and the arts was interesting. The central core of the topic focused on artificial intelligence and its effects on our everyday lives.

I would like to introduce the participants of the conference and the topics involved 👇

ℹ️ I think this conference was more philosophical so you didn't need a PhD to understand the details. True, I have no objection to this, since the basis of the sciences, from which everything can be derived, is philosophy itself. I will share the topics with you, obviously there will be valuable comments over time.

🤔 That is, how does artificial intelligence affect different fields of science, such as architecture, and how does it affect the functioning of the human brain❓

1. Will artificial intelligence kill 🖌️creativity, or will it democratize 💭imagination?

Miklós Hoffmann, doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, teacher of Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, who can be seen in the photo, gave a lecture on this topic.

Artificial intelligence has penetrated almost all areas of life and is achieving clear success in most areas. He diagnoses diseases, recognizes human faces, and defeats chess grandmaster. By success we now mean that human action with a similar goal works faster, more accurately and more efficiently than human intelligence focusing on the given task.

But is it able to function in the same way in the world of arts, which is considered the "peak product" of human intelligence in some respects? The most important factor in the artistic creative process is human creativity. Can machine intelligence imitate or even surpass this? And if so, how does the creator and recipient react to this?

I don't want to influence anyone with my opinion. Feel free to share your thoughts with me. I see that artificial intelligence cannot currently take away the livelihood of real artists, but at the same time it can really democratize this talent and creativity on some level. Lots of searches are pouring into different search engines, like my favorite 🔗 Presearch, and people are looking into image generation with AI options. I'll be honest, sometimes it works for me too. Would you like to see a nice picture? Well, once I went through the topic of Parisian bridges in Hungarian. Of course, I only described the bridges that cross the Seine directly. I wanted a unique image, drawn graphics, but unfortunately I was not blessed with such a talent. See the header image of my article 🔗 Bridges of Paris. Well, AI did it. 😉

2. What is the effect of virtual spaces on the human 🧠 brain and the 🎭 arts?

The presenter of this interesting topic was Péter Baranyi, MTA doctor, Pannon University professor. This topic is very popular. So be sure to write what you think about it. Projecting the facts on myself, it seems that my brain is stuck at the level of „prehistoric man”.

The header image related to my present article shows exactly this topic.

I took the photo at the conference. Péter Baranyi explained what changes the human brain has undergone. He illustrated this with how our brains worked during the time of the once dominant operating system, DOS (Disk Operation System). How our brains changed when we were introduced to the world of Windows, as well as the topic of how our brains will change when we enter the world of spaces. To me it was a bit of a META (formerly known as Facebook) thing, although he never used those terms.

But then why did I write that my brain is at the level of the „prehistoric man” ❓

Because, for example, I still hate the dominant Windows and its object-oriented approach to program development. To this day, my brain prefers the command line-oriented mode, which is probably why I take advantage of the opportunities provided by GNU/Linux, and obviously that's also why I don't find it difficult to manage cryptowallet addresses😆 As an interesting fact, I note that the pioneer of object-oriented program development was Bjarne Stroustrup, who did not hide the truth under a bushel. He said that the introduction of OOP was necessary in order to directly overcomplicate something and unnecessarily occupy hardware resources.

The main motivation behind the development of 3D-based operating systems after the one-dimensional DOS and two-dimensional Windows is the inclusion of spatial movement in the digital world, which activates the parietal lobe of the cerebral cortex and thus changes the perception. And of course processing of information also is essential topic.

The research results of the recently years have shown that the efficiency of users working in 3D spaces is 30% higher, and their understanding and recall of information improves by 50%. In addition, my exploration of the relationship between the cause-and-effect relationships related to cognitive info-communication and the cognitive aspects of virtual reality and the analysis of the effects related to the digital paradigm shift are also the focus of research. We can also answer whether three-dimensional virtual reality will transform people's current digital learning models, replace current platforms and methods in everyday education, art and other creative professions.

A question occurred to me at the conference, and I will ask you this 👇

It would be worth taking advantage of the fact that this Publish0x platform actually forms a mixed cultural field. Most likely, everyone is from another country.

So it would be worthwhile to study the experiences in each country regarding the learning abilities of students, say, over the past ten years. I am thinking of the fact that most educational institutions – in my view worldwide – perform various competency measurements of students at least once within a school year.

• If these results are really good and report improvement, then there is no problem.
• If these surveys only show regression, then it is worth thinking about.

I don't necessarily want to emphasize that the professors at the conference saw things wrong. Perhaps it is more that the educational methods used worldwide are unable to keep up with the development of AI technology and are stuck at the level of the last century❓

The fact is that I experience, for example in court hearings, that the brains of the lawyers representing the generation after me are quite difficult 😆I am not a lawyer, but I have never lost a case, and if I can, I act without a lawyer. In your country, what results do the student competence surveys report?

3. Is it possible to shoot a 🎞️ film today without virtual reality?

The speaker of this topic was Jani Sándor, architect and art director.

Nowadays, with the rise of artificial intelligence, we are experiencing a strange shift in the development of technology, which creates a serious tension between "traditional" and artificial intelligence. In the film industry, the Screenwriters and Actors Guild of America continues to strike against studio executives and the Motion Picture and Television Producers Guild. The actors' guild criticizes the replacement of creative work with artificial intelligence - the use of digital counterparts instead of extras and supporting actors - while the scripts generated by artificial intelligence degrade them to mere proofreaders, according to the writers. Projected into the world of film sets, visual effects (VFX) and computer-generated imagery (CGI), the case can replace physical real backgrounds and sets in the final image world. But the work of directors, cameramen and actors is made very difficult.

So the short answer is that it is possible and even necessary to shoot a film without virtual reality, if the goal is to create a real artistic product and not just profit. So the question is to what extent the competition in content production can make room for this in the future.

4. Will there be a need for 📐 architects if artificial intelligence becomes widespread?

The topic presented by Bálint Botzheim, professor of architecture at the Ybl Miklós Faculty of Architecture and civil engineering at Óbuda University, seemed interesting, although I really missed the topic of 3D printing. The latest results of artificial intelligence-based developments, generative-based, image- and text-based chatbots suddenly burst into our everyday lives. Every day, we read news that places the novelties of chatbots in a positive or negative context. New tools have also appeared specifically for architects, to which both positive and negative interpretations can be assigned. The dynamic development of the field is clearly demonstrated by the fact that more than thirty AI tools intended for architects were released this year. In many cases, the field of architectural application is underdefined, which is why continuous research is needed.

To be honest, I thought Bálint's performance was a bit strange. During the larger period of the topic, it was more about the operation of chatbots, as if the possibilities of artificial intelligence, especially in the field of architecture, were less emphasized. For me, of course, the topic of chatbots is also interesting, although I think that chatbots are not really artificial intelligence, but rather script art. Yes, Sophia, blessed with the famous human form, and rather ridiculously even granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia, is actually not an artificial intelligence, but a script language, based masterpiece. So I was left a little alone with my thoughts, for example, about what artificial intelligence combined with 3D printing technology could be capable of. By the way, China is a bit suspicious when a complete road section is completed in half a night 😆

How do I see the current state of artificial intelligence?

Fortunately, the awakening to self-awareness did not happen. These processes are also clearly visible in the case of chatbots using different language models. Those don't really know what are talking about, they just use bigger databases. Of course, what the civil sector can see from these developments can be a cause for concern and where can the army stand in this area nowadays. The two are obviously not the same! 

Just think of the possibilities of NASA or even Google. There are quantum computers. With those machines, neuron modeling is also much simpler, and they can work with much larger databases.

Do you know, what one of the most dangerous features of artificial intelligence-based developments? Well, the fact that the design people themselves do not know on what basis the artificial intelligence will reach the conclusion it reaches. Humanity's singularity is a point in technological development where artificial intelligence and other technological developments advance to a point where they have a significant impact on human society and human life. But can we regulate this independence that an artificial intelligence can mean? Will we even have the ability to do so in the future? After all, AI is faster and more precise. It is incredible to think about the effect that awakening to self-awareness will have on the intelligence itself, and this is coupled with precision and speed.

📣 I feel that this conference had a coded message. One speaker said, „material is ephemeral.” Based on this, it seems as if the world is starting to break with materialistic views. Let's face it, the materialistic worldview is in many ways a barrier to development, especially in the field of theoretical physics. 👋 A final thought about ChatGPT. When I see material with links that never exist, I know for sure that it is a product of ChatGPT 😉