The machine that invents

From: Elias Sinderson (elias@cse.ucsc.edu)

Date: Thu Feb 05 2004 - 09:36:45 MST

Thought this article would be of some interest to people on this list.



Q1: Is this really creativity at work?

Q2: Is the machine really inventing?



Discuss. :-)



Regards,

Elias

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The machine that invents

Published: Sunday, Jan. 25 2004

Posted at

<http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/emaf.nsf/Popup?ReadForm&db=stltoday%5Cnews%5Cstories.nsf&docid=E981DA33F2CF718986256E250061FFF6�



By Tina Hesman

Of the Post-Dispatch



Technically, Stephen Thaler has written more music than any composer in

the world. He also invented the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush and

devices that search the Internet for messages from terrorists. He has

discovered substances harder than diamonds, coined 1.5 million new

English words, and trained robotic cockroaches. Technically.



Thaler, the president and chief executive of Imagination Engines Inc. in

Maryland Heights, gets credit for all those things, but he's really just

"the man behind the curtain," he says. The real inventor is a computer

program called a Creativity Machine.



What Thaler has created is essentially "Thomas Edison in a box," said

Rusty Miller, a government contractor at General Dynamics and one of

Thaler's chief cheerleaders.



"His first patent was for a Device for the Autonomous Generation of

Useful Information," the official name of the Creativity Machine, Miller

said. "His second patent was for the Self-Training Neural Network

Object. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One. Think about

that. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One!"



Supporters say the technology is the best simulation of what goes on

in human brains, and the first truly thinking machine.



Others say it is something far more sinister - the beginning of

"Terminator" technology, in which self-aware machines could take over

the world.



Thaler's technology was born from near-death experiences of dying

computer programs. Its foundation is the discovery that great ideas are

the result of noisy neurons and faulty memories.



The invention began to take shape in the 1980s. By day, the physicist

worked at McDonnell Douglas Corp., where he wielded a powerful laser

beam to crystallize diamonds. He built elegant computer simulations,

called neural networks, to guide his experiments.



But at night, things were different. Shirley MacLaine and her ilk were

all over the TV and on magazine covers talking about reincarnation and

life after death and near-death experiences. It made Thaler wonder:

"What would happen if I killed one of my neural networks?"



Neural networks can be either software programs or computers designed to

model an object, process or set of data. Thaler reasoned that if a

neural network were an accurate representation of a biological system,

he could kill it and figure out what happens in the brain as it dies.



In biological brains, the information-carrying cells, called neurons,

meet at junctions, called synapses. Brain chemicals, such as adrenaline

and dopamine, flow across the junctions to stimulate or soothe the

cells. In the computer world, there are switches instead of cells. The

switches are connected by numbers or "weights."



So after work, Thaler went home and created the epitome of a killer

application - a computer program he called the Grim Reaper. The reaper

dismantles neural networks by changing its connection weights. It is the

biological equivalent of killing neurons. Pick off enough neurons, and

the result is death.



On Christmas Eve 1989, Thaler typed the lyrics to some of his favorite

Christmas carols into a neural network. Once he'd taught the network the

songs, he unleashed the Grim Reaper. As the reaper slashed away

connections, the network's digital life began to flash before its eyes.

The program randomly spit out perfectly remembered carols as the killer

application severed the first connections. But as its wounds grew

deeper, and the network faded toward black, it began to hallucinate.



The network wove its remaining strands of memory together, producing

what someone else might interpret as damaged memories, but what Thaler

recognized as new ideas. In its death spiral, the program dreamed up new

carols, each created from shards of its shattered memories.



"Its last dying gasp was, 'All men go to good earth in one eternal

silent night,'" Thaler said.



But it wasn't the eloquence of the network's last words that captured

Thaler's imagination. What excited him was how noisy and creative the

process of dying was. It gave Thaler ideas. What if, he asked, I don't

cut the connections, but just perturb them a little?



Thaler built another neural network and trained it to recognize the

structure of diamonds and some other super-hard materials. He also built

a second network to monitor the first one's activities.



Then he tickled a few of the network's connections, and something began

to happen. The tickling, akin to a shot of adrenaline or an electrical

jolt in the brain, produced noise. In this sense, noise is not sound,

but random activity. And the noise triggered changes in the network.



The result was new ideas. The computer dreamed up new ultra-hard

materials. Some of the materials are known to humans, but Thaler didn't

tell the network they existed. Other materials are entirely new, unknown

to humans or computers before.



"A little elbow room"



When Rusty Miller went to lunch one day in 1998, he picked up a

specialized computer magazine called PCAI journal. He flipped through

the pages and came across a story about Thaler and his Creativity

Machine inventing the ultra-hard substances. Instantly, Miller knew that

Thaler had taken a step beyond other artificial intelligence

technologies, such as fuzzy logic or genetic algorithms, he said.



The brilliance of Thaler's invention is the noise he introduces into the

system, Miller said.



"Noise allows neurons to have a little elbow room to dream up new

ideas," Miller said.



Other researchers have come to the same conclusion.



Good old-fashioned artificial intelligence uses human experts to input

huge quantities of data and a list of rules to create a model, said

Robert Kozma, a computer scientist at the University of Memphis. Kozma

is experimenting with a similar technology.



The rigidity of traditional artificial intelligence technologies holds

back creativity, Kozma said.



"This type of rule-based system is frozen. It's dead and cannot get to

the essence of intelligence," Kozma said. "Creativity cannot be derived

in a logical way, in a step-by-step fashion." You need a little noise to

come up with good ideas, he said.



Human brains are also noisy places, said Dr. Walter J. Freeman, a

neurobiologist at the University of California at Berkeley. A debate has

raged for half a century about what the brain does with noise.



Many biologists see noise as just a nuisance or a necessary evil,

Freeman said. The brain devotes many neurons to the same task so it can

swamp out that random activity, those scientists argue.



But Freeman subscribes to an alternative theory - that noise is

essential for the brain to function properly. Noise provides variability

that allows organisms to adapt to new situations, he said.



Kozma has replaced the brain of a robotic toy dog with this new

technology. The idea is to create a robot that can explore a new

environment, such as the surface of another planet, without human

guidance. NASA is funding Kozma's efforts.



Thaler believes that Kozma's research is derivative of his seminal work.



It's not merely noise that makes Thaler's Creativity Machines so

ingenious, he argues. He has discovered a mathematical equivalent to the

fleeting signals that work on neurons - a special kind of noise.



And Creativity Machines are their own best critics. In fact, they have

critic networks built right in. The critics select the best ideas

generated by the noisy networks and reward good work. The feedback helps

the network dream up even better ideas.



Bunker-busting robots



Thaler, too, is engineering independent robots. A glossy, black, plastic

cockroach named H3 could be the prototype for swarms of bunker-busting

robots that could seek out, explore and use collective intelligence to

defeat an enemy target. The U.S. Air Force has contracted Thaler to

create such robots.



Robots, including Mars rovers, have been programmed with artificial

intelligence before, Thaler said. But those robots require human

engineers to program in leg movements and rules for getting around

obstacles. Each unique encounter requires new programming, new rules,

and time.



H3 gets no tutelage from Thaler at all. A sonar beacon beckons the

robot, and H3's legs begin to flail. Every time the robot makes a

movement that carries it closer to the signal, it learns the value of

the move. Within a few seconds, the cockroach coordinates enough good

moves to scuttle toward the signal.



But Thaler hasn't stopped with robots. Creativity Machines can solve

just about any problem in any field, he says.



A Creativity Machine used two neural networks to study toothbrush design

and performance. A brainstorming session between the two produced the

idea to cross the bristles of the toothbrush for optimal cleaning. That

toothbrush became the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush.



In one weekend, a Creativity Machine learned a sampling of some of

Thaler's favorite Top 10 hits from the past three decades and then wrote

11,000 new songs. Some are good, Thaler said. Miller confesses to being

haunted by one of the melodies in a minor key. Other offerings are the

musical equivalent of a painting of dogs playing poker, Thaler said.



But computer-composed music doesn't have to be bad. Human mentors with

good taste could train a critic network to grade the Creativity

Machine's songs, punish it for bad tunes and reward it for harmonious

melodies. The feedback would hone the machine's composing skills.



Such a self-training system was the Creativity Machine's first

invention, and the subject of Thaler's second patent.



Carmakers and security industries want to use machines to identify

obstacles, pedestrians or intruders. Some machines can identify certain

objects, but change lighting conditions or mist the lens with water, and

the system falls apart.



Thaler spins a collection of toy cars, trucks and planes on an old

turntable in his office while a Creativity Machine watches. The computer

learns to distinguish Hummers from pickups and F-18s from 747s, no

matter if the object is lit by a searchlight or sits in shadow or if

rain spatters the windshield. The technology could alert drivers to

whether they are about to back over a boy or a bicycle. Battlefield

commanders might use similar technology to assess damage and decide

whether to send in more bombs.



Machines trained to detect dangerous objects could replace humans at

baggage screening stations or watch for suspicious behavior.



Thaler's first contract with the Air Force used a Creativity Machine to

help design warheads that reconfigure the pattern of shrapnel

scattering. That's important to limit collateral damage and to save

money by tailoring bombs to destroy a target in one hit.



Thaler's machines engage in the guilty pleasure of reading supermarket

tabloids. The networks learn how to write tabloid headlines. The

"International Expirer" quickly became a hit on the Internet. But the

computer reporters of the tabloid "have no shame," and generated such

celebrity-skewering headlines that Thaler removed the Expirer to avoid

libel and slander suits.



Spy agencies want to use Thaler's technology to map the Internet and

detect unusual activity.



Thaler coined more than a million new English words by showing a network

a list of words. It learned rules of spelling and pronunciation and

generated new words. In one trial, the network came up with a name for

one of Thaler's spinoff companies - Synaptrix. The words are nonsense

now, but Thaler predicts that companies could use them to name products.

The machine also liked "eggo." Too bad that one is already taken.



The technology is not ready for widespread commercial use yet, say some

supporters.



"It's got extraordinary potential. Right now the holdup is packaging the

technology as a tool that somebody can actually pull off the shelf and

use," said Lloyd Reshard, the Weapons Platform Integration Team Lead at

the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air

Force Base. With other artificial intelligence technologies, "software

is commercially available on the street, but if you want to apply a

Creativity Machine to your problem, there's no software package you can

go out and buy."



The Air Force is working with Thaler now to solve that problem, Reshard

said.



"I might lose my job"



All of the possible applications for Creativity Machines make some

people uneasy. The machines could easily supplant people for many

mundane jobs, and Thaler predicts that some traditionally human-only

jobs, including laboratory scientist, could be up for grabs. Computer

chemists could soon design new compounds and figure out how to make them.



The machines could even be used to solve pressing societal problems,

Thaler says.



The prospect is just too much for people who see machines as a possible

threat to humans.



The normal human response is, "Don't want it. No thanks. I might lose my

job," Miller said.



Or worse, sentient machines could decide that they don't need humans at

all and do away with people. That fear is fueled by the plots of

science-fiction movies, such as "The Terminator." In that movie, a

satellite called Skynet became self-aware, saw humans as a threat and

destroyed more than 3 billion people.



Sci-fi fans see similarity between Thaler's thinking machines and

Skynet. There's even an eerie coincidence between the fictional

satellite's Judgment Day - August 29, 1997 - and the date the patent for

Creativity Machine became final - August 19, 1997.



But Thaler doesn't see the world ending at the hands of the machines.



"I can never imagine a world that looks like 'Terminator.' What do

people want? Food. Land. Mates. Machines aren't interested in that,"

Thaler said.



Miller, who is in the business of protecting U.S. computers from foreign

attackers, agrees that machines are not the real threat. He worries more

about humans with malicious intent turning Creativity Machines into

weapons. Other countries are already studying U.S. patents and

experimenting with revolutionary technologies. Terrorists could follow

suit, he says.



"If the U.S. doesn't wake up and pay attention, we're going to get

smoked," Miller warns. "It's important for people to understand. It

doesn't have anything to do with the business of business. It's about

America."



Some people are threatened by the idea that machines could think like

humans, Kozma said. They don't like the idea of computers out-creating

humans, he said.



But Thaler's machines may never match the unique qualities of humans, no

matter how clever they are at designing toothbrushes or warheads, Miller

said.



Miller, a former ballet dancer and Green Beret, says he enjoys competing

against Thaler's neural networks, even when they beat him. Miller will

always have a toe up on the machines, he says.



"None of his computers can do ballet."



Yet.

