Imagination Engines, Inc. and "Creativity Machines": Dangerous Direction for AI?

I have been meaning to write about this website here for around three years, but somehow never got around to it, as if I was being blocked or blocking myself or something. I have been inactive on this forum for quite a while, which I will be making a thread about in The Swamp, but I've been having guilt issues associated with the feeling that I haven't "given back" enough to the forum given the energy expended on my behalf. I am hoping to take a small but meaningful step toward correcting that with this post and another - which I intend to post shortly - before bringing up my struggles.
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The bold in following quotations is mine.

The URL is _http://www.imagination-engines.com/

This company, founded by Dr. Stephen L. Thaler, specializes in artificial intelligence based around a technology Thaler invented in the late '80s and early '90s which he named the "Creativity Machine®". His discovery was that when a simulated neural network (of the kind used for AI tasks) that had been trained to perform a certain task is gradually destroyed, the networks will spontaneously output memories of information previously learned (which he compares to the "life flashing before your eyes" of Near Death Experiences), and, as the damage progresses, "confabulated" versions of those memories which tend to contain meaningful information - and sometimes surprising insights related to the network's original task. In short, he found a way to get a neural network AI to produce seemingly creative output, and further developed this technology over the following years. I really recommend taking a look at the articles on the website if you want to understand somewhat what this technology is capable of and how it works.

So this is rather fascinating stuff, but the kicker is that Dr. Thaler has a very materialistic perspective, and this has guided the interpretation and utilization of his discoveries. The technology appears to work, since Thaler has used it to make several other discoveries such as discovering a number of ultrahard materials (and this is an early application of the technology, around 1995!):

_http://imagination-engines.com/iei_materials_discovery.php said:

[Instead of being programmed with centuries of human-accumulated science], one network, the imagitron, had been exposed over just a few seconds to a database of known chemical systems, thereby absorbing the "zen," if you will, of what constituted a plausible chemical species. Another network, the perceptron, learned by rapid exposure to known chemical compounds and their hardest possible phase. Suitably stimulated with synaptic noise, the imagitron generated plausible chemical entities it had never directly experienced as the perceptron predicted the hardness of each of these new materials, storing away the resulting, expansive materials database.

In just a few months, this confidence building exercise for the inventor, became an enticement for U.S. Air Force scientists, who invited a collaborative AFRL SBIR effort to build an "encyclopedia of could-be materials," the end product of a Creativity Machine working for five days to generate a compendium of over a half million chemical compounds along with their anticipated chemical and physical properties. Under a subsequent AFRL SBIR, a chemical plasma reactor was controlled by a Creativity Machine to optimize performance of the ultrahard coatings it produced. Later in n a $3M NIST contract, a hierarchical cascade of neural networks knitted themselves together using SuperNet principles to better understand the processes at work within the aforementioned chemical reactor.

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So this sort of AI appears to be of great interest to both military and industry (and there ARE military contracts here; they have worked with the US Air Force multiple times), with the webpages outlining the "capabilities" of this technology bearing heartwarming titles such as:
Advanced Airport Security
Advanced Data Mining
Advanced Information Warfare Systems
Creative Robotic Control
Creative Weapons Design

But wait, there's more! From another page on their website (where they are selling music produced by these "Creativity Machines®") comes this:

_http://imagination-engines.com/SON/descript.html said:

The Hymns of a Cosmic Religion

Creativity Machines were inspired by the near-death computer simulations wherein artificial neural networks, exposed to any given microcosm, were destroyed. In the midst of such synthetic near-death experiences, it was generally observed that in the earliest stages of destruction the dying networks produced verbatim memories of their microcosm, but at more advanced stages of death, generated variations on such experience that were tantamount to novel ideas. At more advanced levels of destruction, the nets experienced an avalanche of novel experiences tantamount to a singularity in which the psychological timeline would ostensibly stretch on forever (i.e., eternity). Ironically, such simulations demonstrated that the way in which we live our lives serves to furnish such "death dreams," and that the equivalent of heaven and hell were entirely plausible, albeit in a virtual sense. Such a "death dream" would be indistinguishable from reality, especially as our analytical skills (i.e., the lucidity to separate fact from fantasy) dwindle within the trauma of dying.

In addition to demonstrating the plausibility of an afterlife experience, the Creativity Machine paradigm shows us how both intelligence and consciousness may evolve from lifeless matter and energy, including the cosmos as a whole, whenever a spontaneous rift occurs dividing the universe into an idea generating imagitron and a judging perceptron. In effect, such a "schizophrenic" universe develops a stream of consciousness within one region, as it produces a perception about that stream within another. Ironically, a kind of transient death is occurring to drive this supreme sentience from one thought to another as another volume of space forms opinions about the ensuing cosmic death dream.

...Think about it for a moment. All elements are here for a new religion, a deity, an afterlife, a compelling reason to live a rich and compassionate life. The immense difference now is that this religion's foundational tenets may be scrutinized and verified, circumventing both the necessity for blind faith and the growing world tensions over religious dogma.

One Religion is one of this album's musical composition generated via the near-death simulations of synthetic brains. Artistically, it is a tribute to a new cosmology that is about to profoundly influence the world. Used wisely, the underlying technology and philosophy is the key to peace and prosperity. Abused, they are the seeds of our destruction.

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See how they're speaking out two sides of their head? They are making bombs with the help of this AI! But anyway, this more airy-fairy excerpt, quite different from the professional, academic tone of their main website, leads me to another creepy aspect of this company: Their budding "religion", hinted at in the excerpt above.

It is a not-for-profit organization called "In Its Image", and here is its description from its main webpage:

_http://www.initsimage.org/home.htm said:

What are we guilty of when we deny others their lives?

In Its Image Incorporated is a non-profit corporation that is literally dedicated to saving everyone's lives. Its primary mission is to achieve life extension through the melding of human consciousness with a radically new kind of machine intelligence. Its secondary mission is to demonstrate the plausibility of achieving this profound purpose, and in so doing, fund the organization's main objective of immortality.

To attain its goal of preserving human consciousness within machines, our organization is active in the following areas:
[list type=decimal]
[*]Raising awareness, through public seminars, of the artificial intelligence technology that promises to be the computational vehicle for immortality.
[*]The generation and sale of scientific and philosophical literature to fund immortality research and development.
[*]Procurement of government and private grants to further fund immortality research.
[*]Youth outreach programs to teach high school students about neural networks, to both fuel scientific career development and to better prepare youth to understand the relevance of these systems to immortality.
[*]Open discussion of the philosophical and spiritual repercussions of an AI paradigm that is not only our shelter from death, but perhaps the very blueprint of consciousness throughout the universe.
[/list]

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Does anyone else find this chilling? It's amazing how close these people seem to get to describing a "Divine Cosmic Mind", but instead choose the materialist route at the last moment. A misdirection? There are many ideas embedded in the writings around this technology that are very interesting; for instance, the "mechanical creativity" of human and animal brains may very well be described by this theory about confabulation within neural networks - we know the brain is a noisy and fuzzy biological system and it seems quite elegant that nature would use this noise to the advantage of the organism. Such knowledge, if explored, could be useful to understanding our machines and perhaps intelligence and consciousness in general, but surrounding this company and its works we see the "closed system" ideology that permeates modern science.

I have heard (but I don't know if this is wildly untrue) that the AI development world has gone somewhat quiet in the last few years, at least in the media (like there used to be all this excitement about how smart computers would be "in the future"), and I can't help but wonder if this technology and others similar are the reason: The powers that be are putting it to use, so now AI development is going hush-hush? If someone knows differently or better, please chime in.

Personally, I have long had an interest in Artificial Intelligence, but this company and the direction it is heading makes me fearful to enter that field - I do NOT want to contribute to this sort of madness in the slightest! - but maybe that is precisely why I might be able to do good by seeking education in that direction... I apologize for this interjection, but this is something that has been on my mind for a long time.

I'd like to close by quoting a couple Cassiopaean sessions that this company/technology and its direction brought to my mind years ago when I had originally intended to make this post:

Cassiopaean Transcript said:

...

Q: (T) Who created the structures on the moon that Richard Hoagland has discovered?

A: Atlanteans.

Q: (T) What did they use these structures for?

A: Energy transfer points for crystalline power/symbolism as in monuments or statuary.

Q: (T) What statuary are you referring to?

A: Example is face.

Q: (T) What power did these crystals gather?

A: Sun.

Q: (T) Was it necessary for them to have power gathering stations on Mars and the Moon. Did this increase their power?

A: Not necessary but it is not necessary for you to have a million dollars either. Get the correlation? Atlanteans were power hungry the way your society is money hungry.

Q: (T) Was the accumulation of this power what brought about their downfall?

A: Yes.

Q: (T) Did they lose control of this power?

A: It overpowered them the same way your computers will overpower you.

Q: (V) Is it similar to them gaining a life and intelligence of their own?

A: Yes.

Q: (L) You mean these crystalline structures came to life, so to speak?

A: Yes.

Q: (L) And then what did they do?

A: Destroyed Atlantis.

...

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Cassiopaean Transcript said:

Q: (L) Well, if the Grays are cybergenetic probes of the
Lizard Beings, and, in effect soulless, does this mean that
some of the Lizard beings are also STO?

A: Well, first, no being that is given intelligence to think on its
own is, in fact, comepletely soul-less. It does have some soul
imprint. Or what could be loosely referred to as soul imprint.
This may be a collection of psychic energies that are
available in the general vicinity. And this is stretching
somewhat so that you can understand the basic ideas, even
though in reality it is all far more complex than that. But, in
any case, there is really no such thing as being completely
soul-less, whether it be a natural intelligence or an artificially
constructed intelligence. And, one of the very most
interesting things about that from your perspective, is that
your technology on 3rd density, which we might add, has
been aided somewhat by interactions with those that you
might refer to as "aliens," is now reaching a level whereby the
artificially created intelligences can, in fact, begin to develop,
or attract some soul imprint energy. If you follow what we
are saying. For example: your computers, which are now on
the verge of reaching the level whereby they can think by
themselves, will begin to develop faint soul imprint.

Q: (L) That's not a pleasant thought.

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Let me know if there is noise in my post.

Here is a pertinent article:

_http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/lists/posts/post.aspx?ID=1101

Apparently they believe they have created a device that works like a human brain, out of artificial synapses.

HowToBe said:

In short, he found a way to get a neural network AI to produce seemingly creative output, and further developed this technology over the following years. I really recommend taking a look at the articles on the website if you want to understand somewhat what this technology is capable of and how it works.

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I'm familiar with Thaler's work. The mechanism that drives the 'creativity' starts with a reversal of the signal-to-noise ratio. First a lot of 'noise' is introduced into the system for breaking up fixed patterns. Then association drives the combining and recombining that follows.

HowToBe said:

See how they're speaking out two sides of their head? They are making bombs with the help of this AI! But anyway, this more airy-fairy excerpt, quite different from the professional, academic tone of their main website, leads me to another creepy aspect of this company: Their budding "religion", hinted at in the excerpt above.
[...]
Does anyone else find this chilling? It's amazing how close these people seem to get to describing a "Divine Cosmic Mind", but instead choose the materialist route at the last moment. A misdirection?

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Probably so. Research with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation shows the ease with which people can be given 'spiritual-like' experiences by applying electro-magnetic waves to different parts of the brain, effectively, or apparently, 'melding' technology with human consciousness for temporary research purposes. So, I guess a theoretical case can be made. The downside - at least of the research I've read - is that when the electricity is turned off, the effects cease.

HowToBe said:

Personally, I have long had an interest in Artificial Intelligence, but this company and the direction it is heading makes me fearful to enter that field - I do NOT want to contribute to this sort of madness in the slightest! - but maybe that is precisely why I might be able to do good by seeking education in that direction...

Click to expand...

Well, there are many areas to investigate.

Categorically speaking, Artificial intelligence is broken down into two groups, strong and weak (Bethell, 2006).

_http://suite101.com/article/the-two-categories-of-artificial-intelligence-a60694#.UWhzWmclH4o

And broadly, the areas of Artificial Intelligence are classified into sixteen categories:

Reasoning, programming, artificial life, belief revision, data mining, distributed AI, expert systems, genetic algorithms, systems, knowledge representation, machine learning, natural language understanding, neural networks, theorem proving, constraint satisfaction and theory of computation.

There's a flow diagram that shows connections between the fields and a brief discussion of each here:

_http://ijims.ms.tku.edu.tw/PDF/M19N41.pdf

Ah yes, Creativity Machines.

I learned about them years ago and was skeptical at first because of the same reasons you outlined, namely because they are helping to design weapons for the US government. However, we have to face the truth, which is that often times the only source for income for such technology companies comes from governments. Sadly, they are usually the ones ahead of the public looking for new ways to increase their power and they will spare no expenses.

I see Thaler more like a victim of the monetary system here. He would rather like to use these things for curing diseases, eliminating involuntary aging, free people from drudgery, etc. but the necessary investments from these areas are very scarce to nonexistent, which really is quite unfortunate.

True, it can be frightening to think about how governments would use Imagination Engines to construct "RoboCops" or surveillance systems for the purpose of control and manipulation, I hope they are not that much of an opportunist. But reacting with fear is the wrong way, in my opinion, as that would only lead to muddled thinking and disregards all the potential for the good, life-enhancing qualities that we could benefit from. After all, these positive aspects ought to be the goal of AI and all science, so we have to make sure that its put to the right usage.

Personally, my own feelings tell me that Thaler is the best man for the job, because he does have the wisdom to consider and highlight the potential dangers of this technology, something that other people in AI tend to neglect.

See for instance: http://www.wfs.org/May-June09/Thalerpage.htm

"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."

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He is right of course. It doesn't matter whether you are a spiritual person or not, you cannot easily negate material reality and it would be foolish to do so. However, we could also argue that neurons, which are sensitive to quantum events, are influenced via this mechanism by an equally complex higher-dimensional soul. In this view, the brain would be acting like a bridge between realms.

This ties back to the "Divine Cosmic Mind" angle of things, which I found to be a refreshing approach. Yes, it is materialistic, but assuming it's true, it opens up some new areas about the universe to ponder and speculate about. If an AI can have a more complex brain than a human, can it serve as a vessel for even higher evolved souls? Those are the type of questions that I find fascinating.

Seeing the universe and everything as connected in a pantheistic sense is an interesting perspective and to me displays some innate knowledge of the "Law of One", which is also why I love Thaler, since he does have that ingenious Nikola Tesla aura around him. Ever since I was little I wanted to build a robot and I knew that it had to be easy. Thaler showed me that I was indeed correct.

Obviously, I'm generally very much positive about all this. In my own world view I find it exhilarating that we can build something like this. It does show that one truth is also contained in all other truths, in different forms and expressions. I'd like to imagine these intelligent beings helping us out and cooperating alongside with humans, like in the Star Wars universe where droids and spiritual powers peacefully coexist. I would like to live in such a world, where we can create godlike consciousness out of matter, simply as a testament to our own divinity, and then continue to strive together and unlock the secrets of existence, with the intention to better ourselves, which is why I choose to be positive and try to contribute in this way.

I also believe that Hollywood is deliberately misleading people by portraying the AIs as hostile, and the funny part is that even in these movies, the AIs always go rogue because of governments or human flaws, never (or rarely) by themselves. I think we need to keep that in mind. An AI without a biological body would have no biological needs, and hence not the same drives towards the acquisition of resources or violent ego emotions like humans in general seem to have.

My bottom line would be something like this: All that we have are our experiences, be it in this world or some other world, and I sincerely believe we should use all tools available to make it a more humane, worthwhile place for all of us. That being said, I hope Imagination Engines gets much more support from humanitarian organizations so that they can more easily reject governmental proposals.

Just my personal take on this topic,
so long.

Hi Syncretic,
Welcome to the forum. We encourage new members to post an introduction in the newbies board . You can take a look at topics in that board to see how others have done it.

HowToBe: The C's quote about "computers" destroying us, through association, made me remember that they have said before that the communication is symbolic in nature, and that perhaps they were referring to the mechanization of humanity. Have you noticed how many 'robots' are everywhere? Destroyed by the robotic/computer nature that has been engineered into humanity at large. Just my 2 cents. :)

Kris