Gorilla Filmmaking

"Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms." -Fyodor Dostoevsky

By now you've probably heard something about the BBC Chimp movie. "The world's first film shot entirely by chimpanzees is to be broadcast by the BBC as part of a natural history documentary."

Up until now we've only seen what these primates can do with paint, which is kinda impressive (especially Micheal's portrait of his dog Apple).

Anyways, the prospect of their transition into motion pictures is an exciting one... except....

There's something of a gray area, and I can't help but wonder if this counts as them shooting it.
According to the film's producer, Ms Herrelko, "The apes are unlikely to have actively tried to film any particular subject, or understand that by carrying Chimpcam around, they were making a film."

This is where I hear myself saying, "Okay, so they 'technically' shot it, since they were the ones 'operating' the camera." But what do I mean by technically?

I don't mean to get into an argument about semantics here, but when someone uses the word "technically" it translates into, "My pattern recognition software mostly agrees with what you're saying, but somewhere, on some level, it doesn't, however, the impact this section has on the overall conclusion I've automatically drawn is negligible to the parts that tell me otherwise."

Anyways, aside from it being a Television first, it offers an interesting hypothetical situation.
Imagine what it would be like being these apes as they are presented with a movie that they had no idea they shot (actually chances are they'll just fling poo at the screen, which may or may not be a criticism on the film itself).

Murder by numbers

In London on July 10th, 2008, four people were murdered in separate incidents.
BBC correspondent Andy Tighe said "To have four fatal stabbings in one day could be a statistical freak."
Professor Spiegelhalter declares this number was predictable.

http://www.physorg.com/news156540743.html

Prof. Spiegelhalter and his team of statisticians "counted how many murders occurred on each day over a three-year period. Four murders on the same day in London would be expected to occur about once every three years, and it has done. Seven days without a murder should occur about six times a year, and it does."

The trouble here is that the overall patterns are predictable, whereas specific events are not.

I'd like to introduce you to Eliza, a computer program by Joseph Weizenbaum, designed to imitate a non-directional psychotherapist. Cutting edge stuff back in 1966, but it's now easily dominated by AIM bots.
Eliza's importance was the approach it used in developing AI, which undoubtedly inspired Robin Burgener, in 1988 to invent something you may already be familiar with, 20q.

Based on the less addicting parlor game, 20q is an AI website that can guess what you are thinking of in approximately 20 questions or less.
The thing is uncannily good in the same way Amazon.com has become eerily good at recommending Cure cds I already own after I tell it how much I enjoyed the movie Dark City.

Now this is something of a morbid thought, but could one possibly develop this AI to assist in carving away the specifics from the patterns of murder?