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AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region

nevo-project.epfl.ch

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Re: AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region

#231

Post by djaro »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #117
alexpotato wrote: post #106

What's interesting is that the process of identifying what gets human attention is nothing new. e.g. cartoons from the 1950s were designed to have: - cute animals - short and fast scene cuts - catchy music b/c all three of the above were known to trick the human brain into "sit still and observe" mode. Focus groups did the same thing for advertising which then morphed into A/B testing to determine revealed preference…

Books are designed to be addictive. People said the same things about books as they say about screens nowadays. I think it's more important to understand the emotional hysteria people get themselves into

Books are not nearly as addictive as social media though.

Re: AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region

#232

Post by deinonychus »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #114
barrenko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are doing to our brains and our children the same thing we are doing to pigs in cages, squezeeing every last cent until the planet burns down.

> until the planet burns down. Common misconception. We won't kill the planet even if we tried to. Wed make it too hard to sustain billions of humans, sure. But they are very different things

>We won't kill the planet even if we tried to.

Common misconception. The planet isn't alive. We can't kill it. It's a rock.

Re: AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region

#233

Post by customguy »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #205
customguy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "purpose"? Something people wish something would only be used for, right? How does it relate to, what influence does it have on what something will end up being used for?

Oh you are right. Let's just end neuroscience altogether. Also computer science, aerospace, and biology in general. In fact, let's go full Amish. Wait, no. Someone might use a buggy cart to run people over. What exactly is your new fear here?

This isn't about "might", this is about "obviously will", and the sheer fact that questions that were 101 of scientific discussion now lead to instant freaking out and accusations, i.e. stupid cultish bullshit, show me we need to be more serious about it, not less. If that's not to your liking, is it okay for you if other people ponder such questions? Can you maybe stim your brain into believing they don't?

Re: AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region

#234

Post by therobots927 »

Timon3 wrote: post #226
nonethewiser wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good distinction because its a common idea but its based on a conflation: human civilizationhealth and planet health. Planet health is hard to even think about apart from humans but the planet in no way “needs” us.

It's a silly distinction. Unless we're wiped out by a virus or something similar, whatever ends us is likely to also take down a huge part of the biosphere as well - as is already happening. "Burning something down" doesn't mean literally killing all life. But the unnecessary deaths of likely billions of animals in the long run should weigh enough to stop this nitpicking.

Same could be said about any of the many mass extinction events in earth history. Not that I’m in favor of setting the planet on fire, but if you zoom out far enough it’s clear earth would bounce back from even a nuclear war coupled with climate change and microplastics.

Re: AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region

#236

Post by nullbio »

charcircuit wrote: post #73
nullbio wrote: post #23

This is already happening at scale by the social media feed algorithms. We don't need generated content to accomplish this. In a sea of user created content, plenty of it is already at peak activation.

Optimizing for engagement is a categorically different goal than optimizing for lighting up a specific part of someone's brain.

There's algorithmic ways to accomplish the same thing without requiring monitoring of the brain, if there's enough data to pull from. Semantic analysis + engagement monitoring is more than enough. Peoples emotions expressed via comments is a reflection of brain region activation.

The end result of this will be that creating viral or maximally converting content will not be restricted to the top content creators. It will also result in down regulation of those brain regions due to constant stimulation, so the bar will increase for what classifies as attention grabbing and the brain will filter most of it out as noise.

All in all, I don't really see this being a big difference to the outcomes we're already seeing.

Re: AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region

#237

Post by ShinyLeftPad »

p-e-w wrote: post #33
tefkah wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does indeed seem comically evil. While surely this may provide somewhat interesting insights in how our brain processes things, this seems squarely past the "should" part of "you scientists were so obsessed with whether you could you failed to consider whether you should"

> This does indeed seem comically evil. And I have yet to see a single paper like this where a researcher bails out and publicly says they refuse to work on such projects. Not one. The most benign interpretation of this observation is that science is filled with spineless opportunists who don’t care who they hurt with what they create. A slightly less benign interpretation might be that many of these people are doing…

We don't hear from researchers who just decide not to work on something without making a fuss.

Re: AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region

#238

Post by Timon3 »

therobots927 wrote: post #234
Timon3 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a silly distinction. Unless we're wiped out by a virus or something similar, whatever ends us is likely to also take down a huge part of the biosphere as well - as is already happening. "Burning something down" doesn't mean literally killing all life. But the unnecessary deaths of likely billions of animals in the long run should weigh enough to stop this nitpicking.

Same could be said about any of the many mass extinction events in earth history. Not that I’m in favor of setting the planet on fire, but if you zoom out far enough it’s clear earth would bounce back from even a nuclear war coupled with climate change and microplastics.

And that makes it somehow okay? You just don't care about billions of deaths?

Like, do you think I'd argue that any of the previous mass extinctions were good?

Re: AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region

#239

Post by Chu4eeno »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #203
jrmg wrote: post #127

I’ll leave it to other comments to discuss the societal and moral implications of being able to do this (which, I agree, ick…). On a practical level: We train an encoding model, a “digital twin”, that predicts how each visual region responds to any video. Now we can ask: which video would make a chosen region light up the most? NEvo searches for that video automatically, using the twin’s prediction as its reward. I o…

A. Unless you think that brain science is immoral science, then I do not see any problem with this kind of research. As a neuroscientist, I strongly object to the insinuation as unfounded. B. "Digital twins" e.g. [1] are a growing class of brain simulations that can successfully approximate brain activity patterns at large scale. I think these can be very useful, but we shouldn't think that they are at the level of a…

I guess people aren't over the dead salmon study.

Re: AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region

#240

Post by mf2hd »

Timon3 wrote: post #238
therobots927 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same could be said about any of the many mass extinction events in earth history. Not that I’m in favor of setting the planet on fire, but if you zoom out far enough it’s clear earth would bounce back from even a nuclear war coupled with climate change and microplastics.

And that makes it somehow okay? You just don't care about billions of deaths? Like, do you think I'd argue that any of the previous mass extinctions were good ?

We might not be here without those mass extinction events. So yeah, they were good, fck the dinos.
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