Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons • Hacker News Board

Re: Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons

#11

Post by mturmon » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #8

> To find out which sights specific neurons in monkeys "like" best, researchers designed an algorithm, called XDREAM, that generated images that made neurons fire more than any natural images the researchers tested. I know they put "like" in quotes, but damn. Imagine this from a scifi angle: > "The aliens from Tau Ceti found which stimuli specific humans "like" best by trying them out and seeing which ones made human…

The methods and results are scary/foreboding. It's like they are automating and extending the methods used by, say, horror movie creators. Consider the horror-movie hockey mask, which also has the deep, dark eye sockets seen on these images.

Re: Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons

#12

Post by mruts » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

anon1m0us wrote: post #5

This is sick. I can't believe as human beings we still do this to other conscious creatures with feelings. It's emotionally traumatizing. It's wrong.

Maybe we should just test things on people instead?

Re: Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons

#13

Post by nartz » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

anon1m0us wrote: post #5

This is sick. I can't believe as human beings we still do this to other conscious creatures with feelings. It's emotionally traumatizing. It's wrong.

I'm not sure you are interpreting this correctly - its not like they were torturing the monkey.

This is almost the same as studies where they show humans a set of images and ask them which they like the most. Except in this case, they just show them the images and try to measure it.

Most of these comments are blowing this out of proportion.

Re: Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons

#14

Post by crishoj » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

nartz wrote: post #13

anon1m0us wrote: post #5

This is sick. I can't believe as human beings we still do this to other conscious creatures with feelings. It's emotionally traumatizing. It's wrong.

I'm not sure you are interpreting this correctly - its not like they were torturing the monkey. This is almost the same as studies where they show humans a set of images and ask them which they like the most. Except in this case, they just show them the images and try to measure it. Most of these comments are blowing this out of proportion.

Subjecting a being to a machine which automatically evolves stimuli to maximise fear response is not torture?

Re: Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons

#15

Post by Eliezer » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

Remember when it was becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between real headlines and Onion headlines? Well, now it's becoming harder to tell the difference between reality and SCP Foundation logs.

Re: Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons

#16

Post by andai » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #9

adolph wrote: post #2

I wonder how this technique could be used to develop specific-person optimized user interfaces. Of course, it’ll probably be first used in ad-tech.

"I will buy whatever you're selling to make this stimulus stop, please."

Resume viewing. Resume viewing.

Re: Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons

#17

Post by nartz » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

crishoj wrote: post #14

nartz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you are interpreting this correctly - its not like they were torturing the monkey. This is almost the same as studies where they show humans a set of images and ask them which they like the most. Except in this case, they just show them the images and try to measure it. Most of these comments are blowing this out of proportion.

Subjecting a being to a machine which automatically evolves stimuli to maximise fear response is not torture?

Things are relative here - you know they test experimental pharmaceutical drugs on monkeys too right?

Re: Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons

#18

Post by SilasX » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

anon1m0us wrote: post #5

This is sick. I can't believe as human beings we still do this to other conscious creatures with feelings. It's emotionally traumatizing. It's wrong.

Not to do whataboutism, but if you're worried about that, factory farms are a lot worse and a lot more common.

Re: Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons

#19

Post by ve55 » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

anon1m0us wrote: post #5

This is sick. I can't believe as human beings we still do this to other conscious creatures with feelings. It's emotionally traumatizing. It's wrong.

You should see what is done to animals other than monkeys!

Re: Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons

#20

Post by ve55 » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

This paper pretty closely resembles one that I saw a few months ago: Neural Population Control via Deep Image Synthesis: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/461525v1, which is included among the first few references. They do quite a bit of building off of it, but some of the images in the full paper are definitely as uncanny to look at as the ones included in the article about it above.