Turning Neural Networks Upside Down Produces Psychedelic Visuals

cjellibebi writes: Neural networks that were designed to recognize images also hold some interesting capabilities for generating them. If you run them backwards, they turn out to be capable of enhancing existing images to resemble the images they were meant to try and recognize. The results are pretty trippy. A Google Research blog post explains the research in great detail. There are pictures, and even a video. The Guardian has a digested article for the less tech-savvy.

Comments

Is this your brain on drugs?

[jscottk]

This makes me wonder if a similar process is occurring in the brain of someone on a psychedelic. Are the compounds stimulating pattern recognition feedback loops from the inside out, causing people to see their imaginations manifested in the fuzz?

Re:They've nailed it

[qpqp]

While I agree that the photos provoke a similar reaction on a superficial glance, what struck me while on psychedelics was the actual texture of what you see, which extends fractal-wise when concentrated upon.