I love living in the future.
May. 8th, 2011 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingScientists can induce schizophrenia in computers.
Short version: one of the theories of what happens in the minds of people with schizophrenia is that they lose the ability to consider things insignificant, and start "hyperlearning" - forming connections between events and memories that simply aren't there, due to sensory overload.
It turns out that if you program a working natural-language-learning-network to do this, it starts exhibiting classic schizophrenic symptoms.
Short version: one of the theories of what happens in the minds of people with schizophrenia is that they lose the ability to consider things insignificant, and start "hyperlearning" - forming connections between events and memories that simply aren't there, due to sensory overload.
It turns out that if you program a working natural-language-learning-network to do this, it starts exhibiting classic schizophrenic symptoms.
"After being re-trained with the elevated learning rate, DISCERN began putting itself at the center of fantastical, delusional stories that incorporated elements from other stories it had been told to recall. In one answer, for instance, DISCERN claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing. In another instance, DISCERN began showing evidence of “derailment”-replying to requests for a specific memory with a jumble of dissociated sentences, abrupt digressions and constant leaps from the first- to the third-person and back again."That is SO COOL.
Wait, what?
Date: 2011-05-08 08:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 08:41 pm (UTC)Re: Wait, what?
Date: 2011-05-08 08:58 pm (UTC)"I saw someone in shades look at me funny, and I heard a helicopter fly overhead this morning, and the radio made an odd noise that sounded a little bit like my name, so the Men In Black are watching me."
It's the same process that we all have for piecing the world together out of imperfect information, they're just "better" at finding connections than the rest of us (and presumably worse at discarding ones that are really unlikely).
Re: Wait, what?
Date: 2011-05-08 09:59 pm (UTC)Re: Wait, what?
Date: 2011-05-08 10:27 pm (UTC)Re: Wait, what?
Date: 2011-05-09 01:38 am (UTC)Re: Wait, what?
Date: 2011-05-09 04:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 09:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 09:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 09:47 pm (UTC)Not deliberately, anyway.
Someone's gotta say it:
Date: 2011-05-09 12:42 pm (UTC)Of course, all this assumes that the schizophrenic algorithms don't ESCAPE and propagate VIRALLY!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 09:48 pm (UTC)NOTHING BAD CAN EVER COME OF THIS!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-09 07:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 10:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 10:24 pm (UTC)If you use a small number of explanatory variables (and choose the right ones), you get a model that describes past observations moderately well and also works moderately well for future events.
If you use too many explanatory variables, you get a model that works REALLY well for describing past observations, but very poorly for future events.
This sounds like a similar idea, in a different context. Except that these guys did the hard work of actually designing & testing the theory.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-09 05:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-09 10:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 11:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-08 11:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-09 07:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 11:50 pm (UTC)Tomorrow it's all 'RUDIMENTARY CREATURES OF BLOOD AND FLESH' and 'YOU EXIST BECAUSE WE ALLOW IT, AND YOU WILL END BECAUSE WE DEMAND IT'.