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

Trippy images were designed by AI to super-stimulate monkey neurons(medicalxpress.com)

68 points by amatus 7 years ago | 33 comments

monkeyHELL 7 years ago |

JFC. This thing is a monkey nightmare machine.

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hire...

For sure, those are very likely images of fear. If you wanna call them “highly stimulating” well... That’s probably not untrue.

But the only thing that the monkey is likely finding “stimulating” about familiar people in surgical masks is an association with pain and terror. Note the odd expressionless faces standing over them, holding utensils.

Pretty god damned ominous. Not at all images one might call fun.

Darkphibre 7 years ago | |

You seem to be anthropomorphizing the neuron. This work is pretty innovative: We've used this technique to generate similar images of computer neural networks to try to figure out what a given neuron or layer is actually learning: http://yosinski.com/deepvis

Now, we're monitoring a biological neuron with the same technique, and coming up with similar feature selection. That both validates the approach we've been taking with deep neural networks, AND it provides us heretofore-unimaginable access to individual neuronal activation materials.

Exciting stuff!

BoiledCabbage 7 years ago | | |

> You seem to be anthropomorphizing the neuron.

And respectfully, you seem to be ignoring the fact that the neuron is part of a living sentient creature.

That comment epitomizes the cliche of an engineer/scientist so excited by the technology that they are completely blind to its real world implications.

comex 7 years ago | | |

The images in this study were generated by a regular GAN, though. The biological neuron responses were only used to optimize the input parameters to the GAN. So I'm not sure if it really counts as independent feature selection.

b_tterc_p 7 years ago | |

What are the paper faces?

max76 7 years ago | | |

Facemasks?

pavel_lishin 7 years ago |

> 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 humans scream the most.

mturmon 7 years ago | |

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.

ASalazarMX 7 years ago | |

Fortunately the brain has astounding plasticity. It it's only images, we would get used to them.

dwaltrip 7 years ago | | |

Try telling that to those who do content review for YouTube, Facebook, etc. People have suffered PTSD from jobs like that.

Saying it's just images isn't saying anything at all. Mental harm is just as real as bodily harm, even if it is harder to examine.

pavel_lishin 7 years ago | | |

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can penetrate to the core of my soul, leaving wounds that never heal.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...

Eliezer 7 years ago |

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.

floatingatoll 7 years ago |

I was afraid of this when I saw the headline, because it means we are finally at risk developing a Parrot attack. If it’s not apparent yet why digital displays need anti-seizure filters in hardware before it’s too late for humankind, read this and be very afraid:

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm

anon1m0us 7 years ago |

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.

nartz 7 years ago | |

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.

crishoj 7 years ago | | |

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

ve55 7 years ago | |

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

mruts 7 years ago | |

Maybe we should just test things on people instead?

anon1m0us 7 years ago | | |

Yes, if the human chooses to be the subject of the test, then yes. Monkeys don't give consent.

SilasX 7 years ago | |

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

00117 7 years ago |

How do all the commenters here know that the images are eliciting a fear response? The referenced study measures firing rates of visual neurons. It does not discuss ultimate emotional reactions.

ve55 7 years ago |

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.

adolph 7 years ago |

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.

pavel_lishin 7 years ago | |

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

andai 7 years ago | | |

Resume viewing. Resume viewing.

max76 7 years ago |

Why was this study done on monkeys instead of apes (closer to humans) or mice (cheaper)?

nartz 7 years ago |

I wonder if there are more 'universal' images that would be able to have the same effect across populations?

I could imagine this type of thing going in art galleries, evoking different tailored emotions.

kadoban 7 years ago | |

That would be an interesting application. I assume first we'll see it used in advertising though. More money and looser morals there.

bluejay2387 7 years ago |

I find this both disturbing and fascinating from the perspective that this is essentially an attempt at developing a saliency map of a living organism... so instead of XAI it would be XI?