AI Weirdness: the strange side of machine learning
Do neural nets dream of electric sheep?

Do neural nets dream of electric sheep?

If you’ve been on the internet today, you’ve probably interacted with a neural network. They’re a type of machine learning algorithm that’s used for everything from language translation to finance modeling. One of their specialties is image recognition. Several companies - including Google, Microsoft, IBM, and
More candy hearts by neural network

More candy hearts by neural network

Last week I trained a neural network to generate new messages for candy hearts. [http://aiweirdness.com/post/170685749687/candy-heart-messages-written-by-a-neural-network] They were, well, unique. My training data was really small, though - I could only find about 360 existing messages total. So, when I decided to generate some more messages,
Candy Heart messages written by a neural network

Candy Heart messages written by a neural network

Around Valentine’s Day in the US and UK, these things called candy hearts (or conversation hearts or sweethearts) appear: small and sugary, bearing a simple, short Valentine’s message. There are only room for a few characters, so they read something like “LOVE YOU” or “CALL ME” or “BE
New insect species, dreamed by neural network

New insect species, dreamed by neural network

Neural networks are a kind of machine learning program that imitate the way the human brain learns. They learn by example, rather than by being given rules by a human programmer. And because they can get very, very good at what they do, neural networks are now the algorithms that
New bills introduced by neural network

New bills introduced by neural network

Between 2009 and 2017, approximately 18,458 unique bills were introduced to the legislature of Massachusetts (out of 33,201 total). I know this because Dru Tarr [https://twitter.com/DruTarr], a legislative aide at the Massachusetts House of Representatives, very kindly compiled the publicly available list of bills [https:
Thesis titles generated by neural network

Thesis titles generated by neural network

Ever notice that sometimes the neural networks on this blog do a better job of imitating weird datasets than at other times? Here are two major things that affect how convincing a neural network version will be: 1. Amount of data vs complexity of the problem 2. How easy the
Wikipedia articles invented by a neural network

Wikipedia articles invented by a neural network

Wikipedia has a page where they list [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deleted_articles_with_freaky_titles], for entertainment purposes, the titles of a bunch of pages that didn’t meet the cut. These are mostly pages that were submitted as pranks, although a few of them are clever
Ten new applications for neural networks

Ten new applications for neural networks

Neural networks are machine learning algorithms that are very good at solving tough problems - they’re used for language translation, facial recognition, and financial management. I, however, have been training them on silly datasets. Here are some of my favorite experiments from the last year. Naming guinea pigs [http:
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