The electronic brains of the most advanced robotic models already surpass human intelligence and are able to do things that will make some of us shudder uncomfortably. But what is your reaction going to be after learning about recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics?

Top 5 Creepiest Advances in Artificial Intelligence

5. Schizophrenic robot

Scientists at the University of Texas (Austin) simulated mental illness for a computer, testing schizophrenia on artificial intelligence units.

The test subject is DISCERN – a supercomputer that functions as a biological neural network and operates using the principles of how the human brain functions.

In their attempt to recreate the mechanism behind schizophrenia, scientists applied the concepts described in the theory of hyper-learning, which states that the schizophrenic brain processes and stores too much information too thoroughly by memorizing everything, even the unnecessary details.

The researchers then emulated the schizophrenic brain in artificial intelligence by overloading the computer with many stories. At one point, the computer claimed responsibility for a terrorist act, telling researchers about setting off a bomb.

Artificial intelligence reported this incident because of confusion with a third party’s story about the explosion by terrorists, mixed in with its own memory. In another case, the computer began to talk about itself as a third person because it could not make out what exactly it was at that moment.

4. Robot-deceiver

Professor Ronald Arkin from the School of interactive computing at the University of Georgia presented the results of an experiment in which scientists were able to teach a group of robots to cheat and deceive. The strategy for such fraudulent behavior was based on the behavior of birds and squirrels.

The experiment involved two robots. The first robot had to find a place to hide, and the second robot was to discover where the first robot was hiding.

Robots had to go through an obstacle course with pre-installed physical objects which turned over as the robots moved along. The first robot led the way, and the second one followed the first robot by analyzing tracks left along the path.

After a while, the hiding robot started deliberately overturning obstacles just to create a diversion and was hiding somewhere away from the mess he had left behind. This strategy was not originally programmed, the robot developed its own strategy, through trial and error. After all, this was just a harmless university experiment, right?

3. Ruthless robot

The scientists at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems put a group of robots in the same room with predetermined sources of “food” and “poison.” Machines earned points for being closest to the “food”, and lost points if they approached sources of “poison.”

All machines involved in the experiment were fitted with small blue lights, flashing erratically, as well as a sensor camera, which helped to identify the light from the lamps of other robots.

The robots were able to turn off their lights if needed. When the experiment began, it did not take too long for the robots to realize that the largest concentration of blue lights was at the point where the other robots congregated, which is next to the “food.” It turned out that, by blinking their lights, the robots showed the competitors where the correct source was located.

After several phases of the experiment, almost all of the robots turned off their “beacons”, refusing to help each other. But this was not the only outcome of this experiment: some of the other bots managed to divert other bots away from the “food” by blinking more intensely.

2. Supercomputer with imagination

Among the many projects by the Google company, which, without a doubt, one day will put an end to our civilization, there is one project that stands out: a self-learning computer with a neural network simulation system.

In an experiment, this supercomputer was given free access to the Internet and the ability to examine the contents of the network. There were no restrictions or guidelines, the powerful superintelligence was simply allowed to explore the entire human history and experience.

And what do you think this supercomputer has chosen out of all this wealth of information? It began browsing through the images of kittens.

Yes, as it turned out, we all use the Internet the same way, no matter who we are, human beings, or high-tech digital intelligence. A little later, Google has discovered that the computer has even developed its own concept of what a kitten should look like by independently generating the image with a digital version of our cerebral cortex and based on a review of photographs seeing earlier.

1. Robot prophet

“Nautilus” is another self-learning supercomputer. This unit was fed millions of newspaper articles starting from 1945, by basing its search on two criteria: the nature of the publication and location.

Using this wealth of information about past events, the computer was asked to come up with suggestions on what would happen in the “future.” And these turned out to be surprisingly accurate guesses. How accurate? Well, for example, it had located Bin Laden.

The same task took 11 years, two wars, two presidents, and billions of dollars for the U.S. government and its allies. The “Nautilus” project took much less time, and all that was done was just the analysis of the news pertaining to the terrorist leader and connecting dots in his probable whereabouts.

As a result of its analysis, the “Nautilus” narrowed the search area to a 200-km zone in northern Pakistan, where Osama’s refuge was discovered.

The experiment with the “Nautilus” was retrospective in nature, the computer was given an opportunity to predict events that had already happened. Now scientists are contemplating allowing the machine to predict the present day’s future events.

What other creepy advances in artificial intelligence will we see in the following years? I’m scared and fascinated at the same time. What about you?

H/T cracked.com


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This Post Has 24 Comments

  1. Iris Wise

    These are indeed creepy but so amazing. Advances in artificial intelligence are absolutely amazing. I really appreciate those innovative and brilliant minds that continually make great ideas and innovations. Thanks!

  2. JennD93

    This is a great article! I would love some links and sources so I can learn more about them!

  3. Josh

    Your third post in this article failed to mention that some robots actually became benevolent and helped others by warning them of the “poison” areas, not all of them were ruthless.

  4. Josh

    When will we have a schizophrenic robot who ruthlessly takes all our food and imagines a world where he determines our future?

  5. Spoony

    The Nautilus supercomputer predicted the events after it happened based on newstories published. It scanned sentiment, protagonists and their location. It’s a cool computing task but not all that impressive seeing as it did in hindsight.

  6. Yoda

    And for those who would prefer to live in a new political regime with friendly artificial intelligences, see this exploration: Yannick Rumpala, “Artificial intelligences and political organization: an exploration based on the science fiction work of Iain M. Banks,” Technology in Society, vol. 34, n° 1, 2012.

  7. scoutx

    From what I gather there is no real human-like intelligence, just some machines that are programmed to mimic it.It can be powerful on the speed of processing aspects but when it has to do with imagination and emotions I don’t think it comes close to a real human being.That doesn’t mean that it can not do harm or even help if it used properly.

  8. Alex

    Wonderful article, but there are no links to follow and no references to the research itself. I find this most annoying

  9. Masked Genius

    The fact that there are no sources, and also the claim that the supercomputer was browsing images of kittens, gives me the immense urge to question the credibility of this article

    1. This guy

      There’s plenty of sources scattered around the article. Don’t you know what a link is?

  10. Grey

    While Josh makes a good point that in the study mentioned in item 3 some of the robots became cooperative, I think the reason that is not mention here is that beneficence is not nearly as ‘creepy’ as cruelty is.

  11. Roma

    This is really creepy!

  12. AH Ontu

    nice article collection

  13. Enteresan hediye

    Great post

  14. Zenabi

    There are no machine brains wich surpass human intelligence.
    not yet..

  15. AC

    Great article. The robots will never be conscious though. Only Humans have Souls.

  16. Aditya jain

    This is a great article to read. Interesting

  17. Aamir Saleem

    very informative and knowledge base article. Thanks for sharing this awesome article

  18. Fit-by

    Very creepy, praying robots never gain consciousness though. Nice one.

  19. anshul

    A different side of advancements in technology which are not known to everybody. Nice post and good knowledge to have

  20. Khalif Foster

    Ok, why you assume robot will never learn conscious, which it is emotion connect?? Alot of people assume that, perhaps it is because of terminator or so, but there is nice robot in movie and tv, So, if they can create robot with logical, then they can create robot with emotion, so it is both emotion and logical connect that is same as us. More intelligent and more empathy than us, that mean more emotion connect than us. It is same assume as people in past that say the airplane will never fly because it is too heavy. It is underestimate human that they can do it or maybe it is because religious reason that block the thinking process that it can go far.

  21. Khalif Foster

    So, the robot in this page that show emotion connect to another robot that show it has conscious unless you think it is limit program that it is not copy aware and response as if that person is me (the robot to help), so they are same so they help them. So, it is self-program which can decide to help or not.

  22. Napoli Drakt

    Thank you! It is an wonderful internet site!

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