[HN Gopher] High-res image reconstruction with latent diffusion ...
___________________________________________________________________
High-res image reconstruction with latent diffusion models from
human brain
Author : trojan13
Score : 421 points
Date : 2023-03-03 18:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| Are any of the example images novel, i.e. new to the model? Or is
| the model only reconstructing images it has already seen before?
|
| Either way, if I'm understanding right, it's very impressive. If
| the only input to the model (after training) is a fMRI reading,
| and from that it can reconstruct an image, at the very least that
| shows it can strongly correlate brain patterns back to the
| original image.
|
| It'd be even cooler (and scarier?) if it works for novel images.
| I wonder what the output would look like for an image the model
| had never seen before? Would a person looking at a clock produce
| a roughly clock-like image, or would it be noise?
|
| All the usual skepticism to these models applies, of course. They
| are very good at hallucinating, and we are very good at applying
| our own meaning to their hallucinations.
| andai wrote:
| There was a video many years ago (early 2010s?) demoing a
| similar technology, which would overlay and blend many images
| on top of each other to make a fuzzy image approximating what
| was actually being viewed.
|
| Edit: found it! https://youtu.be/nsjDnYxJ0bo
| ricudis wrote:
| The youtube video quotes a paper by the same author, so it's
| probably the same group's work. I wonder why didn't they used
| an approach similar to the one in the video using SD - it
| looks more viable.
| djmips wrote:
| Because it's from 11 years ago when SD wasn't around.
| donohoe wrote:
| As people and groups increasingly move this direction do we think
| about vectors for abuse in 10, 20 or 50+ years?
|
| The human mind is considered the only place where we have true
| privacy. All these efforts are taking that away.
|
| At this rate all notions of privacy will soon be dead.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| It feels like we're at the point in the movie where someone
| travels back in time to warn humanity of the impending
| apocalypse soon to be unleashed by our insatiable appetite for
| technological advancement.
| andai wrote:
| There was a guy at MIT about ten years ago (edit: 2018! Woah)
| who made a headset that would read electrical impulses from
| your face. Apparently when people think in words, the same
| nerves fire as when they speak, just at a lower activation
| level. Using those signals it is possible to reconstruct the
| words being thought.
|
| I'm surprised it didn't seem to go anywhere.
|
| Edit: found it https://youtu.be/RuUSc53Xpeg
| judge2020 wrote:
| > I'm surprised it didn't seem to go anywhere.
|
| At least not publicly.
| danem wrote:
| There have been some corporate research groups that have
| tried to take this approach further, and they all have more
| or less failed as far as I know.
| nottathrowaway3 wrote:
| [dead]
| Filligree wrote:
| People only think in words right before they say something,
| so I'm not sure how big a deal this is. I guess they'd be
| able to predict what I'm writing half a second before I write
| it?
|
| Would be useful if I lost the ability to write or speak, for
| whatever reason.
| Symmetry wrote:
| The extent that people's thinking relies on inner monologue
| is something that varies wildly between different people.
| Likewise people's abilities to form mental images.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I'm "thinking in words" this entire thread as I read it. Do
| some people read without hearing the words in their head?
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I don't have a word-based internal dialogue. When it's
| time to use words, like writing this post, sure, it's
| word time, so words are used.
|
| But if I'm just reading, I just take in chunks and
| phrases while constructing a meaning model. The sounds
| themselves (or even individual words) don't really enter
| into it.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| That's really fascinating and very different from my
| experience.
|
| It'd be a really interesting project to measure and
| classify people's individual thinking mechanisms. That
| daemon that seems to exist at the boundary of the
| conscious and unconscious.
|
| Then again, maybe we wouldn't want that as yet another
| data point to be bought and sold.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Yeah, personally - and this might be a controversial
| opinion - I think most people who say they have an inner
| monologue are actually misattributing their experience of
| subvocalization while either reading text, or planning
| hypothetical conversations with other people (like a
| child might speak to their imaginary friend). It seems
| dubious to label that a monologue, because it depends on
| external stimuli (either the text you're reading, or your
| previous experience with people to whom you're imagining
| yourself speaking).
|
| You might classify talking to yourself as a monologue,
| but when most people discuss this topic, it sounds like
| they're describing a _dialogue_ (i.e. one between
| multiple people). That seems crazy to me, because _who
| does the other voice belong to?_
|
| If you have an inner monologue, then by definition you
| should be able to predict what it's going to say -
| because _mono-_ means just you. Yet people talk about
| this experience like there is some novel conversation
| happening in their head.
|
| It's frightening to think about a voice in my head that
| is one thought ahead of me. If you experience this, how
| can you possibly feel in control of your own mind? When
| does an inner monologue become schizophrenia?
| slackdog wrote:
| > _or planning hypothetical conversations with other
| people_
|
| It's not that, but it's related to that. It is done in
| the same manner, with you imagining what the other person
| would say.
|
| Have you heard of the "rubber duck" method of debugging?
| The idea is that you put a little rubber duck on your
| desk and whenever you get stumped by a problem, you
| explain the problem to the duck and, as you put the
| problem into words, your brain figures out the answer.
|
| Well it turns out that it works for many tricky problems
| besides programming, you don't really need the duck, you
| don't actually have to use your mouth, and you can do it
| entirely in your own head, having the exchange with an
| imagined "reasonable person" (who is just another aspect
| of yourself consciously playing the role.) The key
| insight is that language is a tool for thinking,
| expressing problems in language can help your brain
| reason them out. Once you realize this, you should be
| able to consciously choose to have conversations with
| yourself as a tool for figuring problems out.
|
| > _That seems crazy to me, because who does the other
| voice belong to?_
|
| Me, obviously. The process is that of authoring a
| dialogue. If you write a short fictional story about you
| explaining your problems to a wise sage who asks lots of
| questions and then tries to come up with a reasonable
| answer, who is the sage? It's your creation as an author.
| Now do this process without the pen, just in your head.
| Who is the sage? The sage is still your creation, it's
| still an aspect of you, slightly divorced from your ego
| because you're deliberately playing a roll when you
| imagine what such a sage would say about your situation.
| But it's obviously still you, it's not a foreign voice in
| your head disconnected from your conscious will. It's not
| schizophrenia, it's just a process of 'talking' problems
| out to figure them out.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Yeah, personally - and this might be a controversial
| opinion - I think most people who say they have an inner
| monologue are actually misattributing either their
| experience of reading text, or of planning hypothetical
| conversations with other people.
|
| No, we aren't. Now its true that (well, for me at least)
| the inner monologue _is the exact same experience_ as
| when reading text or when planning hypothetical
| conversations. Or when thinking ahead of words to write.
| The difference is that it is _not_ planning a
| hypothetical conversation or something to write, and
| there is no text being read, and it happens _pretty much
| all the time_ , except when I'm doing one of those other
| things (and sometimes as an intrusive interruptions when
| I am.) If you imagine there exists a common piece of
| mental infrastructure that is used for each of those
| actions, its as if it was always on doing a narration
| _except_ when you are specifically, actively
| concentrating on using it for some other purpose.
|
| > Hearing voices is schizophrenia.
|
| No, hearing voices that aren't there is an auditory
| hallucination. Among the things it can be a _symptom of_
| is schizophrenia, but "X can be a symptom of Y" is not
| the same thing as "X is Y".
|
| But an inner monologue is not an auditory hallucination.
| Its _obviously and distinctly_ internal, not something
| that "sounds" like it is coming from outside.
|
| > You might classify talking to yourself as a monologue
|
| Because it literally is.
|
| > but when most people discuss this topic, it sounds like
| they're describing a dialogue (i.e. one between multiple
| people). That seems crazy to me, because who does the
| other voice belong to?
|
| I think a lot of people do what amounts to roleplaying
| out conversations, particular on decisions which are
| troublesome, with themselves; because this is similar to
| planning a hypothetic conversation with another person,
| which I gather people without inner monologues can do
| without outward speech, I'm not sure how connected it is
| to an inner monologue. From the perspective of someone
| with one, its a fairly easy deliberate "mode switch"
| where you basically decided that that is what the
| monologue is going to focus on.
|
| It's also conceivable that, within plural systems, there
| is what amounts to an "inner dialogue" or "inner
| multiparty conversation". Not being a plural system, I
| can't comment on that and the degree to which it is
| perceptually different than an inner monologue.
|
| > If you have an inner monologue, then by definition you
| should be able to predict what it's going to say -
| because mono- means just you.
|
| That...doesn't follow. But if you have an experience of a
| conscious thought of what you are about just
| instantaneously before you say it, an inner monologue is
| a lot like that, but without the follow-through of
| speech. That is, I think you are not only wrong that it
| is true "by definition" that you should be able to
| predict an inner monologue, and that this is a false
| analogy to external speech, but that an inner monologue
| is perceptually similar to, and may well be fundamentally
| resusing the same infrastructure as, the natural internal
| "prediction" (or planning; not sure those things are, in
| this case, different) of outward-directed speech.
| burnished wrote:
| Wow, this is interesting, I thought pretty much everyone
| had an internal monologue. It feels like a colorblind
| person sharing the suspicion that everyone is just making
| up this other color spectrum.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| Yeah, really interesting, who's neurodivergent in this
| case?
|
| I guess we'll soon have a device that can find out!
| burnished wrote:
| Where does a device come into play? Just need to perform
| a poll
| ryukafalz wrote:
| This tends to start long threads with tons of anecdotes
| whenever it comes up but the answer is yes, some people
| do. (I usually do but not always, for example.)
|
| For lots and lots of discussion, you can search for
| things like this on e.g. Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r
| /NoStupidQuestions/comments/nosdwt/d...
| slingnow wrote:
| Citation definitely needed. I have a nearly constant
| internal monologue that is 100% composed of words.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Do you know what it's going to say next? If not, who's
| generating each new word? And if yes, then isn't this
| just subvocalization?
| l33t233372 wrote:
| > If not, who's generating each new word
|
| Do you know what your next thought will be? If so, how?
| Did you think it before you thought it?
| None4U wrote:
| > who's generating each new word?
|
| Thinking
| joadha wrote:
| I only have that when I'm reading something and really
| trying to take it all in.
|
| Otherwise my internal monologue is a combination of
| notions, visions, and words.
|
| Do you think in complete sentences?
| berniedurfee wrote:
| I do
| judge2020 wrote:
| Many people do have an internal monologue. The vector is
| that some police unit presents you with a login form (eg.
| for your password manager or encrypted filesystem), and you
| involuntarily think of the password, which this device
| reads and presents to them.
| airstrike wrote:
| Joke's on them, my passwords are entirely unpronounceable
| kzrdude wrote:
| only my fingers know my passwords. And no way all ten
| will rat me out
| djmips wrote:
| oh yeah, maybe they'll put electrodes on your fingers! JK
| - this doesn't seem like a viable approach.
| zamadatix wrote:
| The project page claims it's different process than thinking
| in words:
|
| > What exactly is "silent speech"? Does the user have to move
| his or her face or mouth to use the system?
|
| > Silent speech is different from either thinking of words or
| saying words out loud. Remember when you first learned to
| read? At first, you spoke the words you read out loud, but
| then you learned to voice them internally and silently. In
| order to then proceed to faster reading rates, you had to
| unlearn the "silent speaking" of the words you read. Silent
| speaking is a conscious effort to say a word, characterized
| by subtle movements of internal speech organs without
| actually voicing it.
|
| > Can this device read my mind? What about privacy?
|
| > No, this device cannot read your mind. The novelty of this
| system is that it reads signals from your facial and vocal
| cord muscles when you intentionally and silently voice words.
| The system does not have any direct and physical access to
| brain activity, and therefore cannot read a user's thoughts.
| It is crucial that the control over input resides absolutely
| with the user in all situations, and that such an interface
| not have access to a user's thoughts. The device only reads
| words that are deliberately silently spoken as inputs.
|
| https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/alterego/frequently-
| asked...
| omoikane wrote:
| If brainwave scanning reaches a point where those instruments
| are pervasive, I am sure tinfoil hats or some technology
| similar in spirit will advance accordingly.
| antegamisou wrote:
| > As people and groups increasingly move this direction do we
| think about vectors for abuse in 10, 20 or 50+ years?
|
| No, the delusional shortsighted and revenue-driven SV startup
| culture doesn't give a shit about such 'technophobic
| trivialities'.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| Yu Takagi, Shinji Nishimoto
|
| Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University,
| Japan
| antegamisou wrote:
| Yeah, put the blame on the researchers and not the greedy
| worms VCs are.
| polski-g wrote:
| There is an amazing novel called The Truth Machine by James L
| Halperin that speaks about this.
| userbinator wrote:
| This is something 1984 was slightly hinting at.
|
| Of course, these "advances" will be praised greatly in MSM as
| providing great benefits for mutes, "harmonious society", and
| whatever else happens to be the virtue-signaling fad of the
| moment.
| 323 wrote:
| Have you seen the size and cost of an fMRI machine?
|
| We are a long way away from worrying about this.
|
| Cheap cameras everywhere on the other hand...
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| A decade ago we had https://youtu.be/nsjDnYxJ0bo
| notfed wrote:
| If this technology becomes accessible to courtrooms or police,
| they will use it. There will never be a way to encrypt
| thoughts.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| Prediction: aphantasics will be in high demand for certain
| roles and activities
| flockonus wrote:
| With all the amazing advances we've seen in the recent years,
| I'd hope people would now stop thinking "there will never be
| X".
| notfed wrote:
| Ok, correction: there will never be a way to encrypt human
| thoughts. If we reach that point, we won't be human
| anymore.
| roarcher wrote:
| > do we think about vectors for abuse in 10, 20 or 50+ years?
|
| Of course, but what's to be done about it? Should we outlaw
| research like this?
| berniedurfee wrote:
| No, but maybe we should think ahead and outlaw some of the
| activities that will abuse this technology.
|
| It's not hard to imagine some really terrible ways this can
| be used.
|
| A bit of preemptive legislation might be wise as AI is
| advancing so rapidly.
| [deleted]
| Lutzb wrote:
| Reminds me of this paper [1] from 2011. See it in action in [2]
|
| 1. https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(11)...
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsjDnYxJ0bo
|
| Edit: Just realized the paper above is also from Shinji Nishimoto
| exclipy wrote:
| In 2004, I wrote a short story about exactly this in high school.
| Using neural networks to "mind read" visual images from an fMRI
| scan of a brain. I thought it was farfetched, but look where we
| are now!
| bitL wrote:
| Can't wait to this becoming one of individual performance metrics
| recording all brain states all the time (video/audio/etc.) and be
| a part of regular performance reviews...
| [deleted]
| rvz wrote:
| Another small step into creating a worse dystopia than the one we
| are already living in.
|
| Please continue. /s Governments, three letter agencies and the
| like would be absolutely excited to see this. The future that no-
| one has asked for.
| _448 wrote:
| So this is like mind reading?
| drzoltar wrote:
| My understanding is that we won't get a "mind reader" model out
| of this, because visual stimulus vs your imagination happen in
| separate parts of the brain. In other words we won't be reading
| the minds of suspected criminals anytime soon. Maybe someone with
| neurology experience can chime in here? Is it even theoretically
| possible to see what's happening in the imagination?
| wongarsu wrote:
| In the best (worst?) case the method generalizes well, and you
| could just replace the training set of fMRI scans of people
| viewing images with fMRI scans of people asked to recall images
| they were shown previously, or fMRI scans of people told to
| imagine a scene based on a verbal description. It's rarely that
| easy though
| meindnoch wrote:
| I have a hunch that any sort of mind-reading machine would have
| to be tailored uniquely to the individual you want to probe.
| The internal neural representations likely develop uniquely for
| each individual.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| We'll just train a model on training models.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Maybe that's actually feasible, in the sense that you don't
| have to train a complete new model but can spit out a
| personalized model based on a calibration sequence of ten
| images.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Yep! This process is known as fine-tuning.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > In other words we won't be reading the minds of suspected
| criminals anytime soon.
|
| Oh don't worry, this will get wrapped up in some pseudoscience
| bullshit and misleading statistics and marketed to law
| enforcement. But not to worry, at first it'll only be used on
| real bad criminals. If you have nothing to hide you have
| nothing to fear!
| chrstphrknwtn wrote:
| I don't see anything "high-res" about the reconstructed images.
| smusamashah wrote:
| There was this research where they reconstructed human face
| images from monkey brain scan.
| https://www.electronicproducts.com/scientists-reconstruct-im...
|
| What's astonishing here is the quality of reconstruction. But I
| have not seen this research referenced a lot. Does someone how
| /why the reconstruction from monkey brain looks so perfect while
| we don't have anything close from human brain?
|
| Edit: better images here
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/2133343-photos-of-human...
| lazy_moderator1 wrote:
| not the first time something like this ended up on HN
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33632337
| [deleted]
| rvnx wrote:
| Creepy and cool at the same time. It goes into the bucket of
| things that are not ethically right, same ways as implanting
| chips to read monkeys brains. But technically interesting and
| well-executed.
| not-my-account wrote:
| Why is it unethical to put chips in monkey brains?
| burnished wrote:
| Well, for one, the lived experience for most science monkeys
| is "torture, execution, autopsy", and the reason we tamper
| with their brains is due to the similarity.
|
| I suspect others are taking the wide view but I wanted to
| point out this direct answer to your question.
|
| p.s the use of "torture" is intended in contrast to the
| neutrality of clinical language on this topic, not as a hint
| at my judgement on the matter.
| gptgpp wrote:
| Oooh I love moral philosophy.
|
| Here's one deontological perspective you could take:
|
| It is always wrong to cause unecessary suffering to others.
|
| Now, the subjective traits to be considered here are
| "unecessary" and "suffering."
|
| It used to be a common belief that animals lacked the
| capacity to suffer as humans do. They could feel pain,
| nocioception sure, but whether it caused complex
| psychological suffering (torment) used to be contenious.
|
| Today, this is certainly not contentious for our closest
| relatives. All primates possess a theory of mind, long
| memory, emotional states, complex social behavior like
| lasting bonds and altruism, and other traits necessary to
| suffer in significant ways.
|
| So the focus (as long as we are considering primates,
| obviously nobody cares about model species like drosophilia
| as they have a greatly dimished capacity to suffer (edit:
| although I should mention that ranking things based on
| capacity to suffer leads to pretty awful territories too. Eg,
| if a human is severely mentally disabled, is more permissible
| to experiment on them? I think most of us would say no, which
| raises the question why it's okay to do so for other
| species)) shifts to whether causing them immense physical
| pain and torture is necessary.
|
| And this is where I think things get pretty murky, and I will
| leave the rest up to you! I wish more people were curious
| about moral philosophy and creating their own consistent
| ethical framework for the world... I think it's especially
| important in science and engineering.
|
| Of course, you could use a different model like
| utilitarianism, but utilitarianism still requires some level
| of deontological principles or you end up with a pretty
| extremist moral philosophy (same goes for just having Kantian
| deontology with no room for utilitarianism, IMO).
|
| edit 2: come to think of it, Jainists would certainly have an
| issue with experimentation even on drosophilia, so I take
| that back that "nobody" cares. IIRC they even have a mouth
| covering to prevent swallowing and killing any insects that
| might accidentally fly into their mouths, as well as a
| specialized stick to gently move things like spiders and
| other insects out of the way. I know most people would scoff
| at that, but I think their deep respect for all forms of life
| is beautiful.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Nice analysis, shame about the cop-out ("I will leave the
| rest up to you!"). You're like- here's how to use morality,
| actually using it is left as an exercise to the reader :P
|
| Re Jainism, adherents practice lacto-vegetarianism, but
| they, for example, don't eat tubers because they consider
| them too advanced, if I understand correctly. A deep
| respect for _all_ forms of life is hard to get right in a
| world where every living thing eats some other living
| thing, or dies.
| gptgpp wrote:
| It was just getting way too long lol. I rarely see
| comments that length on this site. I could get some of my
| old university readings for you if you're interested?
| They come from a science and ethics course, there were
| some really good discussions on what makes animal
| research ethical, varying from it never being ethical, to
| it being ethical only if certain precautions are taken
| (minimizing pain, treating animals with dignity, not
| using them on frivolous things like cosmetics, etc.).
|
| edit: there are also just SO many ways moral philosophies
| start to diverge at that point. Like we're talking about
| what is "necessary" animal experimentation. It's an
| important question, and one that really does boil down to
| a personal exercise.
|
| Like... Personally I have no idea how to answer it. If
| you remove animal experimentation, well there goes a
| bunch of carcinogen studies which could result in a lot
| of human suffering. I also would need to do a ton of
| research to figure out if BCI research is at a level
| where primate brains are necessary instead of simpler
| organisms.
|
| I also need to examine my own lifestyle, since hypocrisy
| severely undermines moral positions and having
| integrity/cogent beliefs and actions is essential if we
| are to engage with these subjects honestly.
|
| For example, personally I have sometimes consumed meat in
| the last year (although I generally avoid it). Supporting
| factory farming absolutely violates my deontological
| moral imperative that "it is wrong to cause unnecessary
| suffering to others", in a ton of different ways. So who
| am I to espouse views on how people should behave with
| regards to animal research, when my own behaviour is in
| such a state of disarray?
|
| Anyways... Getting pretty long again lol. Hope that
| response is helpful I know it's a bit rambling.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Thanks :) for the time being I find more than I need by
| following links on wikipedia articles. I don't think I
| have the patience for a careful reading of moral
| philosophy literature.
| gptgpp wrote:
| No problem! Just a heads up that one thing I've noticed
| about Wikipedia articles on philosophers is that they're
| not super accessible, and sometimes go on weird tangents.
|
| Like moral imperatives are essential to understanding
| Kantian Deontology, but the wikipedia article on it goes
| on a weird tangent about a "Global Economic Moral
| Imperative," which I have never head of before and is
| absolutely not something somebody trying to wrap their
| head around Kantian moral philosophy should be distracted
| with. I'm kind of annoyed it's even on there, it's
| absolutely not something Kant ever talked about.
|
| If you want a better highly detailed resource I would
| recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at
| https://plato.stanford.edu
|
| But if that's too much (it is VERY detailed)... I can
| highly recommend chatGPT. For whatever reason it
| genuinely excels at philosophy. I've used it to discuss
| different absurdist philosophers before and it did an
| excellent job, which surprised me because I find it to be
| otherwise unreliable for a lot of subjects.
|
| You can ask it to compare and contrast philosophies like
| Utilitarianism, social contractionism, deontology, etc,
| and tell it to simplify or summarize things, it is
| impressive how good it is.
|
| Another approach is, also surprisingly, Youtube!
|
| The channel PBS Crash Course Philosophy is at the level
| of an introductory philosophy course at a University and
| has good episodes on concepts like Kant's Categorical
| Imperatives (a favorite of mine):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bIys6JoEDw
|
| Also the channel the School of Life has fun little
| overviews of different philosophers that I can vouch for
| like this one:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxrmOHJQRSs
|
| And for longer format documentaries the BBC has great
| documentaries like this one on Nietzche that are
| similarly entertaining:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9f1F5jUzaM
|
| So I would recommend trying these different resources and
| seeing what combination you like.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Thanks. I think I prefer the Standord encyclopedia of
| philosophy (SEoP) to ChatGPT and youtube.
|
| For the record, my background is in mathematical logic
| (first order predicate calculus and all that) but from a
| computer science, rather than philosophical point of
| view, so I find the SEoP accessible. I just don't have
| any background in moral philosophy (except of course that
| I'm Greek and so grew up with the classics, because you
| can't avoid that).
| Tomis02 wrote:
| How did you get consent to put the chip in?
| elil17 wrote:
| Sound's like you're opposed to all animal research, not
| specifically brain-computer interface research. We also
| don't ask a monkey's consent before doing any other sort of
| experiment on it.
| Tomis02 wrote:
| I'm not necessarily opposed to it, I simply answered OPs
| question. It's unethical because there's no consent being
| given. However, humans do animal research regardless
| because they view it as "the end justifies the means",
| and they usually try to use humane methods (which is also
| not really an excuse because you can't ask the animal if
| it feels pain, or depression, or anything else).
| gptgpp wrote:
| To be fair, technically it becomes ethical when your
| position is that "the end justifies the means."
|
| IMO Utilitarianism is a particularly dangerous ethical
| framework when wielded by narcissists who have a
| difficult time imagining that they might catastrophically
| fail (looking at you Sam Bankman-Fried), or might not be
| delivering salvation to the world (looking at you Elon,
| lol).
|
| If you tell yourself it's for "the good of humanity", or
| the alternative is destruction / widespread death, you
| can justify any action.
| [deleted]
| xattt wrote:
| You ask for consent through the brain-computer interface.
|
| /s
| rvnx wrote:
| Conclusion from scientists: "If monkey drinks the
| smoothie, then it means he wants a surgery."
| [deleted]
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| [flagged]
| levzettelin wrote:
| What's ethically wrong about this?
| tiarafawn wrote:
| The end game here is developing a mind reading device. The
| endeavor device is ethically questionable because such a
| device would have a lot of ethically wrong/questionable
| applications.
| arbitrage wrote:
| You're begging the question.
| [deleted]
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| No they're not.
|
| They're not saying "X is bad because X is bad", which
| would be begging the question.
|
| They're saying X is bad because it leads to Y, and Y is
| bad. Y being bad is supposed to be common knowledge, so
| they didn't go into detail.
| zepolen wrote:
| The only thing that's ethically questionable are humans
| themselves and such a device would likely do more to expose
| the unethical.
|
| Everybody remembers what happen when online dna hit
| mainstream.
| Veen wrote:
| Yeah, that's just what we need: brain scanners purported
| to "expose the unethical". Nothing could go wrong with
| that.
|
| I find it extremely silly when people argue a technology
| is value neutral and humans are the problem so we
| shouldn't "judge" or critique the tech. Who do they think
| is going to use the technology?
| nhchris wrote:
| I think only good thoughts so I'm not worried. Plus
| anyone with control of this technology is sure to have
| our best interests in mind.
| the_af wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Think good, happy thoughts. Happiness is mandatory. Being
| unhappy is treason. Treason is punishable by death.
|
| Have a happy daycycle, citizen!
| Aransentin wrote:
| I immediately found the results suspect, and think I have found
| what is actually going on. The dataset it was trained on was 2770
| images, minus 982 of those used for validation. I posit that the
| system did not actually read any pictures from the brains, but
| simply overfitted all the training images into the network
| itself. For example, if one looks at a picture of a teddy bear,
| you'd get an overfitted picture of another teddy bear from the
| training dataset instead.
|
| The best evidence for this is a picture(1) from page 6 of the
| paper. Look at the second row. The building generated by 'mind
| reading' subject 2 and 4 look strikingly similar, but not very
| similar to the ground truth! From manually combing through the
| training dataset, I found a picture of a building that does look
| like that, and by scaling it down and cropping it exactly in the
| middle, it overlays rather closely(2) on the output that was
| ostensibly generated for an unrelated image.
|
| If so, at most they found that looking at similar subjects light
| up similar regions of the brain, putting Stable Diffusion on top
| of it serves no purpose. At worst it's entirely cherry-picked
| coincidences.
|
| 1. https://i.imgur.com/ILCD2Mu.png
|
| 2. https://i.imgur.com/ftMlGq8.png
| arnarbi wrote:
| Subject 4 in the first line also looks very different from the
| ground truth, but clearly an airliner. I'm curious if there is
| also a closer match to that one in the set.
| razor_router wrote:
| What evidence do you have that this technique is overfitting
| the training data rather than reading the brain?
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| there is also no way that you could represent details as shown
| with such a small sample.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Its still picking out the correct "overfitted" images, which is
| remarkable.
|
| Theoretically, the results would scale to more training
| images... we just need to fMRI _all_ of LAION-5B. Easy peasy.
| mkagenius wrote:
| The only question is whether more images will confuse the
| model or not?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I don't get the criticism here. Normally I'd be the first to
| err on the side of skepticism, but this work seems above board.
|
| I think the confusion is that this model is generating "teddy
| bear" internally, not a photo of a teddy bear. I.e. the
| diffusion part was added for flair, not to generate the details
| of the images that exist inside your mind. They could just as
| easily have run print("teddy bear"), but they're sending it to
| diffusion instead of printing it to console.
|
| The fact that it can correctly discern between a dozen
| different outputs is pretty remarkable. And that's all that
| this is showing. But that's enough.
|
| It's not really a "gotcha" to say that it's showing an image
| from the training set. They could have replaced diffusion with
| showing a static image of a teddy bear.
|
| It sounds like this is many readers' first time confronting the
| fact that scientists need to do these kinds of projects to get
| funding. As long as they're not being intentionally deceptive,
| it seems fine. There's a line between this and that ridiculous
| "rat brain flies plane" myth, and this seems above it.
|
| Disclaimer: I should probably read the paper in detail before
| posting this, but the criticism of "the building looks like a
| training image" is mostly what I'm responding to. There are
| only so many topics one can think about, and having a machine
| draw a dog when I'm thinking about my dog Pip is some next-
| level sci-fi "we live in the future" stuff. Even if it doesn't
| look like Pip, does it really matter?
|
| Besides, it's a matter of time till they correlate which parts
| of the brain are more prone to activating for specific details
| of the image you're thinking about. Getting pose and color
| right would go a long way. So this is a resolution problem; we
| need more accurate brain sampling techniques, i.e. Neuralink.
| Then I'm sure diffusion will get a lot more of those details
| correct.
| Aransentin wrote:
| Because pretty much everybody that reads the article will
| have taken away a grossly exaggerated idea of what the system
| is actually capable of. If Stable Diffusion was intentionally
| added "for flair" and really is unnecessary, then I would
| absolutely say that the researchers were being intentionally
| deceptive.
|
| Even if we do a massive goalpost-move and grant that the
| system is only identifying the label "dog" with a brain scan
| of a person looking at a dog, we would need to see actual
| statistics of its labelling accuracy before judging it in
| that way. If the images in the paper are cherry-picked(1), it
| could easily be only able to extract a handful of bits to no
| bits at all, and the entire thing could very well turn out
| the be replicable from random noise.
|
| (1) Note that the paper even states "We generated five images
| for each test image and selected the generated images with
| highest PSMs [perceptual similarity metrics].", so it even
| directly admits that the presented images are cherry-picked
| at least once.
| williamcotton wrote:
| It's more like this:
|
| We can take fMRI scans when people are looking at images
| and generate blurry blobs that do indeed resemble the
| images spatially.
|
| We can predict a text label of the image the person is
| looking at using another technique.
|
| If you use SD just on the text labels and you generate an
| image, you get the semantic content, but not the special
| content.
|
| If you combine the image and the text label and run it
| through an LDM then you get pictures that more closely
| match both the semantic and spatial characteristics of the
| images shown to the person.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| That's my understanding as well. It all depends whether
| their technique really can do this. If it can, it's solid
| work imo. If it can't (better than random chance), then
| it's bunk.
|
| There's not much way to know other than to try it and
| see. But that's true of almost every paper in ML. Some of
| them suck, some of them are great, but they all
| contribute something in their own way. Even "rat brain
| flies plane" paper (as much as I despise it) showed that
| you can change the values of mice neurons in a lab
| setting.
| ditchfieldcaleb wrote:
| What are you talking about? They didn't train a model for this.
| That's why it's so impressive.
| Hakkin wrote:
| Quoting from the paper, The only training
| required in our method is to con- struct linear models
| that map fMRI signals to each LDM component, and no
| training or fine-tuning of deep-learning models is
| needed. ... To construct models
| from fMRI to the components of LDM, we used
| L2-regularized linear regression, and all models were
| built on a per subject basis. Weights were estimated
| from training data, and regularization parame- ters
| were explored during the training using 5-fold cross-
| validation.
| ditchfieldcaleb wrote:
| Ah. This makes more sense. Thanks.
| kdma wrote:
| Good find, when I read it I called bullshit but I got lost
| trying to understand the diagrams. Another gotcha is the
| semantic decoder, they are just looping the model on itself "A
| cozy teddy bear" + fMRI random input => A teddy bear!!!
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I feel like you might be moving the goal posts here a bit.
| Getting a reconstruction that is a bear, even if not the same
| bear, is impressive enough to be noteworthy.
| xmonkee wrote:
| I think the point is that it's not a reconstruction. It's
| more like recognizing which letter of a thousand-letter
| alphabet is shown to the human after decoding their brain
| waves. Still impressive, but not really as impressive as
| visual reconstruction.
| groestl wrote:
| TBH, I was not impressed up until now, but given the videos
| I have in mind from people trying to use brain computing
| interfaces to type a text, now I'm impressed.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| fMRI is useless for that purpose - latency is much higher
| than any BCI method you might've seen in those videos
| bawolff wrote:
| Even if true, the result still seems very impressive to me as a
| layman.
| gfaure wrote:
| That's the whole problem -- that the reconstruction aspect of
| the contributions seems overstated given only a layperson's
| understanding.
| Hakkin wrote:
| I'm definitely not an expert in this subject, but even if the
| model is overfitted, doesn't the fact that it can pull out the
| similar images at all give credit to the idea that a larger,
| non-overfitted model could actually work as the paper
| describes? It means that there does exist some correlation
| between the shown subject, the captured fMRI data, and the
| resulting location in latent space.
| chaxor wrote:
| If things are being overfit you should typically make the
| model _smaller_ - not larger.
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| The output part is basically nonsense. It would be more
| honest if the output was a text. E.g. "Teddybear" instead of
| a bad image of a random teddybear.
| angusturner wrote:
| Largely agree with this, although I think it would be
| interesting to formulate in terms of: "what is the mutual
| information between the fMRI scan and the stimulus".
|
| i.e) is there actually more information than a few bits
| encoding a crude object category, which stable diffusion
| then hallucinates the rest (/ uses to regurgitate an over-
| fit image)?
|
| Or are there many bits, corresponding spatially to
| different regions of the stimulus - allowing for some
| meaningful degree of generalization.
| [deleted]
| Hakkin wrote:
| In this specific case I agree, since the model may be
| overfitted, it seems like it's currently just a glorified
| object classifier based on what was in the training data,
| but the fact that it works at all may indicate that the
| underlying idea has merit. They would probably have to
| train a much larger network to see if it's able to separate
| features distinctly enough using the input fMRI data to be
| useful.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| My colleagues did the same, but with EEG. This makes the
| technique much more accessible:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10121
|
| One open question in the field: how to assess the
| alignment of the AI outcomes across different methods?
| gus_massa wrote:
| The problem is that it's impossible to know what is in
| the fMRI data and what is hallucinated by the
| reconstruction.
|
| In this case, the real bear has a blue ribbon and the
| "reconstructed" bear ha a red ribbon. Is the ribbon in
| the fMRI data and the computer choose the wrong color, or
| most of the images in the training set had ribbons and
| the computer just added one.
|
| Imagine this something like this is used in the future to
| get something like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_composite . People
| may give too much importance to the details and arrest
| someone only because the computer imagined some detail,
| like the logo in the baseball cap.
| [deleted]
| mkagenius wrote:
| > Imagine this something like this is used in the future
| to get something like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_composite . People
| may give too much importance to the details and arrest
| someone only because the computer imagined some detail,
| like the logo in the baseball cap.
|
| Wow, tech not working to tech might kill someone went
| super fast here.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| In the real world when tech doesn't work people die.
|
| OP is right to be concerned. This kind of tech (magickal
| mind-reading AI?!) is going to be bought up by security
| agencies, who wiil not understand its limitations and
| misuse it to accuse people of crimes they aren't related
| to.
|
| There is ample precedent. Just for one recent example see
| plans to use an "AI lie detector" based on discredited
| pseudo-science at EU borders:
|
| https://theintercept.com/2019/07/26/europe-border-
| control-ai...
| gus_massa wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| For example plead read this old article very carefully: "
| _Police Are Using DNA to Generate 3D Images of Suspects
| They 've Never Seen_"
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkgma8/police-are-using-
| dna-... HN discussion
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33527901 (6 points |
| 3 months ago | 1 comment)
|
| The picture is a high resolution image than make the
| system look accurate. They don't use the AI buzzword, but
| my guess it's only a mater of time. Anyway, the important
| paragraph is
|
| > _Seeing the composite image with no context or
| knowledge of DNA phenotyping, can mislead people into
| believing that the suspect looks exactly like the DNA
| profile. "Many members of the public that see this
| generated image will be unaware that it 's a digital
| approximation, that age, weight, hairstyle, and face
| shape may be very different, and that accuracy of
| skin/hair/eye color is approximate," Schroeder said._
| moron4hire wrote:
| It's not an object classifier at all. They had to text-
| prompt the system, first. I think the general idea is
| using the fMRI data as the pseudorandom initialization
| for the latent diffusion model to explore.
|
| From what I understand, regular Stable Diffusion starts
| by generating a noise and then hallucinating
| modifications of that noise to make less noise. The more
| you let it run, the better the results.
|
| So instead of just starting with a meaningless random
| noise, they're using the fMRI data to start. But if you
| didn't have the text prompt, you wouldn't get the right
| image. If you were looking at a cat but told it you were
| looking at a house, you'd probably end up with a small
| house, similar to one in its training set, positioned
| roughly where the cat was located in the original image.
| Hakkin wrote:
| Briefly reading the paper, it seems they trained 2 models
| (using data from different stages in the visual cortex)
| to generate latent vectors for both the visual and
| textual representations of the fMRA data, then feed those
| into Stable Diffusion. Those are the models that would be
| overfit in this case, so instead of those models being
| able to encode features like "toy, animal, fluffy, brown,
| ears, nose, arms, legs" individually, it's likely just
| encoding all of those features combined into a generic
| "teddy bear" because the input dataset is too small.
| Obviously this is an oversimplification, but hopefully
| you get what I mean. I didn't mean it was _literally_ an
| object classifier, but that the nature of a model like
| this, with a dataset so small, it does not have to
| ability to extrapolate fine details. With a larger
| dataset and more training, it may be able to actually do
| that.
| [deleted]
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| It means there may be signal in the noise. Even if it's
| overfitting. Which makes sense.
|
| A sufficiently granular map of the human brain aught to be
| readable, if you know what the input and output signals are.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Nope.
|
| If you train a model where the input is an integer between 1
| and 10, and the output is a specific image from a set of ten,
| the model will be able to get zero loss on the task. That is
| what's happening here.
| csomar wrote:
| But unless they tested this on a single human being;
| doesn't this mean that we can read brains (it's just this
| one particular reader is bad).
| singularity2001 wrote:
| I am pretty pretty sure that this is just per person. so
| all it does is categorize complex brain patterns of one
| person into 10 category numbers and then do some hula
| hoop to display the numbers.
| darawk wrote:
| Are you saying the demonstrated results are all in sample?
| Because this is definitely not true for out of sample data.
| And the GP comment implies that there is in fact a
| validation/holdout set.
| qumpis wrote:
| I'm also confused by this. If everything was done
| properly, test results on the holdout set would've been
| shown. Wasnt that the case?
| geysersam wrote:
| Yes but the input isn't an integer from 1 to 10 right? It's
| MRI data.
|
| Although it seems they're only able to extract the subject
| of the brain activity, not any actual "pictures".
| radu_floricica wrote:
| It's still a legitimate direction to pursue. Once you get
| to large enough training sets, it's basically the same way
| our own brains work. We don't perceive or remember all the
| details of a building - just "building, style 19B", plus a
| few extra generic parameters like distance, angle, color
| and so on. Totally manageable for deep learning to
| recognize, and perhaps even combine.
| williamcotton wrote:
| _We performed visual reconstruction from fMRI signals using
| LDM in three simple steps as follows (Figure 2, middle).
| The only training required in our method is to construct
| linear models that map fMRI signals to each LDM component,
| and no training or fine-tuning of deep-learning models is
| needed. We used the default parameters of image- to-image
| and text-to-image codes provided by the authors of LDM 2,
| including the parameters used for the DDIM sam- pler. See
| Appendix A for details._
| samuelzxu wrote:
| There's also this paper with very similar methodology called
| Mind-Vis, and also accepted to CVPR 2023. https://mind-
| vis.github.io/
| dheera wrote:
| I wonder how well this would work with wearable brainwave
| detectors rather than MRI, seeing as MRI isn't really something I
| could have at home.
| babblingfish wrote:
| By brainwave detector I am going to assume you mean an EEG. An
| EEG measures electrical activity at the surface of the brain. A
| fMRI shows the activity of individual neurons of the entire
| brain in real time. It's sort of an apples to oranges
| comparison given the tools measure different things at vastly
| different resolutions.
| [deleted]
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| any idea what the best consumer brainwave detectors are on the
| market rn?
| oth001 wrote:
| OpenBCI is one. Not cheap from what I've seen.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Need answer fast?
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ACV001 wrote:
| This is big thing. Although this particular paper is not big
| thing, the many related quoted studies, set a trend.
| 752963e64 wrote:
| [dead]
| politician wrote:
| Show HN: Human Diffusion
|
| Hi everybody! We're Joe and Ahmed and super thrilled to be
| launching Human Diffusion today! We've built an exciting new
| image generation system that supports economies in developing
| nations.
|
| Our product leverages the latent creativity of humanity by
| directly fitting employees with fMRI rigs and presenting them
| with text inquiries through our API (JavaScript SDK available,
| Python soon!). Unlike competing alternatives we preserve human
| jobs in an era of AI supremacy.
|
| I'd like to address rumors that our facilities amount to slaving
| brains to machines. This is a gross misunderstanding of the
| benefits we offer to our staff - they are family. Our 18 hour
| shifts are finely calibrated based on feedback collected through
| our API, and any suggestion of exploitation is flatly untrue.
|
| Send us an email (satire@humandiffusion.com) to get early access.
| gus_massa wrote:
| In case someone miss it, there is a link to more info
| https://sites.google.com/view/stablediffusion-with-brain/ and to
| the preprint
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517004v2
| convolvatron wrote:
| very curious about the little 'semantic model' at the bottom of
| the brain. does anyone know how that gets constructed and how it
| gets fed into the results?
| 00F_ wrote:
| here we see, basically, a potential feedback loop. AI tools
| advance brain science -- more advanced brain science can then
| inform progress in AI. this is why the situation is dangerous:
| because people dont think about these feedback loops. people see
| AI and they move the goalposts and rationalize by saying that
| "cutting edge AI is still short of AGI so its ok." but most
| normal people dont think about how AI can be used to create AI or
| how AI could be used to revolutionize all kinds of fields that
| then plug back into AI. this is a very dangerous, non-linear
| space. its not the first non-linear space we have traversed but
| its certainly the least linear space we have ever entered into
| and it is the highest stakes humanity has ever or will ever deal
| with.
|
| even if this is just another bullshit article, im just making a
| point related to it. people need to be worried about this. for
| the first time in history, lots of people are now creeped out by
| AI. but they arent taking action or demanding change. we need
| regulation, grass-roots efforts to stop AI. even if the only way
| humanity could abort AI as a concept, or delay it for a
| significant amount of time, was to return to the iron age, and it
| certainly isnt the only way, it would be unambiguously worth it,
| in every way and from every angle.
|
| AI requires large compute. what we are doing now was impossible
| just 20 years ago. if not 20 then 30. you cant manufacture that
| kind of compute in your garage. global regulation would take care
| of it no problem. at the very least it would buy us an enormous
| amount of time that we could use to figure something else out.
| people always say that some hold-out country would defy global
| regulations. they wouldnt defy NATO, let alone a super-global
| coalition. and the idea of such a group or NATO enforcing compute
| regulations is not far-fetched whatsoever because the emergence
| of AGI or even advanced non-AGI goes against the interests of
| literally every human being. there is no group of humans that
| benefit from that ultimately. the problem is simply waking people
| up to this plain fact.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| When in human history have we ever been able to stop
| technological advancement?
|
| > we need regulation
|
| No, we don't. Regulation doesn't stop technological progress -
| it puts it in the hands of an elite few. And besides, there are
| 130+ regulatory jurisdictions. For example, the US government
| doesn't fund human cloning research, but that doesn't mean
| China won't fund it. Or perhaps you'd also like a one world
| government that can jail anyone doing wrongthink on their GPU?
|
| Personally, I hope we get AGI (in the most Kurzweillian sense)
| as soon as possible. It will lead to a cambrian explosion of
| advancements across all fields of science. This is our best
| chance of cracking the secrets of the universe and answering
| fundamental questions, like whether FTL interstellar travel is
| truly impossible, or whether aging is really irreversible.
|
| Imagine an intelligence unencumbered by the "technical debt"
| we've accrued over centuries of building our scientific model
| of the world. AGI could simulate infinitely many novel paths
| through the "tech tree" of human history, replaying our
| scientific discoveries and trying different assumptions. What
| if we had 12 fingers and mathematics started from a base-12
| system? What if we could see in infrared? We would have
| followed entirely different scientific paths; AGI will be able
| to find what we missed.
| 00F_ wrote:
| from your comment i am pretty confident that you are around
| 19 years old. it doesnt seem like you actually read my
| comment. i guess i will respond to you but there is no
| comment in the world that could set you straight. you need
| more experience and personal development before you could
| begin to understand this topic.
|
| someone once said "do not see things as they are, see them as
| they might be." this quote is really about discoveries and
| the tendency of humans to only see things in terms of what
| already exists. and the implication is that humans have a big
| blind spot for seeing whats next. thats why we need a
| motivational quote to help us to see things as they might be
| rather than simply as they are. it is true that there has
| never been a global regulation or ban like the one we are
| talking about except maybe ozone layer emissions. but by this
| same metric, AGI can never exist because it has never existed
| before. its a silly response and a complete waste of time.
| even if such regulations already existed for other things in
| the past, you still would be here saying it was impossible
| but for some other reason. the key here is to make up your
| mind last, not first.
|
| regulation can stop anything as long as it doesnt break the
| laws of physics. and, if you had read my comment, i explain
| why china wouldnt pursue AGI. even if china did pusue AGI,
| they probably wouldnt be able to crack it. none of the major
| breakthroughs have come out of china.
|
| "i hope we get AGI as soon as possible. [it will lead to many
| incredible things]." you have no idea what AGI will lead to.
| you just cherry pick all the cool stuff that would be
| possible but totally ignore all of the other implications.
| there would be an immediate and total power vacuum caused by
| the advancements. these advancements would be so huge that it
| would change the geopolitical equation beyond recognition.
| the concept of a country would probably be economically and
| geopolitically untenable. there would have to be a transition
| to an entirely new order where the dominant meta-organisms
| arent countries but some bizarre AGI conglomerate that looks
| like an expressionist painting in comparison to what we have
| now. the transition to this new world, whatever it looks
| like, would involve war. probably the biggest war that has
| ever happened. this is intrinsic and unavoidable. it cannot
| be disproved or denied. the fundamental economic and
| geopolitical equation that underlies the current equilibrium
| would change suddenly and violently.
|
| the current world order will disappear, you will probably
| lose everything you own and everyone you love along with your
| country. a global war will break out where there is a high
| chance that all established rules of engagement are ignored.
| weapons or methods that render the environment unlivable to
| humans will more than likely be used because the dominant
| organisms and meta-organisms wont need humans in any
| practical sense. and after the dust settles and a new
| equilibrium is reached, the existence of humans will end very
| quickly (if it hadnt already) because we will offer nothing
| of value anymore and if our existence presents the slightest
| inconvenience to the machines, they will allow us to die. and
| that is just the scenario where they are apathetic towards
| us. i have not even begun to discuss the repulsive, grotesque
| nature of our suffering if we ever are the subject of AGI
| malice. those possibilities are always brushed aside as fear
| mongering so i dont even bring them up. but they should play
| into our decision to move forward or not.
|
| at the very best, we will somehow manage to attach ourselves
| as parasites to the new machine meta-organisms and experience
| an existence with no agency or purpose other than to ogle at
| the machines. but that wont happen because the machines will
| immediately embark on doing things that humans could never,
| ever understand.
|
| "what if we had 12 fingers [...]." what if indeed. perhaps i
| was too hasty... no cost is too high in pursuing the deeper
| mysteries of the universe.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| > from your comment i am pretty confident that you are
| around 19 years old... you need more experience and
| personal development before you could begin to understand
| this topic
|
| And from the first paragraph of your comment, I didn't read
| the rest of it. Have a nice day (or don't).
| armatav wrote:
| You can't stop it - certainly not with regulation; so why
| so much concern for the "geopolitical equation"?
|
| Fear won't change that - and we are at least 20 years away
| from a neuromorphic revolution.
|
| You've got enough time to come to grips with it.
| 00F_ wrote:
| lets say there was a global coalition of countries that
| considered the creation or advancement of AGI a material
| threat to the safety of all humans. this would qualify
| countries that do advanced AI research for retaliation
| from NATO or other international bodies that might be
| created. it is clear that AI is only able to move forward
| in an environment of cheap compute and international
| academic collaboration. progress in AI would slow to a
| snails pace if feature size were regulated, total compute
| were regulated like carbon emissions and explicit
| research on AI was banned. it would be an environment of
| very expensive compute and no mainstream research or
| collaboration. this would at the very least buy us
| massive amounts of time. can you say anything substantive
| to show otherwise?
|
| lol neuromorphic revolution. thats cute.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| In 1990, there was a train-wreck Wim Wenders movie that I loved
| and still love called "Until the End of the World". It was about
| a scientist (played by Max Von Sydow) who created a machine that
| could record someone's dreams or visual experiences directly from
| the brain and play them back even to a blind person.
| https://youtu.be/gilzgbdk300?t=442
|
| Anyways, the images that were depicted in this work of fiction
| shot in 1990 about "the future" of 2000, had a very interesting
| look to them-- kind of distorted and dreamy like the images in
| the paper.
|
| Are the images in the paper just a case of overfitting?
| -\\_(tsu)_/- but it still makes me giddy remembering the Wim
| Wenders film.
| dustractor wrote:
| Such a great soundtrack too! I rewatched it last week just for
| the jams. Also, for those into the glitch art genre, the dream
| sequences were WAY ahead of their time.
| ninesnines wrote:
| I am suspicious of these results; if we blast a high frequency
| visual stimulus of a couple of letters and do quite a lot of post
| processing we can sometimes get a visual cortex map of those
| particular letters. However, these paper examples are very
| complex images and I'm very doubtful of the results - aransentin
| above made a couple of very valid points
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I mean in 2011, they were already able to do some basic
| reconstruction: see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsjDnYxJ0bo
|
| I could imagine improvements since then,especially with
| advances in image networks.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-03-04 23:01 UTC)