September 17, 2006
The Imagination Engine
The Air Force is looking into the work of Stephen Thaler for building up an AI engine for controlling both single and multiple robot swarms. While I am not directly familiar with his work, he seems to have done something quite interesting with Neural Nets by injecting noise and feedback into the system. The article in Wired is an interesting read, and certainly looks promising.
It's based on work by Stephen Thaler, who came to prominence 10 years ago with his brainchild the Creativity Machine. This is software for generating new ideas on the basis of existing ones, and it has already written music, designed soft drinks, and discovered novel minerals that may rival diamonds in hardness.
The software is a type of neural network with two special features. One introduces perturbations, or "noise," into the network so that existing ideas get jumbled into new forms. The second is a filter that assesses the new ideas against existing knowledge and discards those that are unsuitable. Current applications range from detecting intruders in computer networks to developing new types of concrete and optimizing missile warheads.