Meet Norman, the Psychopathic AI (bbc.com)

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created a psychopathic algorithm named Norman, as part of an experiment to see what training artificial intelligence on data from "the dark corners of the net" would do to its world view. Unlike most "normal" algorithms by AI, Norman does not have an optimistic view of the world. BBC reports: The software was shown images of people dying in gruesome circumstances, culled from a group on the website Reddit. Then the AI, which can interpret pictures and describe what it sees in text form, was shown inkblot drawings and asked what it saw in them. These abstract images are traditionally used by psychologists to help assess the state of a patient's mind, in particular whether they perceive the world in a negative or positive light. Norman's view was unremittingly bleak -- it saw dead bodies, blood and destruction in every image. Alongside Norman, another AI was trained on more normal images of cats, birds and people. It saw far more cheerful images in the same abstract blots.

The fact that Norman's responses were so much darker illustrates a harsh reality in the new world of machine learning, said Prof Iyad Rahwan, part of the three-person team from MIT's Media Lab which developed Norman. "Data matters more than the algorithm. "It highlights the idea that the data we use to train AI is reflected in the way the AI perceives the world and how it behaves."

Comments

Not just machine learning

[Steve1952]

Anyone see any correlation between these machine learning results and results with real live humans? Now think about the effect of all the adaptive algorithms on social media driving individuals to ever stranger and more isolated information bubbles.

I hope nobody thinks this was surprising

[ScentCone]

If you limit anybody or any system to only a small, tunnel-vision view of only part of reality, that small pool of information IS reality. What would be news would an AI that forms a rose-colored-glasses sense of reality when only shown what's described. Or an AI that only perceives death and violence when shown unicorns and rainbows and (not mutilated) puppies. But when you limit a system's visual vocabulary to a small subset of consistently violent things, what else would one expect? The AI's got nothing else to draw on. GIGO.