Last Day at the 2004 ACM Conference

Today, we heard a talk from Stephen Thaler of Imagination Engines, Inc. He talked about his many years of research he has conducted in the area of AI, or as he calls them, creative machines (CM). His research has led him to apply notions of neural networks to develop “embarrassingly simple” algorithms to allow the software to “learn” from its own mistakes. Essentially, the program is given an objective, a definition of a “good” outcome, and a definition of a “bad” outcome. From this simple information, the program can work towards the objective, and learn from its mistakes.

He showed us demonstration after demonstration. One program invented new English words by recognizing trends in a giant inputted list of preexisting words. Another one recognized objects in 3D space. Another could tell the user what expression they were giving to the camera (happy, sad, surprised, etc). Still another one was fed a large collection of songs, and it was able to compose/invent thousands of completely original songs based off of them. That last one completely blew my mind. He even sampled one for us, and it really didn’t sound half bad. So I guess this guy is doing lots of work for the government and raking in the cash.

Last night there was an “unofficial” (as in keg-equipped) ACM house party where they spun techno breaks. It was a good amount of fun.

Oh, and here are the pictures that I took.