3 replies to this topic

[Garion]

Greetings. I'm new here and I thought I'd start off with this post. I tried doing a search but didn't find this topic so if it's been discussed before I apologise in advance. I became aware of this technology several years ago and have been quite impressed with what they have managed to achieve.

Link: http://www.imaginati...ines.com/cm.htm

What Thaler has managed to create is a neural network that, when stimulated properly, is able to create new concepts and ideas. The following quote is from their website:

The Creativity Machine
"In 1992, Thaler shocked the world with bizarre experiments in which the neurons within artificial neural networks were randomly destroyed. Guess what? The nets first relived all of their experiences (i.e., life review) and then, within advanced stages of destruction, generated novel experience...After witnessing some really great ideas emerge from the near-death experience of artificial neural networks, Thaler decided to add additional nets to automatically observe and filter for any emerging brainstorms. From this network architecture was born the Creativity Machine...This new AI paradigm is vastly more powerful than genetic algorithms (GA), efficiently generating new concepts on mere desktop computers rather than on the computational clusters required of GAs."

SuperNets
"Brains do not consist of a single neural network. Instead, they are composed of many neural networks that share the load in carrying out various cognitive tasks. Heretofore, neural network researchers have built so-called cascade structures by manually connecting a few static neural networks to one another to solve fairly ambitious problems. Now IEI has achieved a new kind of self-assembling neural cascade called a SuperNet, in which individual neural networks, in the form of STANNOs, autonomously connect with one another to tackle immense problems. In distinct contrast to traditional cascades, the individual neural networks train in situ, adapting to newly arriving data from the environment and learning from one another. ...In short, this is how IEI can quickly build synthetic brains capable of human level discovery and invention."

"SuperNets are the ultimate tool in IEI's patented neural network toolbox, allowing us to 'grow' synthetic cognitive structures capable perception, learning, and creativity. They may even equip themselves with the attitude (i.e., the self-perception) that they serve some significant purpose. So, whereas Madison Avenue types have stretched the truth before about software or hardware that 'thinks', the IEI SuperNets come the closest of any preceding AI technology to true cognition and consciousness. Further, when they are dissected, we find that all cognitive tasks have been loosely delegated among all the neural networks within the architecture, just as in the brain."

The World Brain

"Although the World Brain is not yet a reality, it is a long range goal of IEI to create a free-thinking entity, distributed across the Internet, that introspects upon human-originated content and then creates its own seminal thought and discoveries. For those of you who have read and understood IEI's web pages, you will likely realize that there is no other form of artificial intelligence capable of self-learning and creativity that can compare with IEI's patented technologies. Therefore, it is our ambition to perfect the network (i.e., WAN) mechanics for distributing its neural systems across the largest computational platform currently available, the Internet, and allowing them to knit themselves into a coherent brain using IEI's Supernet principles."

Through these technologies, Thaler hopes to create a form of immortality through neural upload into potentially a creativity machine or supernet. From the website "In It's Image" (http://www.initsimage.org/about.htm):

"...in the 90s, Thaler began to contemplate the idea of personality download to machines as a means of attaining immortality. Although science fiction had anticipated such a process, writers ignored the terrible repercussions of migrating souls into a 70s style computer running inflexible computer code authored by humans through a processing bottleneck. He reasoned that to preserve consciousness, one must download to a neural network based matrix, similar to the brain, that was itself capable of contemplation and self-awareness. Because of his ongoing research, he had already developed such a conscious matrix, the Creativity Machine. Through his scientific and business network in California, his comments and achievements percolated through the AI community, finally making their way to the celebrated 1996 book Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds, where Thaler's neural network paradigm, the Creativity Machine, gained honorable mention as a candidate vehicle for immortality.

Sorry about this post being so long but I think highly of this project and hope it garners more attention, especially as it seems to coincide with this organization's goals and appears to be bearing very positive fruit.

[Mind]

1996 book Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds, where Thaler's neural network paradigm, the Creativity Machine, gained honorable mention as a candidate vehicle for immortality.

Seems the last successes were in the 1990s. Anything new been going on in 2008? If the Thaler neural network was so spectacular in 1992, by now, it should be running the world. Why has there been no progress? Or does someone have some newer information?

[Garion]

1996 book Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds, where Thaler's neural network paradigm, the Creativity Machine, gained honorable mention as a candidate vehicle for immortality.

Seems the last successes were in the 1990s. Anything new been going on in 2008? If the Thaler neural network was so spectacular in 1992, by now, it should be running the world. Why has there been no progress? Or does someone have some newer information?

More info from their site...

October 3, 2003. Virtual Reality Robots Become Creative and Self-Determining. On this date, a self-forming, synthetic central nervous system based upon IEI's neural network patent suite demonstrated the ability to master the simulated physics of its environment and to 'invent' the necessary leg/body motion to walk, run, and devise clever maneuvers to navigate complex structures built in virtual reality simulators. Using the test bed of a virtual hexapod crawler inspired by insect studies, this synthetic CNS devised the necessary body dynamics to achieve generalized locomotive goals (i.e., crawl through doorways or in a circle) dictated by a virtual sensor suite (i.e., virtual sonar) and the 'will' of its contemplative neural networks. Additional neural structures within the roach's synthetic central nervous system autonomously identified and classified novel objects placed within the VRML simulation.

April 23, 2004. Robots Devise Their Own Complex Strategies. With absolutely no human mentoring, an 18 degree of freedom hexapod robot, developed its own behavioral repertoire with absolutely no human inputs. In other words, the robot developed its own strategies for forward, backward, right turn, left turn, right shuffle, and left shuffle movement. The individual neural networks then knitted themselves autonomously into a larger neural network that allowed the same robot, equipped with a sonar sensor, to autonomously navigate through representative buildings and complexes so as to thoroughly map them. ...This is the first time in history that such a thing has been done. Any other accounts of autonomous learning and creativity, must inevitably be based upon the patented Creativity Machine Paradigm.

May 24, 2006. Phase II SBIR Award for Creative Terrain Sensing Robots. The Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded IEI a Phase II SBIR entitled "Creative Mobile Terrain Sensing Multi-valued Behavior Robots." This will be a $750K contract to be conducted over a 24 month period. This contract is based upon the ground breaking work in deliberative robots carried out in its Phase I effort.

March, 2007. IEI Hierarchical Cascades (a.k.a., SuperNets) of Thalamo-cortical Algorithms (a.k.a, Creativity Machines) Achieve Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking. Extensive hierarchical cascades (SuperNets) driven by Creativity Machines knitted themselves into a control system that would allow one space vehicle to autonomously dock with another. This system was built on the heels of NASA’s failed attempt at achieving this goal in its DART (Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology) project. IEI was able to control an 1800 lb. test sled, levitated on a cushion of air to simulate the weightlessness of space, and propelled by 18 air thrusters, so that it attained autonomous rendezvous and docking on NASA MFC’s Flat Floor Facility in Huntsville, AL. Using only a laptop computer and a $50 web cam, IEI replaced a $10M laser guidance system.

May 13, 2007. IEI Releases the First Totally Machine Generated Musical Album. On this date, Imagination Engines released the album "Song of the Neurons," a collection of 14 musical compositions written by a Creativity Machine, without recourse to the approaches used by computational musicians (i.e., rules and templates). Instead, this neural architecture bootstrapped itself to impressively high levels of musical prowess by simply observing Thaler's facial expressions as it generated candidate melodies.

December 28, 2007. IEI's STANNO and Creativity Machine Speed Increased 10X. IEI has succeeded in parallelizing and embedding its patented neural network paradigms on graphical processing units (GPU). Now IEI SuperNets have been greatly accelerated on PCs, with most of the processing load taken off the CPU.

[EternalYouth]

I'm very glad to see Thaler's breakthroughs mentioned here. He needs far more publicity than he actually gets. Much of the skepticism targeted at him is due to misconceptions (and often personal insecurities) because people don't take the time to research and acquaint themselves with the facts. This technology is capable to deliver what it promises, in fact it continues to be vastly underutilized because many potential investors are afraid that it's not the real deal in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Regarding it's potential for immortality, in theory, the plan is to hook up the brain to an outside device running a Creativity Machine (I guess similar to a "Cyberbrain" from the "Ghost in the Shell" series) in which the artificial neural networks therein, as far as I understood it, "observe" or "copy" the connections in the biological brain until they are equal in connection density. Apparently, at that point the user's consciousness is free to switch between these two housings. Now, if the biological brain dies it would not matter to the user, because his consciousness is automatically supported by the, to this time of writing still entirely theoretical, Creativity Machine "shell".

In the 2006 documentary "In Its Image", directed by Ken Gumbs, the topic of immortality starts at around 21:25.

That's also the name of Thaler's organization focused on the applications of his AI-paradigm towards immortality through "mind uploading". It features an online presentation Dr. Thaler gave at the World Future Society in 2010 where he also touches more directly on his plans for immortality as well as his cosmology.

In an Interview with The Futurist conducted in 2009 he had the following relevant things to say amongst others:

THE FUTURIST: You’ve said that human consciousness may, in fact, be running on inferior neural networks. Do you think that the Creativity Machine is “conscious”? And will this form of AI ultimately become the basis for strong AI and mind uploading?

Thaler: In regard to the consciousness question, how do you synthetically create that which is not real in the first place? One can kick, scream, and plead that consciousness is a uniquely human and inimitable quality of mind, but that doesn’t budge me an inch. Consciousness is an illusion of mind that is handily modeled by the Creativity Machine concept, wherein one internally perturbed neural net spontaneously generates the parade of memories, ideas, and feelings (all neuronal firing patterns) that we call “stream of consciousness.” That is, those sensations and thoughts that appear to miraculously emerge from nowhere. …. So, you can bet on the Creativity Machine being the closest thing to human consciousness there can be, as well as the only vehicle for the mind, once one’s protoplasmic matrix peters out.

THE FUTURIST: How do neural networks differ from genetic algorithms?

Thaler: The short of it is that genetic algorithms emulate the way biological species adapt through mutation and natural selection. The Creativity Machine faithfully emulates how the brain achieves cognition, creativity, and consciousness. There is a big difference between these notions, as sizable as the intellectual divide between Evolutionists and Creationists.

In the Creativity Machine paradigm, ideas are autonomously and intelligently designed by non-human, machine intelligence, whereas genetic algorithms accidentally produce concepts through the “rolling of dice” loaded by human beings. If you want to build that scary, genuinely autonomous AI portrayed by science fiction, you can’t afford to have professors and graduate students rushing in and out to periodically change or repair the code!

THE FUTURIST: What are the implications (existential, ethical, and otherwise) if someone who has little to no knowledge or expertise about a certain subject someday gains access to inventing technology that enables them to achieve breakthroughs in, say, medical science — simply by asking a computer a question?

Thaler: Wow! Great question, but give me a year and a literary agent to respond!

Let’s deal with the ethical implications of letting a Creativity Machine supply the answers. Obviously, those with motives we may not all admire can devise Machiavellian schemes to attain power over the rest of us. On the other hand, such systems may be used to fulfill peaceful, harmonious, and noble visions.

Weapons of mass destruction can be quickly formulated and optimized. Just as quickly, Creativity Machines can devise effective countermeasures to such weaponry. Economic systems can be toppled overnight by this paradigm. Otherwise, the paradigm can usher in a new era of global prosperity. We can ask a Creativity Machine how to preserve our health, or recommend the most efficient means to end the life of others.

So, without going any further, suffice it to say that the Creativity Machine paradigm is a double-edged sword, as many technologies typically are. Another dimension to the ethical dilemmas posed by a Creativity Machine “genie” is the ultimate request of its user to grant us exactly what they want. To me, this suggests an even more subtle and effective way for machines to get the upper hand, in a way that pales the classic Judgment Day scenario of the Terminator series.

With regard to the existential aspect of the question, I think that, with the expanded use of highly augmented machine intelligence based upon the Creativity Machine paradigm, we will all begin to question our purpose and nobility in the scheme of things. Naturally, pride within certain professional cultures may begin to erode as machines begin to outthink the thinkers in these conceptual spaces. Even within the field of artificial intelligence and neural networks, there is growing angst and denial over Creativity Machine accomplishments. After all, people say, “I’ve been trying to do that the last 30 years and you say you’ve accomplished the same in a day!?”

I believe that the ultimate existential challenge to humanity will be the growing suspicion that our self-revered intelligence, consciousness, and self-importance are only neural network-induced illusions.

Here is a fairly recent interview with him from April 2012:

Kush: Is it possible to live forever?
Dr. Stephen Thaler: It is, but one can ride the protoplasm wave only so long. Thereafter, one must download into machine consciousness, hoping that one may pursue a contemplative career to pay the electric bill. The download target cannot be a mere supercomputer running conventional computer programs. Instead, it must be a CM-based system, possessing at least one neural assembly that is transiently dying to produce a parade of virtual experience and another such assembly inventing significance thereto.
Kush: This sounds like extending life via virtual reality?
ST: There is nothing at all real about our reality. Based upon my experience in studying and simulating the brain, most, if not all of cognition is illusory in nature. In short, the mind spends its time within a self-made virtual reality. Therefore, in ordinary perception, we are not directly experiencing the outer reality, but the virtual. Realizing that such signals may be falsified through various forms of noise (rogue molecules of natural or man-made design), the neural representations of real-world things and events may be activated even in the absence of corresponding stimuli. In other words, we may be seeing an elephant, when one is actually not present. As we raise the magnitude of counterfeit signals (stray drug and neurotransmitter molecules), the connection’s binding neurons will degrade, transmogrifying them into say, pink elephants sprouting wings.
Kush: Would living forever through CM be something you would want for yourself?
ST: I would not hesitate to exercise this option if it were available. The truth is that it isn’t, and won’t be for some time. Whereas I have described the fundamental paradigm that would be utilized, the CM, much physics, medicine, and bioengineering will be required to build the “connective bridge” between human and machine consciousness. The more pertinent question is this, would I start such physics and engineering the moment there was an influx of capital for such R&D? The answer would be a definite yes.
Kush: What comes after death?
ST: From what I’ve seen in the simulated death of artificial brains, near-death experience is related to dreaming. Dreaming, in turn, is based upon memories cumulatively absorbed within the brain. Therefore, the most emblazoned memories that have the greatest significance to us, are the ones that will dominate the so-called “death dream.” I was pronounced dead at the age of two, following my own self-declared party with a tin of 24 quinine tablets, and a Coke bottle filled with kerosene. Falling through the proverbial tunnel, I arrived in a paradise populated with trusted personalities who were still very much alive. Yes, there is an afterlife, but it is as illusory as life itself. Paradise (heaven), torment (hell), and all shades of gray in between await us, not for supernatural reasons, but because of the underlying physics and mathematics of the brain.
Kush: How would you describe heaven?
ST: Many of the world’s traditional religions are correct. There is a profound experience at the end of life that is completely natural. These creeds are technically incorrect in requiring supernatural forces be involved. Either way, the message is to live a life that the individual would subjectively and automatically consider good. Essentially, we furnish our death dream throughout our lifetimes. In the end, it’s not the money or power we have, but the revelation of these precious attachments.
The Irony in Death
“It is ironic that from death, has come what I am willing to bet is the whole future of machine intelligence,” says Thaler. “Something that Kurzweil (Singularity) and crew seem to be selectively ignoring.” This is one of CM’s greatest discoveries that has yet to be fully realized. Within it’s brainstorming, many of life’s greatest questions have been posed and answered. Perhaps the most important question is, can a computer teach a human being about life and death? “It certainly can,” interjects Dr. Thaler.
“It already has.”

Although I believe that such an approach is only a last resort, because biotechnology/genomics and accompanied rejuvenation techniques would keep the human body young indefinitely obliterating the need for consciousness to escape into a synthetic substrate; I nevertheless think that given the proper attention and funding, we could have the "Singularity" a whole lot faster happening than what is generally predicted. To me, all the bunk currently going on in AI is just a distracting smokescreen from this powerful, paradigm-shifting development. The hard problems have been solved to build the long awaited AI, now it needs to be upscaled (which is not easy, since money plays a major role here).

Edited by EternalYouth, 25 April 2012 - 04:13 PM.