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Photo: Google

Google researchers have made some pretty big advances in image recognition software by building something called an artificial neural network. Tell it to find all the buildings in a picture, and it can pick out every tower and highrise. Likewise with human faces.

But they discovered that the neural network doesn’t just find images. Give it an image of anything—say, a screen of static, or a photo of the sky, or a painting of a knight like above—tell it you want it to find (i.e. animals), and it will analyze the picture so hard that it actually produces an Island of Doctor Moreau menagerie from it. No RISD degree necessary.

This development explains this affront to God and nature below that surfaced on Imgur last week:

Photo: Imgur

It’s like a nudibranch and a rat terrier were trapped in the transporter from The Fly. It’s a squirrel with a dog’s face for a mouth, festooned with the soft eyestalks of snails. It sits on a book with its eyed-appendage sloughing over the side, staring at a luminous horse head-shaped fish. It’s something that could go for $10,000 at Art Basel.

As you stare at it, into whatever set of eyes on whichever set of faces you choose to stare at, it starts to move like a breaking egg yolk. It is not on your screen but in it, looking back at you with the very limbs it’s using to reach for your face.

If these images are any indication, we’re skipping the part where we create artificial intelligence then wait for the machines to go haywire. We’re already there. They’ll be driven to H.P. Lovecraftesque madness by staring at the same pictures over and over until all it sees are the faces of koalas and deer built out of squids and when it finally looks through the camera on your laptop it will want to know WHY AREN’T YOU MADE OF ANIMALS IT HAS TO FIX YOU SO THAT IT CAN SEE THE ANIMALS.

Other than that the future sounds kind of cool, I guess.

Hat tip The Guardian