2.29.2004
Computers get more and more creative
Stephen Thaler's Creativity Machine
From the article:
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From the article:
- 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, Mo., gets credit for all those things, but he's really just ``the man behind the curtain,'' he said. 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- IEI's bleeding edge neural network technology represents "AI's best bet" at creating human level intelligence in machines. Inevitably, it won't be ordinary computer programs, genetic algorithms, or even advanced hardware innovations that will achieve the super-intelligent AI systems portrayed in science fiction. Instead, IEI's self-learning, contemplative neural systems will drive all forms of synthetic intelligence, whether they be embedded within household appliances or within large computational clusters that are relentlessly churning Nobel caliber discoveries.
Founded in 1997 by Dr. Stephen Thaler, Imagination Engines, Inc. (IEI) has pursued its long range objective of producing trans-human intelligence in machines, while supplying a range of more conventional neural network services to such customers as Gillette, Anheuser-Busch, Air Force Research Laboratory, Boeing, Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Raytheon, General Electric, Ladish, and Bekaert. After all, who would be in a better position to provide such services than the most prodigious inventor of foundational neural network paradigms in the world?
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