Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic but what if the
technology actually creates magic? A group of
researchers at the Queen Mary University of
London have trained a computer to create
magic tricks using puzzle pieces and cards
that are reproducible by humans. This isn’t
HAL sawing a woman in half, however. The
tricks are very basic mathematical problems –
reorganizing a puzzle so certain images or
parts seem to disappear, for example – but
they allow for the simulation of creativity on
the computer’s part.
Another trick, a mind-reading card illusion,
allows a magician to reorganize a deck and
then, using “a few seemingly innocuous pieces
of information from the audience,” pull certain
cards out of the deck to amaze the audience.
Again, this isn’t David Copperfield qualuty
stuff. In fact it’s more like Robocop learning to
tell a joke by offering up permutations of “Why
did the chicken cross the road?” until
someone laughs.
From the release:
The magic jigsaw involves assembling a
jigsaw to show a series shapes, then taking it
apart and reassembling it so that certain
shapes have disappeared using a clever
geometric principle. Creation of tricks of this
kind involve several simultaneous factors such
as the size of the puzzle, the number of pieces
involved, the number of shapes that appear
and disappear and the ways that the puzzle
can be arranged. Something this complex is
ideal for an algorithm to process, and make
decisions about which flexible factors are
most important.
The mind reading card trick involves arranging
a deck of playing cards in a specific way then,
based on a few seemingly innocuous pieces of
information from the audience, identifying a
card that has been seen selected from the
deck and using an Android app to reveal the
card on a mobile phone screen. The computer
was used to arrange the decks in such a way
that a specific card could be identified with
the least amount of information possible. The
program identified arrangements for the deck
that on average required one fewer question to
be asked before the card was found than with
the traditional method. The app simply avoids
the magician having to remember the order of
the cards.
You can actually the mind-reading trick by
downloading the Phoney App for Android.
“Computer intelligence can process much
larger amounts of information and run through
all the possible outcomes in a way that is
almost impossible for a person to do on their
own. So while, a member of the audience
might have seen a variation on this trick
before, the AI can now use psychological and
mathematical principles to create lots of
different versions and keep audiences
guessing,” said co-creator Howard Williams.



http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/19/researchers-train-computers-to-make-up-magic-tricks/