/ News
Could Artificial Intelligence Lose Its Mind?
The DeepDream algorithm Google made public this month is a strange offshoot of image recognition technology based on artificial intelligence. It can turn mundane images into hallucinatory worlds, and has spawned sites where you can have photos processed with the software and even a mobile app. Beyond the pretty pictures, however, DeepDream hints at the kind of personality that artificial intelligence could develop quite by accident.
Google engineers Alexander Mordvintsev, Christopher Olah and Mike Tyka first wrote about DeepDream in June. They explained how their software recognizes and tags images, and how it is able to distinguish between, say, a pizza on a stove top and a motorcycle rider on a dirt road:
We train an artificial neural network by showing it millions of training examples and gradually adjusting the network parameters until it gives the classifications we want. The network typically consists of 10-30 stacked layers of artificial neurons. Each image is fed into the input layer, which then talks to the next layer, until eventually the "output" layer is reached. The network's "answer" comes from this final output layer.
DeepDream's engineers turned the process inside out, "showing" lots of images of, say, a screw or a banana to the neural network and getting it to generate its own images of the objects. DeepDream was trained with animal images, and even in pictures that contained no animals -- clouds, a street scene, a human face -- it "recognized" dogs, birds and deer. I ran the algorithm, and here's what it did to my Twitter avatar, a penguin-cat hybrid:
All kinds of animals emerged that weren't originally there. The artificial neural network appeared to have come down with an acute case of pareidolia -- a condition that causes sufferers to perceive nonexistent patterns in images and sounds (such as faces in clouds or a religious images in random objects). We all do this to some degree; otherwise Rorschach tests would be useless. But recent research by Norimichi Kitagawa of the NNT Communication Science Laboratory in Tokyo shows that some people may be more susceptible than others.
In extreme cases, pareidolia can be a symptom of psychosis. Although the images DeepDream produces are visually stunning, they are not the product of a "normal" consciousness by human standards. The Google researchers wrote that "neural networks could become a tool for artists -- a new way to remix visual concepts -- or perhaps even shed a little light on the roots of the creative process in general." Sure, but it's easy to imagine how such a network could, in human terms, go off its rocker.
Programmers, of course, can calibrate the network to look for specific patterns and ignore others. But at some point, networks will be more complex than those available today, and I doubt it will be possible to control for every eventuality.
We already have a sense of how unpleasant these accidents can be. In May, Yahoo!-owned photo hosting Flickr and Google Photos introduced artificial intelligence-based autotagging. The Flickr one marked concentration camp photos "sport" and "jungle gym," and the Google one made offensive mistakes, too. Both companies subsequently fiddled with their algorithms.
It's seemingly much easier to make an artificial brain to revise "bad thinking" than to get a human being to abandon faulty ideas or prejudices. But machines can process prodigious enormous amounts of material and at speeds that are inconceivable to a human brain; and that means the machines also could develop unfortunate personality traits, convictions and ways of looking at the world faster than they could be corrected.
At this point, those worries belong to the realm of science fiction. DeepDream only does one highly specific task. Still, it points to one of the dangers of artificial intelligence: the potential for the machine to develop a mind of its own that is in profound disagreement with its human creator.
And then there's the danger that the artificial mind might be so much better than our own and render us obsolete. For the moment, at least, DeepDream has allayed those fears.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the author on this story:
Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.net
Source: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-24/could-artificial-intelligence-lose-its-mind-
/ About us
Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
/ Follow us at:
/ Contact:
For additional information, partnerships and sponsorship, contact:
info@2045.com
Media requesting information and interviews, contact PR@2045.com
LinkedIn
LiveJournal
Google
Twitter
Facebook
Я.ру
ВКонтакте
Mail.ru